How do I feel about Morocco?

I think it's Mo-Roccan.

Ha ha ha I'm sorry.

The post I meant to make last night before I fell asleep absurdly early--

Morocco is incredible.  I don't think I can come up with a better word for it.  No description I can give you will be accurate enough for my liking, so I'm just going to not and pretend I did.

We flew into Casablanca and immediately boarded a bus for the four hour drive through Rabat to Fez. We didn't get to explore Rabat, but man was it beautiful.  We drove along the edge of continent and watched the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean.  My phone was dead at this point, so I don't have any pictures to describe how magical it is, but it's like Harry Potter World cubed.  The waves were crashing over the rocky edges of the shoreline, the sun hidden behind orange and pink and red clouds. Perfect.  That's it.  Perfect.

Ignoring just how morbid this is, I'm really fascinated by cemeteries.  I'm not going to get into just how interesting the concept of burying your loved ones in a place where their souls, bodies, or both will reside for an extended period of time is, but think about it sometime.  ANYWAY.  We turned the corner away from the shoreline and into the city, and I saw this massive congregation of people on a hillside.  I couldn't understand what they'd be doing on a Friday at 6:00pm congregating on a hill, but that's when I realized they weren't people.  They were gravestones.  And it was a cemetery.  I've been comparing the cemeteries here to the ones back home, and it's interesting to me just how differently they're laid out.  At home, it's very structured, row by row, even unnamed burials having a very specific place.  I always know where to step to avoid being on top of someone.  Here, not so much.  Everyone has a place, but there's very little method to it.  It seems more beautiful, in a way, to have so many generations of people on top of each other.  Clearly I put too much thought into this.

I think my favorite part of Morocco thus far is how the city continues to exist within history, instead of growing up around it.  The medieval medina is still a thriving community, it's not just a place for tourists to come and bask in the Moroccan sunlight.  Sure, tourists are here too (what really where), but it's not JUST a tourist destination.  You get to see a lot more this way.

I'm still struggling with being a tourist.  Anyone who has ever gone on a trip with me knows how much I hate it, but it's kind of unavoidable here.  It's a group of 25 United States citizens riding around on a large blue bus and stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures.  We're told not to drink the water or eat the chicken (broke that rule, and it was delicious) or eat the fruit (oops) or eat anything we can't wash/peel by ourselves (also whoops) and so on.  I desperately want to talk to people and learn more about what it's like to live here, but it's kind of hard to do when you're being herded around like crazy Americans.  We'll see what happens.

Next post:  Chefchaouen and Darby gets angry.

The Packing Post I Postponed Posting

4 hours, 41 minutes.

You know how I said I was going to post about packing when I did that last night?  Well, clearly I didn't.  But that's okay because I didn't pack either.  LET'S GO!

I have this nifty packing list:

1. 3-5 shirts
2. 1 sweater or fleece
3. 2 pairs of pants
4. 1 pair shorts
5. 5 pairs undies
6. 5 pairs socks
7. 1 pair walking shoes (uh)
8. 1 pair sandals
9. 1 rainproof jacket with hood (uh)
10. scarf
11. sleepwear
12. money belt (uh)
13. debit card
14. PASSPORT
15. driver's license
16. student ID
17. guidebook
18. journal
19. daypack
20. plug adapter (uh)
21. book
22. toiletries
23. ziplock bags (uh)
24. bug spray (uh)

All the "uh"s are things I don't have or haven't thought about that are probably pretty important.

Fun fact:  it's really hard to fit everything in a carry on.  It's like expert tetris, but with higher stakes.

Right now I'm trying to fit all of the tiny liquid bottles into a quart sized ziplock bag while talking to my mom on the phone about how I should be able to fit more tiny bottles in a ziplock bag and it doesn't make sense why it's not working.  It's actually making me a lot angrier than it should be.  I just want to bring shampoo.  I promise I won't do anything bad with the shampoo.  I just need shampoo.  PLEASE. 

As far as fitting clothes in the bag goes, pretty easy so far.

This is not how I expected this to go.

I thought I'd be freaking out and throwing clothes all over the place but instead I'm picking the clothes that have already been thrown all over the place off of the floor and stuffing them in a bag.

4 hours, 10 minutes.

8 Days. 1 Carry On Bag. All of Morocco.

In an exciting turn of events, I'm getting the opportunity to follow in my fore-smather's footsteps.  Starting tomorrow night, I will be flying from RDU to Detroit to Paris (throwback) and finally touching down in Casablanca, Morocco.  I'm deleting everything I can off of my phone to make room for pictures, so prepare yourselves.

In addition to the super cool things I can't wait to do (Spoiler:  there are camels involved. Am I allergic? Find out on next week's episode of Darby's Possible Near Death Experiences with me, your host, Anaphylactic Shock Girl.) I'm pretty excited about one tiny aspect of this trip: one carry on bag.  Every other time I go anywhere, my bag of stuff becomes massive.  Partially because I have a lot of stuff, and partially because I'm so indecisive that I end up getting stressed out and packing all of my stuff so I don't have to decide between one stuff or another stuff.  This time, I actually have to limit my stuff.  Within a 21x13x9in bag.  Fun fact:  the U.S.'s ability to supersize everything didn't forget to pack.  My bag is 13.5in (they didn't sell anything smaller, okay) and I am exactly 0.5 inches of unadulterated rebel.

I, for one, can't wait for the packing catastrophe blog post scheduled for sometime in the next twelve hours.  Get ready.

1 day, 1 hour, and 31 minutes remaining. 

The final pun of the day (CERN edition)

CERN

Finally, we spent two days at CERN, the Center for European Nuclear Research (more or less, the actual name is in French, which I do not know, much to my dismay).  We learned all about quarks and muons and positrons and other various things.

On the first day, we visited two of the experiments at CERN:  ATLAS and the original Syncro-Cyclotron. The presentation at the SC was among the coolest I've ever seen. They projected on the SC itself. It was amazing.

We then went into the wooden globe outside of Reception, whose inside is oddly similar to the inside of the Alain head in Mission to Mars. 

We also visited plenty of other places, like this one:

On the second day, we did two totally amazing things:  we went 93 meters underground to visit CMS,

And we made cloud chambers (which I will hopefully have pictures of soon).

Also, it started snow-hailing.  Switzerland weather, man.

More details on CERN to come as I remember them. It was an information overload.

...with the sound of music!

For our second and final day enjoying Switzerland, we had a and early start, leaving my favorite hotel and person (Gilbert, is his name) ever. We love Gilbert. I'm going to write Gilbert a thank you letter.

On the way to Geneva, we stopped in Bern, the Capitol city of Switzerland.  It is apparently the second happiest place in the world to live and costs almost as much as London. The food was very, VERY expensive. Very.

The name of the town has sometime to do with bears. Bear, Bern, I mean, it's similar. The city also has a really cool clock and a a statue of someone eating children, which has been aptly nicknamed "Darby."

For lunch, Maggie and I searched around for food and successfully found a sushi place. This place has the most delicious sushi I've ever had in my life and if I never get to go back for anything else I want to go back to that sushi place.

We then proceeded to wander around until we were able to go into the Einstein House. We learned:

1) Einstein was a player,

2) His house was very small,

3) He made his most important discoveries in Bern, and

4) He had a child before he was married that no one really knew about (sadface, poor baby Einstein).

Finally, after we finished, we all traveler to our hotel in France, which was insanely sketchy and smelled of cigarette smoke and dead things.