Marrakech, Morocco: Day 5

In the morning, we go to two museums: la Palais Bahia and another one whose name my uncle can't ever remember. He tells me to look it up on the internet, but I really don't have anything to go off of so apologies; it will remain a mystery. In any case, the two museums resembled each other in that they were both full of unbelievably intricate, stunning architecture and lots of sun burnt tourists.

In the afternoon, after packing a metal crate full of random fragile things, we go back to the market to re-buy supplies. No one gives me presents this time, but what's even neater is that I now feel like a familiar face. I'm also a little more brave about taking pictures.

Spices, in bulk

If you say that you want a kilo of tomatoes, they use this scale with pre-set weights to give you the right amount. Super hi-tek; this means these vendors could give you the right amount of fruits or vegetables even if you were on the moon!

For dinner, we've been invited to Thierry's house, where he lives with his "friend" Sebastien. It's going to be a French style dinner, which means we're expected to arrive around 20h30. I spend the late afternoon roaming around the house feeling unbelievably hungry. I've finished my book and stupidly only brought one, so the only thing to distract me is Fruit Ninja and taking pictures of my sunglasses. Finally, 20h rolls around and we get ready to leave. I of course forget my camera, and turns out there's a beautiful sunset waiting for us on Thierry and Sebastien's balcony.

Hipsterified product of my sunglasses photo-shoot. I made the collage by arranging my four photos together on the desktop and then screenshotting them all together ;)

Dinner is delicious but I find the conversation and company a little bit perturbing. First of all, I automatically feel super shy when around French people I don't know. My accent becomes more pronounced, my frequent grammatical mistakes become more frequent, and I suddenly feel very American. It doesn't help that Thierry launches into a rather serious rant about his impressions of the USA, none of which are very positive. The word "extravagant" must be mentioned at least three or four times. I don't have much to say besides the fact that the US is a big country, a lot of which I know very little about, but in my personal experience a lot of the stereotypes he cites aren't very accurate. I think the language barrier prevents me from delivering a solid defense. Sebastien, who I haven't met before, is less controversial and pleasant to hang around with. Both smoke five or six cigarettes during the course of the evening. 

We arrive back to the house much later than our normal bed time. While in the bathroom getting ready for bed, I close one of the windows and feel a sudden thud of extra weight on the back of my pajama top. I swivel my neck around in surprise, and there's a giant cockroach just sort of hanging out there. Needless to say, a frantic, hectic wiggle ensues to get it off. I catch myself wiggling in the mirror and have to start laughing, because I look absolutely ridiculous flailing my arms around in impulsive desperation. At all the frats next school year I'm launching a new dance craze, I've decided, called the "cockroach wiggle." So that is how I learn that I'm very scared of cockroaches. I'm not really scared of spiders or snakes or other normal things like that. But this: *shudder*