March 18, 2012,4:45pm Hotel Volubilis, Casablanca, Morocco
The last few days have been a blur. On Wednesday the class went to the American University in Cairo for a full day of lectures. The campus was beautiful, over 200 acres outside of Cairo. Unfortunately I left my glasses in one of the classrooms, but it was worth the experience.
On Thursday we visited our client and finished up our interviews. The team took us to lunch at Taboula, a Lebanese restaurant, where we again had way too much food. Even though the restaurant was only a few blocks from the office, they insisted on taking cars there and back. When we got on the bus, the traffic was so bad that it took us 45 minutes just to get back to where we ate lunch. The total trip home was over 2 hours for about a mile drive. Thursday night we had dinner at a restaurant called Sequoia right on the Nile. It was still a bit cold, but the food, drinks, and shisha were fantastic. We took cabs home and returned around midnight.
Friday was all tourist visits in the morning and afternoon. We started at the pyramids with pictures and camel rides (where a local tried to charge me 5 pounds after he jumped in my picture) then went on to the Sphinx. We got back on the bus and stopped for falafel and shwarma for lunch. We went to the Citadel and Copic Cairo before heading back to the hotel to work on our presentations. I was up until 1am Friday night working on our presentation , after a night of lobster ravioli and powerpoint presentations in the lobby.
Our group woke up at 6:45am to finish work on our presentation before we had to leave for Cairo University. We wrapped everything up and jumped on the bus. Our group went first, and did a pretty good job (although we went a bit over time). We watched the rest of the presentations while sitting on the hard wood benches and eating some type of roast beef (I think?) sandwiches. We returned to the hotel and I was able to sneak in a nap before the reception started at 7pm. The reception was a great way to end the course, a very celebratory event. Our professor informed us that we were getting ‘A’s in the course and that he was looking forward to our case studies. I said goodbye to my clients and classmates before heading upstairs to pack and get some solid sleep.
Sunday morning came way too early. I got in a cab with two classmates and headed to the airport. Arrived with barely enough time to swing by the duty free before jumping on my flight to Casablanca. Got a bit of sleep on the flight after I had lunch (the chicken meal on EgyptAir isn’t half bad). I got through customs and baggage claim just in time to see some type of national celebrity come off his plane, with tons of tv cameras and screaming fans everywhere. I ran to the train station and jumped on the 2pm train to Casablanca City Center. Enjoyed the countryside on the ride in. Found a cab and found my hotel. The free wifi that was advertised is apparently in the next building over, and my room is quite small and cold with little insulation and a broken heater, but it’s only for a night. The “bellman” that showed me my room continuously tried to get me to tip him more than the total of my train and cab ride combined. The general feeling here is very different from Cairo.
Casablanca is a pretty depressing city from what I’ve seen so far; grey, rundown, and desolate. It’s very difficult to find anyone that has even a tenuous grasp of the English language which makes getting around town and figuring out schedules difficult.
As for now, I’m making the best of the situation. Enjoying my duty free Jack Daniels while watching ‘US Marshalls’ on the 5” tv, headed to find food and wifi soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment