Morocco Almost Ready to Rock

This is a belated posting as I put it together a few weeks back and just today had the time to return to it as I can only access the Internet at certain locations on the ship and the students manage to find me and ask questions that they say which will take a minute but end up taking us into the late night; Alicia and I actually love these "interruptions" as it's cool to hear about their cultural experiences, insights, and to waltz with them on questions on their progress and grades.

Morocco was a blend of old and new, familiar and weird, tasty and then odd (especially the big eel fillet smothered with caramelized onions and almost recognizable vegetables). We docked at the industrial port of Casablanca as it was cheaper but a long way from the gate leading to the city. Thew ship was surrounded by container cranes that surrounded us like sentinels. Casablanca sure looked a lot better in the Bogart movie than it did when we sat foot on the eroding streets that were jammed with motor bikes, scooters, and maniacal cab and bus drivers--not a place to rent a car unless the death wish is winning over common sense. On our first full day at port I co-led a student field trip to the largest Coca-Cola plant in Morocco and the second largest in North Africa where we met with the General Manager who was a well educated Moroccan who spent several years in Atlanta and answered some great questions posed by the students, such as how they rationalized using so much water to make their products in a land with severe water shortages. It turns out the Coca Cola started off when the US Army built a bottling plant in North Africa to provide thirsty soldiers during WWII with a taste of home.

In any event, we took a couple of field trips to Marrakesh and then to some "real" Moroccan cities along the coast. Marrakesh reminded me of Mexico City around 1960 with the streets filled with people, many of them recently from the country, and scores of mini-shops selling everything from hand-made shoes to sheep heads and stalls filled with an incredible assortment of spices next to shops selling all types of herbal/local cures. We did the "tourista" thing and visited the Mosque (which we disbelievers were not allowed to enter), the Palace, the souk, and the Medina. The Medina was incredible as it reminded us of the Zocalo in Mexico City as it was filled with people selling their wares and entertaining tourists with monkeys on leashes, snake charmers (think they were charming the local version of garden snakes rather than cobras), women ready to henna and sprinkle glitter on "ancient" designs configured on wrists and arms, all of this happening concurrently.

We left Marakesh the next day on a bus and traveled along a two lane road to the coast and the trip should have taken an hour but took almost three as the roads were in either totally disrepair or being repaired. Along the way we learned about the unique Argon trees and their fruit that is harvested via goat droppings and which is converted into elixirs with great curative powers, from diarrhea to cancer to dandruff to bad breath. We held out from the sales pitch but enjoyed watching the female "co-op" workers grind the nuts into a paste and then an oil. We finally arrived at Essaouira which was a beach side community where Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens did their thing a couple of generations ago. That's where most of the students rebelled at eating fresh eel but I managed to have a BIG chunk. After lunch we headed to the waterfront to see the men unload their fish and literally fight over prices and freshness--great to see the local color.

We shared a last meal at Rick's cafe (some enterprising French woman opened this over-priced but sort of cool place) where we had an OK meal and enjoyed a very nice jazz quartet with ex-pats ranging in age from 20 to 80; they played pretty well and it decreased the pain of paying premium meal prices for "Planet Hollywood" fare.

Viva Espana!

We landed in Cadiz, Espana, on September 5th after a week at sea and it was great to land at Europe's oldest settled city to experience land, wonderful seafood, and good to great wine. We woke up before dawn on arrival to watch the tugboat nudge us into the pier that literally led us into the old part of the city. After checking out the local mercado and munching on some sinfully tasty chicharrones we took a couple of tours; the first being a pretty interesting city tour by bus and foot that took us to some wonderful museums, churches, and historic buildings. We found out that Cadiz was first settled by the Phoenicians and that it became the primary commercial center for trade with the Americas after the river route to Seville silted up. The second tour that evening took us to a small town outside Cadiz where we were "entertained" by a fourteen year old matador intern who did a pretty good job of irritating a two year old bull. Then we had a high energy flamenco program that was very entertaining and where we probably took a hundred plus photos--and you can see some of the "good" ones on Alicia's shutterfly album.

The next day we took a trip to Arcos and Ronda which are two of the famous "white cities" and were lucky enough to see the end of the week long annual celebration in Ronda that commemorates the birth of bull fighting. These were wonderful cities and it was fascinating to hear how these Phoenician born cities were made great by Rome and taken to even great heights of art and science by the Moors. It was one heck of a second day in Cadiz. The next day we took the very efficient and fast train (it got up to about 100 mph and makes our inefficient Amtrak look like an anemic sister train) to Sevilla where we walked the city in hundred plus heat. Still, we enjoyed seeing the cathedral, the Alcazar, and the old Jewish
Quarter where we had a darn good paella and some luscious white wine from a varietal that was new to both of us. On our last day in Spain I co-led a field trip to a wind farm and a solar installation that looked like the set from a science fiction movie. The wind farm produces about 120 megawatts, enough to power a mid-sized city and actually makes electricity at a competitive rate--the wind powering these behemoths started off in the Sahara and picked up force crossing the straits of Gibraltar and was blowing so strong at times that they had to lock in the blades to prevent equipment damage. Then we went to a solar farm where the energy produced cost ten times more than the wind farm but at least they are trying to test and make use of this technology. Our guide for the wind and solar farms is a "bud" of Al Gore, a nuclear physicist, and the author of the most current text on global climate change in Spain. Wow, it was like a year of experiences in a week in Spain and now we are heading to Morocco after spending most of the day refueling in Gibraltar.

Attention Mrs. Elder's Class

Dear students of Mrs. Elder: I promised Mrs. Elder that we would keep you posted on our trip around the world. We left Norfolk, Virginia on August 24th and spent three days following the US coastline to Halifax, Canada (can you find it on the map?). Halifax is a wonderful seaside city and we spent an afternoon climbing up a small hill to the Citadel which was a fort built by the English at the request of the Queen of England (know her name?). It took twenty-eight years to build the fort and it never fired a shot as it was considered impregnable and would have easily wiped out any attacking French or Indian forces.

Alicia (my wife; that's her in front of the ship just before we left Norfolk) and I left Halifax on August 28th and have now completed a full week at sea. During that entire time I saw one container ship and maybe spotted a whale but hard to tell given the distance we were from whatever it was. This is a BIG and DEEP ocean and at one point our ship traveled over some ocean canyons that were almost twenty thousand feet deep. The water is incredibly blue and fairly cold as each day they tell us the temperature; yesterday it was 68 and today it was almost 70 but still too cold to enjoy a swim if we were to fall overboard. Speaking of which, on a cruise last year on this ship one of the students was partying too much and fell overboard at two in the morning and it took the ship more than thirty minutes to turn around and it was a miracle that one of the students spotted him furiously swimming towards the ship. He was picked up and was "expelled" although I suspect he will never forget that swim.

Well, I should have began this message to you by noting that I am a teacher, like Mrs. Elder and that this ship has over five hundred college students from more than two hundred colleges from throughout the United States. This should be an exciting, fun, and great educational learning adventure for every student and I hope that some day you could join in for a similar adventure.

Tomorrow we reach our first port in Spain and it is Cadiz which is the city that the Spanish galleons came to loaded with the riches of Mexico and South America in the 1600s and 1700s. The people of Cadiz brag that Columbus is buried in one of their cathedrals, but plenty of other cities also say the same--maybe they divided him up?

After Cadiz we sail for Casablanca, Morocco, and I will try to keep you all informed of our adventures. We will finish our sea adventure in mid-December so stay tuned for more updates. Please send us your comments and questions and I promise to get back to you but it may be tricky at times as the Internet on the ship is linked to a satellite and when the weather is bad we can't send or receive messages. In the mean time please be good to each other and pay close attention to Mrs. Elder as she is probably the world's greatest teacher. Regards, Teacher Dan.

Land At Last at Dawn

An incredible first week at sea with over 500 students from 200 colleges and universities along with a fascinating bunch of professors, staff, and assorted kinder, including a darling set of "no fear" twin eighteen month old baby girls--all of us getting our sea legs and adjusting to shipboard food that does not remind us of home but is filling none the less.

Here's the scoop. Alicia and I are like newly weds sharing a cabin that is probably ten by eight feet but it does have a window on the sea. We spent the first couple of days learning to navigate around each other and figuring out how to use our micro shower and store our belongings so that when the ship rocked and rolled everything more or less stayed in place.

I'm teaching three classes and the students appear to be genuinely engaged or are doing a great job of projecting interest. My favorite class is the "hot of the press and make it up as you do it" course on Sustainable Development. Its my smallest class with nineteen students but it also has drawn a group of five life-long learners, including a couple of "real" experts and advocates who live and breathe sustainable development. The other two classes are "International Marketing" and "Operations Management" and I have refocused both classes on all of the nations we are visiting. Today the first four student teams for these two classes did a magnificent job of telling us about GDP/per capita, wind and solar energy initiatives, cultural norms for business dealings, corruption, and all manner of other information that will prime the students before each port visit. I don't think I've worked this hard since I first began teaching but it's a trip and I'm actually learning how to learn again about new stuff that matters. Also, the photo at upper left was taken on "Mismatch" day which was the first dance for the students and the guys with me are definitely "studs".

Now, here's Alicia.

It has been a fascinating and exciting week. We have attended many meetings, watched some great films about Casablanca and Spain and grown tired of the food and worked out too. Tomorrow we arrive in Cadiz and we are off on our various excursions, can't wait!

Please check my shutterfly site for pictures of our trip.

OK buds, time for us to check our prep list for tomorrow's adventures--including which Spanish vino we should taste and where to get some great cheese.