Fasting on My Birthday

After being asked by way too many freshman why I was not fasting during Ramadan I decided that the best time to try it out would be on my birthday. Yes kids, Obie will give into pear pressure. When Karaoke went on past midnight, I was left with some pretty limited options for getting back to the Annex, I could either wait until 1:45 for the last shuttle or walk the 6 kilometers, being the motivated kind of dude that I am I decided to head out at roughly 1 AM, expecting to beat the shuttle. This plan might have worked perfectly had I not attempted to get all clever and try out a “short cut” that I had never walked before. Thirty minutes of walking down roads that I had no geographic reference for I decided that it was high time that I back track and try to find out where the hell I was. At 1:30 in the morning trying to back track is quite the experience, especially when you aren’t 100% sure where you are to begin with and you keep running into feral dogs, either alone or in packs. Fortunately after following some random hunches, as backtracking completely failed me, I was able to find myself back on the highway headed towards the Annex.

A critical oversight that occurred when I was getting for bed that night, was that I did not bother to set my alarm for an early enough time for me to have some kind of meal before sunrise.

To expose the exchange students to the idea of taking a Grand Taxi, an intercity taxi service, we were told to sign up for a time we would like to head to the town of Azrou and wonder around for a while. As I was supposed to fast that day I tried my best to resist the urge to drink water, but I will admit when I lack the will power to uphold arbitrary personal decrees at 36 C, or 96 F, it was way too hot to avoid drinking water while walking around.

After getting back to AUI it took all the energy I had to simply sit in front of my computer and be useless, as soon as Adam asked to borrow my laptop I was out like a light. For the rest of the evening I was exhausted with the major highlight of the night being a short call home to say hi to the family.