As Time Goes By

I just have to rub it in your face. It's going to be almost 20 degrees here on Friday. That's Celsius by the way...in Fahrenheit it's about 70 degrees.

We rode the train (which was nicer than the Metra to Chicago, and cost less than four dollars) for an hour south of Rabat to Casablanca on Saturday morning. After checking into the very inexpensive, but clean and colorful, Hotel Centrale (less than a ten minute walk from the train station and about $20 per person per night), we sat down to enjoy a cup of mint tea. Mint tea (tay d'el ban-ah) is popular in North Africa, and I drink it everyday in Morocco. It's very good and super sweet (I'll probably have diabetes when I come home from all the sugar they ingest in this country) . In this photo you will find Emma (who took all the photos in this post due to me being too lazy to purchase a memory card) and Nida, two girls who I hang out with quite often and will probably mention in passing quite often during my blog post. After a good half hour of chatting and tea drinking, we headed to the Hassan II Mosque to meet our fellow students who arrived the day before.

Hassan II Mosque (Masjid el-Hassan el-Thanii) is named for Morocco's previous King Hassan who died in the earlier part of the decade. Construction began in the 80s and it will not be complete for at least another decade (according to AmidEast staff). It is breathtaking, beautiful and intricate mosaics, and at nearly 700 feet tall, the world's tallest minaret (the mosque itself is the second largest). We did not take a tour inside; however, we will in a couple of weeks on our way to Marrakesh.

The top picture is the minaret, right about the caption is another part of the mosque with Casablanca peering through behind it.