Epilogue

Today is Friday and my last day in Morocco. Tomorrow morning my journey back across the ocean to home will begin as will the rest of my life that has been on hold while I have been away. In reality. Morocco really has been another world within my life for the past six weeks. Even though I still have contact with home, everything else is thousands of miles away and is of little consequence or thought here. I will be leaving new friends, new family, a different neighborhood, different school, a different culture, and a different world behind as I pick up where I left off. I will still stay in contact with the connections I have made but soon enough life will resume as normal as I adjust to life back in these United States. The memories and even some friends will stick with me for a lifetime whether I return to Morocco or not. I have made friends here from Morocco, Germany, Italy, England, Russia, students from Florida, Virginia, VMI, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Wake Forest, NYU, Cambridge, Oxford, and also one other Aggie, Vernon, class of '04. And all of them have been great people and I have enjoyed sharing my time here with them. This has been the greatest single learning experience I have had in my life. In context, six weeks is not long, but it is long enough to take in and understand a culture and its people. It is long enough to greatly enhance language skills and communicate with a variety of people. All these experiences I will bring back with me to America and hopefully put them to use. Otherwise, what is the point? I have been blesses to see amazing places here in Morocco. Remembering the beauty of the Sahara, the sheer awe of the high Atlas, the paradise of Asilah, the enchantment of an ancient city, and sights, sounds, and smells in between. Returning home to my daily life in the states I will recall the people in my own daily life here. Whether it be the taxi driver, the dirham ice cream vendor, the Malawi man, the shopkeeper next door to home, or the homeless man at Batha, they will still be present in my mind. With so many thoughts and experiences and things to share, I can only capture a snapshot of my time here through writing. I hope I have been able to illustrate and convey the things I have seen and done here, and most of all give a sense of Morocco to you without having been. It truly is a world apart from my own and one not many Americans are familiar with, so I think documenting my time here is important. The end of this adventure draws to a close as one final chapter remains to unfold: the journey home.

~Andrew