With the last of my money, I booked plane tickets for kitty Shady and me, via Paris, to Casablanca! Yep, that was quite a view! To Casablanca , where β after Morocco opened its borders again after the Covid Omicron scares β I was met at the airport on February 9, !
Breakfast and lunch were always available, and evening dinners were cooked up for me. This campus was actually not very close to Casablanca, but rather in a pretty empty suburb, far south of the city. This area still contained vast barren agricultural areas in which entire villa districts were planned. Although the sea was visible, the coastal strip was still developing. Even a short walk to the beach was not allowed because of construction activities.
In a few years, the Moroccan Riviera will be ready here, intended for the elite. These were often old, packed passenger cars, sometimes even with animals on board, that you could stop along the main road. They would drive toward town, stop randomly, and you would literally throw some small change at the driver, and he would leave with smoking tyres. Eventually I got the opportunity to explore the city on my own my host family left campus mostly just for shopping at the mall , and what a splendor I encountered.
The city was steeped in a lot of French-colonial architecture , and palm trees were everywhere, making the comparison to what Phnom Penh was like for a long time, quick. However, in Morocco they were masters at creating remarkably large, green parks. I wore out the soles of my shoes as I wandered through various neighborhoods of this magnificent city.
I like to explore locations with a little help from the locals, so that was slightly more difficult there. Not only because the language of communication was French, but also because my host family was not really interested in Morocco. And they worked all day at the school.
