While in the terminal in Madrid, I met three other people coming to AUI. Quality conversations were had. The stupid Ryanair plane was an interesting experience, to put it nicely. I hope not to fly with them again, but that will depend on what I do for spring break, I guess. Once we landed at the Fes "Airport" we had to wait an hour for another new student to come, then headed up Mount Doom. Longest ride of my life, I swear.
Once at AUI we got dinner, parted ways, unpacked, etc. I slept til 1pm. And spent the day studying Arabic. Got about two hours of sleep and went to go take the Arabic placement test. With success, might I add. I skipped Beginner II and am currently in Intermediate I. If I'd been more on the ball and started studying earlier in the break, I probably could have made it to Intermediate II, but oh well. All of the new international students were in orientation all day, so I spent the rest of the weekend doing pretty much nothing, to the point where I almost wished classes had already started so I'd have something to do. Who does that??
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Airports are dumb.
Ugggh. I think the worst part about epic long travel is not the epic longness of it, nor the lack of sleep involved, nor the epic boredom suffered, but the desperate need for a shower that develops about halfway through. I left home just about 24 hours ago now and I feel like I stink. I'm sure everyone wants to know this, right?
So it's 11:12 am local time in Madrid. I can't check my bag with Ryanair for another 3-ish hours, and then my plane leaves 2 hours after that. Hour and a half-ish flight to Fes, where I get to reclaim my bag and try to find the AUI van that's supposed to meet me and other students there. I kinda wish I'd asked for the phone number of the student who's supposed to be with the van, but that would have been too easy. Please excuse random typos; my dinosaur of a computer seems to be rebelling against me and doesn't always register when I've hit certain keys. Makes writing papers really fun. Anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to find the AUI people. Fes Saiss is a small airport, I think, and I'm sure if I look for a bunch of confused/lost-looking foreigners, they'll be AUI students.
The process of getting to Mardid was fun. And by fun I mean annoying and long. After leaving home at like 520 am on Tuesday, I had an 815 am flight to London. I had an aisle seat and no one sat next to me. Win. I slept most of the way, and pretty much only woke up when they came around with food. Turns out the girl in the window seat in my row was on my flight to Madrid as well. The one that left at 620 am Wednesday, when we arrived at like 7-something pm Tuesday. 11-hour layover for the LOSS. After playing “where's our terminal and how do we get there?!” we wound up in a little pub thing in the airport, then chilled in various hallways til 430 am. Found out via CNN that Massachusetts fails at being a blue state. :(
The thing I hate about traveling at length like this is that it takes so long to get to my destination that sometimes I forget where I'm going. I'm sure the lack of sleep doesn't help with this at all. But after sitting on planes for hours, sitting around in airports for hours, and really only focusing on what time it is now and what time I have to be at what gate or something, I don't know if I lose focus or what. Just sitting here talking about this I was like, “OH HAY I'm going back to Morocco now!” Obviously I know that's where I'm going, but I'm not thinking about actually being back and going to AUI and all of that stuff. The concept of “Morocco” just becomes “the last plane ride I take and the place where I have an hour-long car ride.” It will probably be more exciting once Friday afternoon hits, after the Arabic placement test and hopefully a substantial amount of sleep.
Why do airports fail at providing free wireless? I do not approve of this. I'm not paying 5 euro for 30 minutes of internets that I have to use all at once. La shukran. Especially when my battery lasts 2 hours max and I really don't want it to die while I'm using those precious internets. As a result I'm just sitting here rambling in a Word document and will transfer later.
There are a lot of college-age-looking people here. I wonder if any of them will be on my flight. Not that it will really make a difference because I plan on sleeping. Oh hay, some guy just came by and put a flier on my computer. I think it's a solicitation for money for some kind of sports federation thing? Translation fail, woo. Too tired to bother right now, and I didn't want to look at it for too long and make him think I was considering it. I don't have cash on me anyway, unless he wants Egyptian pounds. Speaking of translation fail, knowing random words in multiple languages is sometimes not a good thing. For some reason I was trying to think of a word in Arabic earlier, and I was coming up with it in Japanese instead. Er? Then trying to think of things in Spanish once I landed here, and got the French words instead. Oh, life. I've not had to deal with a lot of Spanish being spoken to me here, but the little that's been said I've understood. Woo. Do I look like I could be Spanish? Because no one has spoken to me in English yet. In France they seemed to use English by default, I think.
Speaking of language fail, there were two women speaking Arabic a few rows behind me on the flight to London. I couldn't pick up most of what was said; I don't know if that's because it was a different dialect, or just a whole lot of words I have yet to learn. Most of what I got was subject pronouns and the word “no” a whole lot. It's something though. Six months ago I probably couldn't even have identified it as Arabic. So I win a little bit.
Wave of tiredness just hit me. I'm going to stop staring at the computer now. Instead I'm going to stare at my Arabic book and hope the words just implant themselves in my brain. Wooot.
So it's 11:12 am local time in Madrid. I can't check my bag with Ryanair for another 3-ish hours, and then my plane leaves 2 hours after that. Hour and a half-ish flight to Fes, where I get to reclaim my bag and try to find the AUI van that's supposed to meet me and other students there. I kinda wish I'd asked for the phone number of the student who's supposed to be with the van, but that would have been too easy. Please excuse random typos; my dinosaur of a computer seems to be rebelling against me and doesn't always register when I've hit certain keys. Makes writing papers really fun. Anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to find the AUI people. Fes Saiss is a small airport, I think, and I'm sure if I look for a bunch of confused/lost-looking foreigners, they'll be AUI students.
The process of getting to Mardid was fun. And by fun I mean annoying and long. After leaving home at like 520 am on Tuesday, I had an 815 am flight to London. I had an aisle seat and no one sat next to me. Win. I slept most of the way, and pretty much only woke up when they came around with food. Turns out the girl in the window seat in my row was on my flight to Madrid as well. The one that left at 620 am Wednesday, when we arrived at like 7-something pm Tuesday. 11-hour layover for the LOSS. After playing “where's our terminal and how do we get there?!” we wound up in a little pub thing in the airport, then chilled in various hallways til 430 am. Found out via CNN that Massachusetts fails at being a blue state. :(
The thing I hate about traveling at length like this is that it takes so long to get to my destination that sometimes I forget where I'm going. I'm sure the lack of sleep doesn't help with this at all. But after sitting on planes for hours, sitting around in airports for hours, and really only focusing on what time it is now and what time I have to be at what gate or something, I don't know if I lose focus or what. Just sitting here talking about this I was like, “OH HAY I'm going back to Morocco now!” Obviously I know that's where I'm going, but I'm not thinking about actually being back and going to AUI and all of that stuff. The concept of “Morocco” just becomes “the last plane ride I take and the place where I have an hour-long car ride.” It will probably be more exciting once Friday afternoon hits, after the Arabic placement test and hopefully a substantial amount of sleep.
Why do airports fail at providing free wireless? I do not approve of this. I'm not paying 5 euro for 30 minutes of internets that I have to use all at once. La shukran. Especially when my battery lasts 2 hours max and I really don't want it to die while I'm using those precious internets. As a result I'm just sitting here rambling in a Word document and will transfer later.
There are a lot of college-age-looking people here. I wonder if any of them will be on my flight. Not that it will really make a difference because I plan on sleeping. Oh hay, some guy just came by and put a flier on my computer. I think it's a solicitation for money for some kind of sports federation thing? Translation fail, woo. Too tired to bother right now, and I didn't want to look at it for too long and make him think I was considering it. I don't have cash on me anyway, unless he wants Egyptian pounds. Speaking of translation fail, knowing random words in multiple languages is sometimes not a good thing. For some reason I was trying to think of a word in Arabic earlier, and I was coming up with it in Japanese instead. Er? Then trying to think of things in Spanish once I landed here, and got the French words instead. Oh, life. I've not had to deal with a lot of Spanish being spoken to me here, but the little that's been said I've understood. Woo. Do I look like I could be Spanish? Because no one has spoken to me in English yet. In France they seemed to use English by default, I think.
Speaking of language fail, there were two women speaking Arabic a few rows behind me on the flight to London. I couldn't pick up most of what was said; I don't know if that's because it was a different dialect, or just a whole lot of words I have yet to learn. Most of what I got was subject pronouns and the word “no” a whole lot. It's something though. Six months ago I probably couldn't even have identified it as Arabic. So I win a little bit.
Wave of tiredness just hit me. I'm going to stop staring at the computer now. Instead I'm going to stare at my Arabic book and hope the words just implant themselves in my brain. Wooot.
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