An Eiffel 38 Hours...

As I sit here drinking sweet Moroccan tea, the warm breeze carries a beautiful smell throughout our riad. I inhale a combination of chicken marbella, which is being prepared in our kitchen, and the scent of fresh flowers from the garden...and the memory from last night's travels begins to be erase itself from my memory....well, almost...

What was supposed to be a relatively short trip at 18 hours, ended up taking 38 miserable hours.

The plan was to go from SFO to Montreal and then Montreal to Casablanca, landing on Saturday, June 27th at 7:30 AM. However, my initial delayed flight became cancelled which would eventually cause a chain reaction of headaches and backaches before arriving at my destination. After my flights were rescheduled, I thought I surely had to be in the clear.

However, I couldn't have been more wrong.

I had another delayed flight from SFO to Toronto which left me running, swearing, and sweating through the Toronto airport in order to make my connecting flight to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I ended up pulling my back muscle from carrying the 10 books I convinced myself that I couldn't live without - and embarrassingly enough, one of them was from the Twilight series. After landing in Paris, I walked what I believe, all exaggeration aside, was 1 mile from the beginning of the airport to my boarding gate, only to be turned away by a nasty French boarding officer saying, "Jour ticket iz no good!" Um...."What?" I stammered. "But, here is my confirmation number." Apparently the ticket I was issued in SFO needed a stamp to be approved. So, I was turned away at the gate, and forced to walk the 1 mile back to the start of the airport to talk with my good buddies from Air Canada...and, at that point, I missed my connecting flight to Rabat...and said goodbye to my luggage. From there I downed water and the Parisian equivalent of Advil and boarded a standing-room only bus to the Paris Orly airport where I waited for 9 hours to board my flight...and I'm pretty sure that air conditioning doesn't exist in Orly. You all know how testy I get in the heat...or when I'm hungry. It also goes without saying, that someone like myself who also worries constantly about proper refrigeration and expiring food, would never in a million years eat one of those ancient sandwiches sitting in this sweatbox of an airport. I'm sure that you can gauge my mental state at this point. However, the long layover meant that I would get into Rabat at 11:30 PM and my biggest fear was arriving at night in Morocco by myself and being driven by someone I didn't know to CCS. When my flight was delayed another two hours, I felt the onset of frustration tears. When I had chalked this horrid day off as one of the most frustrating days of my life...I happened to look at the window as my plane ascended Paris, and I saw the sparkling Eiffel Tower...and I thought, things could surely be worse.

And, I was right.

I got into Rabat at 1:30 AM and was turned away at customs and had to talk with a health officer...and by talk, I mean he asked me first in Arabic and then in French precisely 5 more times the exact same question, growing more and more frustrated by my lack of understanding. I have learned that when I don't know the language, my brain always falls back on Spanish (which isn't good to start with)...and I almost said, "Que es tu problema?". Which I am fairly sure means, "What is your problem?"... and I can even more accurately say that I believe that I said that, and had he understood, I may have been sent to the Moroccan pokie. But, all joking aside, I later learned he worried that I was a Swine Flu carrier, being so close to Mexico and all. I hoped I didn't cough while walking out of his office.

After finally getting through customs, I waited for my luggage to come around. And God knows, I couldn't miss it, as it is mocha with aqua polka dots...obnoxiously flashy and so undeniably screams, "American Turista!" This could also be noted when back in SFO an angry Parisian who believed he deserved to be dealt with before me referred to me as, "Z beach with z poe poe dot zootcase." But, anyways, I waited and waited until the last of the luggage had come off and it became apparent that Air France had lost my luggage. I "talked" with someone from baggage claim which consisted of me explaining my cancelled and missed flights and him saying, "Naam...naam. Inshallah"...which I have come to understand is Arabic for "Yes, yes. God willing (meaning if God wills your bags to be here, they will be. If not, then they will not)." How about using the baggage claim number to locate it instead of "willing" it to be here, I am thinking... But, at 2:00 AM I walked out without my luggage, to meet Mohamud who would be driving me to Cross Cultural Solutions. Yet, he wasn't there. In fact, no one was in the airport. And by airport I mean it is a room with some chairs and that's about it: no phone, no info desk, no passengers waiting, no nothing - the airport was about to close...who knew an airport closed?! By then the panic and frustration over the entire last day and half set in. I had to mime to someone that I needed a phone. At that point I frantically dialed Mohamud's number, then Abdellah's number, then the CCS home base number in Morocco, the CCS homebase number in New York...all to get their answering machines. Before I started to cry, one of the numbers called the cell phone back...and it was a man talking in French. I handed the phone to an airport police officer to talk for me. Apparently it was Abdellah, one of CCS' drivers, and he said he would be there in 20 minutes. So, 45 minutes later a man named Simo came to the airport (Simo?? Where's Abdullah? What about Mohamud?), who proceeded to verbally fight with the police officer in Arabic while gesturing towards me. The police officer then said, "You go with him." NO WAY in hell, I was thinking, but said, "I am not going. I need to talk with Abdullah first." We ended up dialing Abdullah back and he said that Simo worked for CCS and he would drive me back to my place...I had faintly remembered seeing a picture of Simo from the CCS website. So, I asked Simo to show me his identification card with his picture and then proceeded to get into the CCS van...and said a quiet prayer, over and over, as we headed silently to my place. At about 3:00 AM I arrived at the dark and quiet riad and was shown my room. From what I could tell, as the moonlight shown through the room, I was in a room full of 7 other girls...and I had bottom bunk...the best news of the day, well, after safe arrival.

Then, my exhausted head hit the pillow faster than you could say Salam Alaikim...and I awoke to a near paradise. The nightmare of last night, seemed just that, and I quickly became excited for this new adventure.