Wow! Rich didn't know what he was getting into at age 22! It's been a long and adventurous road full of curves! Never in a million years did either one of us expect to be where we are today. He has put up with a lot over the years with me, I'm definitely an imperfect soul! I hope it hasn't been too bad! I appreciate everything he does for our family so that I can be a home with the kids. He is a great dad and a wonderful husband! He helps me out tons around the house and is our chef (and a great one at that!), our vacation planner :^), and our oldest tease!
Thanks for everything that you do and I love you tons!
When we were in Morocco, I made a few comments about how crazy the driving was. How cops would stand on the side of their freeways with no vehicles and simply step out into the fast lane and flag you down, and people actually stopped! And how I didn't know why they even bothered to paint lines on the road because it would be a little 1 or 2 lane road and there would be 4 or 5 lanes of traffic on it. They also had round-about intersections with 5 (sometimes more) roads forking off them and this is exactly what every intersection looked like! At anytime you could put your hand out the window and touch at least one car! This video only shows one of the intersections of a round-about. This round-about probably has 5 of these intersections all around it that are all doing the same thing! It is absolute chaos! It is completely opposite of driving rules here. If you are in the round about, you have to yield to people coming in! So they get clogged because everyone is coming into them and no one can move out.
Our friends that we stayed with told us that their driving rules were not really strict, they were just merely suggestions. Red lights and stop signs did not mean that people would necessarily stop, they may slow down, a little, but you never knew if they would actually stop. That reminds me of another thing. Their stop lights are placed on the same side of the street as you are parked so it is hanging above your head, sometimes even above the car behind you, so you have no idea when that light turns green! You seriously just have to listen for the cars behind you honking at you to go and then hope that that is why the cars are honking!!! It is truly a miracle every time you leave that you make it back in one piece! There are no seat belt laws! The government cars can pretty much do what ever they want and get away with it! The people we stayed with were government so they had this privilege. The speed limit on there freeway is about the same as here, yet they would go sometimes in the 100's and when the cops would radar them (yes they had radar on a tripod in the center median of the freeway) the cop would step out in front of them and motion his hand to tell them to pull over!!! and then notice their government plates and shake his head and motion to them to keep going!!! When I say that this trip had many miracles involved.... we witnessed them daily as we drove too!!!
Our friend also told us that you are considered "well off" if your family owned a scooter. She once saw a family of 5 with all of their groceries in tow, riding on a single scooter! There was a child in front, then the dad (driving), then another child, then the mom, and then another child on the back! all of them holding several grocery sacks! We never got to see one that loaded but we did see a guy riding a scooter with a lawn mower tied and balancing sideways on the back of his scooter and one acting as his own tie off.
One other crazy and frustrating thing was that there was NO waiting in lines (ie. first come first served)! If you were the least bit polite and tried to wait your turn, you would literally stand there all day!!! No joke! We stood in "line" (more like a chaotic gathering) to get some cotton candy at a party we went to and we were there for seriously a half hour (possibly longer). Even mothers and grown men would come and insist on their cotton candy before 20 little kids who had been there for a long time got theirs! That is just how they are raised and to them it is not rude, it is just how things are done. You walk straight in the door, straight to the desk, and talk/yell over top of everybody else till you get helped and you don't look back when you leave either!
It was a VERY interesting experience to say the least. I am so glad, for several obvious reasons, that we went and once again, no offence, but I am very proud to be an American living in America!!!
I love this time of year! This is just the food we picked today from our garden. We have zucchini, yellow squash, beets, peas, beans, and tomato's. We got SOOO many peas this year - they are my favorite part! We haven't had a garden for a few years now with all of the moving, so this year it is very appreciated!
13 years later,
