Koti kullan kallis

Mama I'm coming Home...

Oon junas matkalla Marrakeshistä Casablancaan ja voin vain todeta, että oon niin valmis tulemaan kotiin.

Tän vikan kuukauden aikana en oo oikein pystynyt nauttimaan mistään, koska mulla on ollut meneillään kaikkee shaizee ja oon vaan laskenut tunteja kotiin paluun.

Eilen kun lähettiin Tamraghtista ajamaan taksilla Agadiriin, josta otettiin kolme tuntia kestävä bussimatka Marrakeshiin, en tiennyt, kuinka tuun jaksaa vielä kaksi päivää, että pääsen Helsinkiin.

Oon vaan niin onnellinen, että nään huomenna mun perheen ja myös rakas Mikko, yksi parhaista ystävistäni tulee mua vastaan kentälle ja meille... aaaa olisinpa jo Helsinki-Vantaan lentokentällä...

Nyt ymmärrän TÄYSIN, mistä serkkuni Laura puhui vikana Aussi-viikkona: "You just feel like you're wasting time. You've seen all you want to and you don't wanna take no more fucking pictures. You just wanna go home. But you've still got some time to kill." Melaniekin kertoi, että kun se oli porukoittensa kanssa Australian jälkeen Thaimaassa kolme viikkoa, että "I just couldn't enjoy it the same way anymore".

K-O-T-I-I-N .


P.S Älkää ymmärtäkö väärin. Tietenkin olen iloinen tästä reissusta ja on ollut kivaa. Mutta olosuhteet tän viimisen kuukauden aikana on  ollut mitä on ollut, minkä vuoksi kotiin palaaminen on ainoa järkevä vaihtoehto.

Marrakesh

Went to this herb shop

The owner of the herb shop was nice enough to give me lip balm and a head ache killer / throat clearer for free although i didn't buy anything! Made my day :)

After that we went to Palais Badii which was in the middle of the city.

Had lunch

We took a 4 hour (?) train to Casablanca where we stayed the night. I had to catch my flight at 8 in the morning... home! I went to dinner with Sam. Poor Tom was lying in bed for the third day.. D-I-A-R-R-E-A

mmmm free cake!

The world's largest mosque @ Casablanca

Leaving from the Surf Camp to Marrakesh

Imagine how frustrating it is to travel with this much surfing equipment + 6 backpacks..

We checked into a hotel in Marrakesh and bought some souvenirs from the market, which was a disappointment compared to the Essaouira market. 

The limp bodies of the drugged snakes, that were there for the sole purpose of entertaining the tourists, was something so outrageous... But before we knew it, the snake man had already wrapped the drooping reptile on Tom's shoulders for a photograph and was waiting with his hand stretched out for money.. How can people do this kind of animal cruelty?

Last Week in Morocco

The last week... the last time I surfed was on Sunday, just before the weather turned all shit. There was a storm that flooded all the rubbish and dirt to the sea, so shore was in no-surf-condition for a couple of days, unless you wanted to get Ebola or some other nasty virus from the bacteria that was floating around.

After that, for the rest of our stay there was no waves - of course...
So this is pretty much what I did:

Played with Charlie the Cat

Tested the Viagra Femme tea, didn't work.

Watched the pups grow

Essaouira & Viagra

I took plenty of beautiful photographs of the picturesque fisherman town, Essaouira, and the lively and colorful market, so it was quite hard trying to choose just a couple for this blog.. :)

Because the surf was pretty much dead, we rented a car with Edwin, Sam, Tom and Chris and drove to Esaouira.

Rainbow!

We bought some calamari from the fish market and got someone to make it for us.

After eating we went to the lovely market in which we wondered in for hours.

Although I was broke, in dept (thanks mom and dad) and ONLY supposed to by flip flops AT MOST (my 5th or 6th pair that I had bought from a Coles in Alice Springs a month before were broken and I was trying to avoid buying a new pair, just 2 weeks before heading to snowy Finland, by duct-taping my flip flops with poor results...) I ended up buying a bag... nooooo. I just couldn't resist the hippie-festival-rocker -vibe I got from it. And hey, it's made of camel skin...!

Tom got his beard shaved at an old school barbershop!

Tea time

Sam and Tom enjoying tea.

If I would've had the money and any available space in my already-over-weight-backpack, I would've bought a rug like Tom and Sam did... Oh well

Oh yea, also bought some Viagra Femme from the market just for shits and giggles

Board Problems & Muslim Customs

22.1

When we got to Tamri beach break I noticed that my board's laminate had cracked thanks to getting hammered yesterday at Imsouane... FUUUUCK. I was all ready to go in, so Edwin lent me his 7"0 and I had a go. Tamri beach break was a bitch though, and because of the strong current I didn't really have a go that many times and ended up struggling to paddle back to the shore. Luckily I made it. I was on the verge of starting to panic when I noticed how far I had drifted with the rip...!

We drove to Croucrou beach break and I jut chilled since I didn't have a board. I met two duchies that had driven all the way from Holland to Morocco. Pretty sick drive. In the evening mom called and talked to her <3 Crazy, didn't talk this much with my parents in the whole time i was staying in Australia (3 months) than now in this month...

We had a pretty interesting convo at dinner. Edwin was telling about working as a paramedic in Bronx. Wouldn't have guessed in a million years what he does for a living! Edwin also told about how it was working on 9/11... pretty fucking surreal.

---

23.1

The sun wasn't out so I couldn't fix my board with the sun repair cream, so instead I used a 7"10 which was easy to ride! Nothing really interesting happened this day.. I saw Dutch Chris again and had a chat with him and declined his invitation to smoke weed with him. I also met this cool English guy, Damien, who is a surf instructor at Dynamic (just around the corner from our surf camp). He was pretty hilarious with his circus tricks from standing on his hand while surfing and doing all kinds of jumps.. entertaining indeed!

Me, Tom, Sam, Chris and Momo went out for lunch and it was quirky to see how Banana Village had come into life on a Sunday afternoon. It was pretty intriguing listening to Momo tell about the marriage system. You can have four wifes BUT you always have to get to wifes (and other wives?) permission to remarry. And each of them has to be treated with equality: If you buy your second wife a gift, you also have to buy your first wife one. I did however get pissed off when Momo compared women to cars: "How would you feel like driving the same car for 40 years?"

Surfing @ Imsouane

6:30 and the moon was still shining over the town :)

Me, Tom, Sam, Edwin, Christian, Juan and Sayeed & Rachid, as our surf guides, woke up at 6:30 and started driving to Imsouane, this cute little fisherman/surf town. We surfed at this beautiful little spot at low tide which was perfect for my kind of learner. I really got to paddle and it was nice that I didn't have to fight the waves while trying to get out. The waves were really in rare and a bit slow, so paddling with my short board-ish board was almost impossible with my non-existing arm muscles and already-used energy. I did however manage to paddle on to a wave, but god damnit, of course I hadn't waxed my board, so I slipped just as I was about to get up.... arghh.

Anyway, It was really really really nice, cause this was the first time we all were out at the same time in the water (talking about me, tom, sam and justin). And because it was Justin's last day before heading back to his job in the Australian army in Afghanistan, it gave this nice feeling of togetherness :)
After trying to persuade me a couple of times, I finally gave in, and Tom and I switched boards. It was actually fun on that long board... paddling with it... aaaaa, god's gift to limp bizkits...! And it was just like old times... Because the waves weren't strong, I wouldn't have enough padling power to get onto one, so Tom was just pushing me onto the wave.. just like in Sayulita!

Me and my lovely Aussies - Tom, Justin & Sam

When it was mid tide, and the waves died in that beach break, we went for lunch. I was fascinated with the fish auction! Didn't know one existed! But because I am dirt poor / broke az, I decided to stick with spaghetti bolognaise, instead of buying fish like Tom, Sam and the other guys did. And I made a terrible mistake. What actually would've been the same price AND delicious AND the thing you should buy once in a fisherman town could not be implified to the shit I got for 50 dirhams. I got plain fucking spaghetti without any kind of sauce what so ever. I'm an idiot. Note to self: Don't order pasta with normal expectations.

After lunch we went to surf he other side (since it getting high tide), or the advanced team went and I tagged along. I paddled out with my board and man it was a hard one. After my arms were all jelly I managed to get up once for a couple of seconds but after I fell off, I decided it was time for me to go in, cause I was out of energy.

I should listen to what Rachid said.

He had been telling me something with his sometimes-not-so-clear-English and although I couldn't make really anything of what he had just said, I couldn't bother to ask him to repeat it. Well, I should've. Cause he was telling me to watch and wait till the (wave) set finishes and then come out of the water. So after deciding to come out, Me, not having heard all this, just paddle towards the beach, get up and BUUUUUUUUUUM. I got hammered by a wave. Fuuuucking hell. I was standing in less than 50 cm of water when the wave hit me so i'm tumbling and rumbling in sand water and just thinking that i'm gonna get SMASHED in the head with a fin from my board (and that my board is probably gonna get damaged, too). I get up and start running out of the water - I don't wanna get hammered by another one - too late. BUUUUUUUUUUUM. I feel like i'm in a washing machine full of sand.

I get out, slightly embarassed and pissed off with my rookie-ness. I look at my board: It has a white scratch that I assume is from my wetsuit knee pads or something. I'm too exhausted to think at that moment about my board.

After getting my wetsuit off and dropping my board at our bus, I return to the beach and join Tom, Sam and
Justin at the beach break where they are running around all esctatic like little children. Tom going ADHD crazy and dunking at barrels was the most funniest and sweetest sight ever. Wish I could get my brain to go to a more kid level more often !

Surfing & Arabic Vocabulary

Although on the first day of surf (after my sun got light up in small dots of sun rash) I felt like considering to do what Sayeed was saying in moving down on board sizes slowly towards my board's size, on the second day I had a totally new mentality. Although It's a hard to learn how to surf on mine, since it's only 6"8, I put myself out there. I felt like although it's gonna be tough, I can do it. And in the end, it'll be worth it.

The Slab

So for two thirds of the day I tried to proceed in learning my board, but at the end of the day, when Chris wasn't surfing anymoreo n his board, I took his longboard for a ride... And it was soooo much fun. Riding a 9"8 log is sooo easy and getting up is effortless. Paddling too with a log is so much better cause the biger and wider your board, the less you have to paddle. The only downside is the speed the board goes and turns: it felt like someone was hitting the slow motion button, after geting used to the lighting fast -motion of my board. I did though get hit on the back of my head so I called quits and decided to just munch on the alluz that I had bought from the Almond-Nutman.

Denny (owner of Surf Camp), Thomas, Alex, Dan

Afterwards we went to The Slab see the pros who, unfortunately, had done with surfing for the day.

PS. Some Arabic vocabulary i've learnt so far (written how it's pronounced):

Shukran - thank you
Afek - please
Aunni - help me
Baraka - stop!
L'Henge - snake
Hatar (H pronounced like chomik and chlopak in Polish) - dangerous
Kebir - Big
La - No
Je - Yes
Aluz - Almonds
Temmint - honey