i survived...

the bus ride from hell.

not only was this bus 2 hours late from departing, but boy was it an adventure! what was supposed to be a 5 hour journey from rabat to chefchaouen actually was a 9 hour journey. yes, 9 hours, confined to a tiny seat on a bus.

but here's the best part- and i know that my mom isn't going to sleep for a week when she reads this, but before i came to morocco, i had major fears about the bus trips through the mountains. i've seen several movies set in morocco and i knew to expect that there would plenty of tight, windy roads... windy roads that are set on cliffs, with no protection from the ground several stories below... and my ex used to tell me how you could see cars in the valleys that ran off the road. so i was dead afraid of encountering these roads. not only was the second half of the trip through nothing BUT these roads, but then add to it pitch black darness. what a fun ride.

i kept leaning towards the cute boy sitting next me, as if by leaning against him, it would prevent the bus from tipping over. but what baffled me was the lack of care the driver took around these turns. i mean, if i stuck my hand out the window, i'd be touching the tops of trees, that's how far down you could go... and he's still switching lanes, diverting drivers ahead... IN A BUS!!! well i was terrified. i didn't know if it was worse that i couldn't see what was below, or worse to know. my stomach was in a knot for all of about 3 hours.

then i also kept noticing all these road signs, like one was just an !, another was an image of falling rocks, another was a cow... like these roads aren't treacherous enough, let's add a damn cow to the mix!

i'm not even going to tell you how many more of these bus trips i have left.

but every cloud has a silver lining. i sat next to a cute boy in his early 20s, who was reading paolo cuehlo in french, i was immediately impressed. at one point, he unwrapped a snickers and offered me a bite. it was so out of nowhere that i laughed and said the obligatory, no merci. so cute, and so arab. then later he offered me cookies that he had in tupperware. still cute, still no merci. so at a rest stop, i had purchased oranges and returned the offer, we both laughed, he said no merci. in the midst of trying to seek comfort on this bus, i dropped a quarter. and although i told him "c'est l'argent american, ca marche pas ici, c'est pas grave," but he insisted on retrieving it, for which i gave it to him as a cadeau. He was so grateful, he was like "oooh merci boucoup it is a memory" -- It turned out that he also speaks english fluently, so we ended up talking about everything from that point: traveling solo, life experiences, languages, he even plans to visit india this summer- so we chatted about that! he was so interesting! we agrees that these kind of random moments and encounters are what make life interesting and what makes one grow in life. in the end, we exchanged numbers and i will be calling him to meet up tomorrow.

and now my trip begins...