That's Morocco

 I was irritated because I woke up on Saturday morning at 7:30, the only day that I can sleep in.  I tried falling back asleep and after about five or ten minutes of simply lying there in that weird state between sleep and not sleep, I heard a noise near my window.  I turned just in time to see a LARGE black bird flapping its wings near my window.  Then it kind of fell into my room, right on my bed.  Both of us made weird noises.  He made one like he had flew to the wrong place and I made the noise where your breath is taken away and you can’t really say anything, just a weird terrified grunt.  I pulled my feet away from the bird in a panic and it managed to flap its wings loudly and it flew back out my window.  I could not fall asleep because my heart was racing so fast.  I closed the window after that.  No more birds for me please.

Sometimes I set weird goals for myself.  This past week I discovered a delicious bakery only about a block from where I live.  My goal was to become a regular—the kind where the workers would eventually have my order ready before I came, and they would give me a free sample here and there.  I am proud to say, that I am definitely on my way to accomplishing that goal.  The lady who works there smiles and seems excited to see us every time and she has started speaking to us in Arabic.  We try to respond as best we can in our broken Arabic.  She also gave us a free sample already!  The bakery only opened about two weeks ago and I think we are their most regular customers.  The chocolate filled croissants are delicious and I am sure I will probably gain some weight—probably not a bad thing for me actually.

This morning I went to church for the first time here.  I have been trying to figure out where it is and what time Mass is celebrated.  I am so glad that I went.  All parts of the Mass were in different languages.  Although the majority of it was in French, there were also parts in English, Polish, German, Italian and Latin.  I thought it was kind of odd that practically everyone knew the parts in Polish.  Who knew there were so many Polish people in Agadir?   And, the church was packed.  It was really neat to see that so many people from all over the world who speak different languages could come together and celebrate something they have in common.

After church we found out some unfortunate news.  We would not have electricity or water for the next 3 days.  Apparently they are working on fixing something in our apartment, but they did not feel the need to mention that to us.  So that is pretty cool.  Luckily our friend Driss is letting us use his apartment, only a couple of buildings away.  When Kristen mentioned that she was surprised that no one had slipped a note under our door that we would not have water or electricity, he simply responded with “That’s Morocco.”  Interestingly enough, we have been hearing that expression a lot, which always makes me laugh.  For example, when we went to the water park and it seemed like you could easily fall off the water slide and die, he said, “That’s Morocco.”  Now I use that expression a lot as well because it is applicable in so many different situations.