Mcdonald's for everyone

I had a pretty great day after i wrote my last post, I made it to the beach and hung out on the expensive side because it was slightly cleaner. The day was beautiful and so I asked some old French people to watch my junk while i went swimming.

I only saw two pieces of plastic floating in the water (i thought the first one was a box jellyfish), which is probably pretty good by Moroccan standards. I spent the next hour chasing large schools of fish around the water, watching seagulls dive in to catch them, and always making sure that there was someone further out in the water and directly across from me so that, if a shark attacked, they would be eaten first and screams would give me enough warning to escape back to shore with a heroic tale of survival to tell. no sharks came.

I ate my dinner at mcdonalds, which means that I have now eaten at Mcdonald's on three continents (it would have been 4 but none of my friends in London wouldn't go with me, so that will have to wait until spain). From Phucket to Agadir to Vancouver, the food is always adequate.

While it was kind of reasurring to see the large Mcdonalds on the beach (sharing a patio with pizza hut and at the end of the row of fancy restaurants), it was also kind of unsettling, but not because I am bothered by the spread of American culture across the world, as that means that I can usually find someone who speaks some English, and there will always be a large air conditioned restuarant for me to hide out in. No, it is upsetting for the opposite reason: Mcdonald's has gone too native. Instead of operating as an embassy for embattled north americans, it was full of Moroccans on holiday and European families. It was even staffed by people who could barely speak english and couldn't understand me when i tried to order a 10 piece chicken nuggs. It was like entering your home and learning that it was now inhabited by a new family who couldn't understand you and didn't want to talk about your family. Being the only english speaking person in a Mcdonald's was weird. Of course, when an overweight sunburnt family from england sat down next to me and began yelling at their children I immediately missed the silence. I just can't win here.

After that, I bought an early morning bus ticket to Essaouira and went to sleep at 8 because the sun drained all the life from me. I didn't bother to set my alarm because the mosque next door always provided me with a free wake up service at 5:20am.

morocco could be worse

today i was woken up by the stupid mosque with its incredibly powerful speaker system and long, whiney voice. it sucked, but what're you going to do?

i went to the famous beach which is apparently the only reason people come to this town, and wqas kind of dissapointed: it was really dirty and the water was cold. but it was nice to soak my feet and there are no jerks trying to sell things there, which was a pleasant change.

i found a clean spot and put my towel down, getting ready to relax, when these young moroccan guys asked me to play soccer with them. i did and it was awesome. we communicated in a mixture of badly spoken languages and signs, and they were all very nice. we kicked the ball around for a couple of hours and they told me they wanted to go to canada and kept asking questions about the girls there. Hammad gestured that he was a breast man and began thrusting wildly in the direction of two 30+ year old french women wearing bikinis on the beach.

women who come to morocco from europe and north america should probably not wear beach clothes here. the men are all sexually repressed disgusting pigs who think that foreign women are just begging for their tender and sweaty touch. it's pretty horrible, but i guess this is their country and they can be as revolting and stupid as they like.

anyways, after that i bought 3 disposable camers for 6CDN each, a very good deal provided they actually work, so there will be pictures as soon as i can get the, developped on CD

i then went back to my hotel and made friends with the reception guy. he's pretty awesome and never pantomimed sex once so it was a good conversation. i just wish my french were better.