#while looking for something else recently i found an old facebook post of vicky's

[pigeonclaw]

I forgot to make a post about it til now, but in Onestar's Confession, Tallstar going to the Moonstone to confirm Crowpaw's story and being told by StarClan "yeah he's right, you'll never get your home back so you need to leave" makes me even more exasperated at the plot of Midnight. Already that book baffles me in hindsight because I misremembered it for years — I believed that the journey to Midnight was to not only strengthen bonds between cats of each Clan to help everyone work together, but also to point them in the right direction of a new home because the lake was so far outside StarClan's sight that the Clans needed an outside source of information.

Turns out I was wrong. The whole journey was just so Midnight could tell them to leave their home, and they had to figure out where to go entirely on their own. (Sure they had a shooting star help them out but it's not like StarClan couldn't have predicted that too.) But if we have confirmation by this point (also confirmed in Shadowstar's Life) that StarClan already knew they had to leave, then what was the point of all that??? All they really accomplished was stalling the great journey for multiple books and letting a bunch of cats suffer and die needlessly. I don't agree with the idea a lot of people have that StarClan and all these characters should simply (and uncharacteristically) work together and flawlessly avoid conflict, I like conflict, but I want a reason for it. The case of Midnight is just so unfortunate. It's such a mess that could have so easily been streamlined into something that makes more sense, but it just... wasn't.

[safasaf2018]

Day 14 - 6/15/18

12:24 PM

Woke up at 9:30, went down to breakfast which was closed, but Kimberly had grabbed a plate of fruit and a gluten free roll with brie cheese for me - love of my life. Now we’re all sitting by the pool tanning, swimming, I’m catching up on my blog, our professor jumped in the pool at one point, it’s surreal. I wonder about the wealth distribution in Marrakech - I know it’s a huge tourist city and they built their economy off of that, but I wonder if locals drive by this resort and hate it because it brings in so much money and it’s filled with such privileged people. It’s hard to remember that not everywhere is like this, it’s hypnotizing when you’re in it - the staff is SO incredibly nice, doting on us wherever we are - as I was writing this at a table outside just now a man came up with a silver platter in a suit and asked if I wanted anything to eat or drink. It’s wild. I’m so grateful to be here, i’m just very aware of other people right now. And at the same time I never EVER want to leave this resort. I could be very happy just living here the rest of my life. Ramadan is finally over!! Iskandar, the student who was fasting, ate breakfast with us this morning! And now we have to go to McDonalds one more time because he wants to try it in Morocco, but I don’t think anyone minds much. The three days after Ramadan are also holy, so no drinking, but also no more fasting. We’re waiting for the professor’s family to get here and then we’re off! I’m not entirely sure what we’re doing today but I wasn’t sure what we were doing yesterday and that turned out all right so I think I’m just gonna close my laptop right now and go back to the pool.

6:18 PM

We left the resort at 1:30, and went to downtown Marrakech to see an old Sa’adian dynasty family tomb. It was without a doubt the most beautiful tomb or tribute of any form to someone’s death I’ve ever seen (keep in mind I still haven’t been to the Taj Mahal yet). It was laid out, there were about 60 people buried there, each marked by a rectangle mosaic in the ground. The members of the royal family were buried under the most intricately carved out rooms of marble, plaster, and cedar, and the servants or other people living in the house were buried outside in the grass. It was such a light and colorful space for burying the dead. The carvings were absolutely incredible, with arabic calligraphy usually spelling out “allah” (god) up and down the sides, or something religious. After a quick foot tour there led by our professor, we went across the street to a café called Kasbah Café where we actually met up with a girl from Maine! She’s a high schooler and she and I have mutual friends and have been following each other on social media for about 2.5 years now, and oddly enough this was our first time meeting! Our professor allowed her to eat with us so her dad dropped her off and she got to join us. Today is Eid, the end of Ramadan, which is the biggest holiday for Islam, so she’d been eating all day (her mom’s family is Moroccan) and wasn’t that hungry, so she and I just split a meal, but that was really cool to be able to do. Afterwards I walked her downstairs to meet her dad and bought a gelato for myself while I waited for the others. Now we’re in the bus on the way to Essouaira (spelling ah), which is where we’ll be until we leave back for campus on Sunday. Most everyone is sleeping or just sitting quietly listening to music. We picked up the professor’s wife and 3 daughters and an airport in Marrakech so they’re all with us now as well. Alright I need to do some of the class readings.

2:13 AM

The hotel we’re staying at right now may must be my favorite place I’ve absolutely ever stayed. We arrived in Essaouira at around 7 pm, and walked through the medina (market square) to get to our hotel. Our professor and his family were staying in the hotel right next to us because our hotel didn’t have a big enough room for them, so he got us all checked in, introduced us to the staff, and left us until Sunday morning. So first off, this hotel’s owner is a GORGEOUS young man from Paris, so that definitely added to the aesthetic. but more importantly, the hotel used to be a classic Roman house, so the middle has a beautiful fountain with floating lily pads, with 4 stories going up around it, all open in the middle. Danielle and I are on the top floor, and everyone else is on the second or third floors. Every room is decorated differently - our room seems to have a red bird theme - and one of the rooms has two floors! One bed is downstairs and the other is up a staircase in a loft. We all get settled in at the hotel (threw our stuff on the beds) and then went downstairs to decide where to eat. In the lobby was an older woman named Vicky who had started a conversation with Carolina, and slowly drawn in every single one of us. This woman speaks ten languages, has a ton of different degrees from the US, Africa, and Europe, went to Columbia at 8 and a half years old, trained with US olympic figure skating team that all died on that plane, but luckily was 6 months too young to compete so she wasn’t on the plane that crashed, has been working for the UN forever, and is recently retired and traveling (she doesn’t own a house anywhere she just travels - she’s been to 5 countries in the past 3 weeks), but the UN and other NGOs keep getting her to teach seminars (she’s taught at Stanford, Berkeley, and a ton of other schools I’ve forgotten), she recently deleted her Facebook and changed her name and wiped Google clean of herself because she doesn’t want anyone having her information, especially her half brother who would track her down and tap into her bank accounts to steal money. She was amazing, no one really believes her but Carolina and I do. Oh she also broke her pelvis in 2 places and healed on her own within 3 weeks because she had people from all over the world sending her energy, and she taught the doctors reiki. Anyways that was fun. So we finally left for dinner. We were told to go to a popular restaurant called Taros, but we wanted to walk around and look at other restaurants first. We went down curving alleys, seeing different shops we locked in our heads to go to tomorrow, went in a few restaurants, and ultimately settled on Taros. One man brought us into his small restaurant with live music and opened the rooftop seating just for us, leading us up a spiral staircase behind the musician. We chose not to eat there in the end, but that’s the Moroccan spirit. Taros was a huge restaurant with multiple floors, the most popular of which was the roof, where we went. The roof had a kitchen, a bar, and stairs up to even higher levels with tables. We all sat at a table and enjoyed the live music while we ate. I got a Pizza Reine which is a classic French pizza, and it absolutely melted my heart it was so good. We all got drinks while eating, a few of us got beers on tap which is the first time I can say I’ve done that! The food took an extremely long time which for some reason didn’t really bother anybody at all, I thought it honestly added to the atmosphere, gave us more time to talk and enjoy our drinks and the music, some of the students went downstairs to dance and then came back up to eat, it was a great night - reminded me of those looooong French dinners. After we were all done eating we went down to the bar, got another drink each, and started dancing. We made a couple friends there (especially when the girls needed a lighter for their cigarettes) but for the most part stayed within the group which I was grateful for. We formed a dance circle and just made fools of ourselves, screaming the lyrics to Spanish songs that only a few of us understood, and we always went with each other to the bathroom or to the bar to get another drink, just in case. It was a great group feeling night. Shortly before the place closed we all left, at around 12:30 or 1. Most of us went back to the hotel, but Kimberly, Carolina, Iskandar, and I wanted to walk around town. It was so empty, this is the first night post-Ramadan so people aren’t awake eating. There were some people of course, but much emptier than during the day. We walked through alleys and lanes of stores and said hi to every cat we saw. At one point we stopped into a small convenience store to buy a lighter for their cigarettes. They didn’t have any lighters, but the owner of the store offered his lighter, and when that didn’t work two customers offered theirs - again, the Moroccan spirit. We kept walking until we left the downtown area and came to the bigger roads that lead to the high way. We found a 12 year-old couple walking and asked them where the beach was. They walked us far enough to where we could see it and then left us to go for ourselves. There were maybe 3 other people on the whole beach. We all kicked off our shoes and walked into the very shallowest bit of the water which was freezing to the bone - we didn’t stay long. After that we came back to the hotel, and Kimberly and Iskandar left again to get crêpes but Carolina and I stayed in, I’m exhausted. So far I love Essaouira, but I haven’t even seen a fraction of its liveliness yet, so I’m beyond excited for tomorrow when we have an entire day to do whatever we want.