Come on over!

This blog has moved sites. New updates are going to be over at http://mitzyg.wordpress.com .

Welcome to the blog!

Hello! Welcome to my travel blog. There aren't any current posts at the moment, but there will be after I start traveling at the end of July.

In the meantime, check out some of the posts from 2005 and 2006. It's a new blog, but I've been posting some of my old travel journals from previous trips. Hopefully I will be continually adding my old journals the whole month of July before I leave, so there will always be something new to read. Most of my Morocco journals are up now and the next step will be adding some pictures from that trip. Then it's on to my journals from the Czech Republic.

So, poke around, give me some feedback by commenting, and I hope you come back!

see you soon!

we are leaving fes early tomorrow morning, going to casablanca with lindsay, (hopefully) seeing the hassan II mosque, sleeping in a hotel, and then going to the airport the next morning. in short: i'm almost home. i'm really excited, though it feels a little sad, now. we've kind of established a routine here and i will miss getting to hang out with lindsay and lahcen. but i'm also completely psyched about coming home. i'll call you from new york when i get in.

in the internet cafe part duex

i really miss the english language. we met people at volubulis today and they were from the states and abby and i talked to them for like ten minutes, desperately trying not to let them go even though i think they were a bit freaked out by our enthusiasm and really just wanted to be by themselves, because abby and i both miss the english language so much. i mean, we speak to each other exclusively in english, but i think what i really miss is being able to meet random people on the street and talk to them, listen in on conversations, understand the words to songs, understand the newscasts etc. the kid in the internet cafe was really sweet; i liked him. he was very friendly. most kids that talk to you want you to give them money, and that is the sole purpose of their interaction with you, but he just wanted to talk to the american girl. it’s really lonely when you can’t talk to anyone and no one will talk with you, only at you. this kid didn’t even speak english, but we communicated just fine with pictures and gestures. i think i might be very lonely if i lived here by myself.

in the internet cafe

there's this kid sitting next to me. he's probably ten or twelve. he's been writing and drawing in my journal and trying to get me to write arabic and asking why i'm not muslim. it's pretty cool. he showed me how to write my name. he laughed when i told him abby's name because in arabic it means my father. i think that's pretty funny, too.

he just read this e-mail out loud, and his pronunciation is very good for someone who doesn’t speak english. he's reading over my shoulder and marveling at how fast i can type, which is funny because i don't think i can type very fast on these damn french keyboards. abby's ready to go, so i will go with her.

asima

so the surprises in the aisles. there is a big sign that says "canned tomatoes" (in french actually, something like preserves de tomates, but i know what it means) hanging over the aisle. there are a whole 10 feet dedicated to canned tomato products. that's pretty normal, right? so i thought it would be pretty easy to make a decent tomato sauce: get some canned tomatoes and some canned mushrooms and some onions and garlic and voila. but all, ALL the cans are tomato concentrate. there are tons of sizes, lots of brands, lots of pretty pictures of tomatoes, but all the cans contain concentrated puree. there was one brand that had one size of non-concentrated puree, but that was it. apparently people here use a lot of tomato paste and absolutely no chunked tomatoes. there are other weird things (weird to me, probably not weird to moroccans). but altogether probably one of the most western experiences you can have in morocco. it’s really kind of comforting, and i enjoy going there. it’s a great field trip.

abby and i are going to walk to the bou jeloud gardens which separate the medina from fes el jdid. we haven't been into el jdid at all, but there are extensive palace grounds there, not open to the public, and the old jewish quarter with some old synagogues. they say that most of the inhabitants are no longer jewish, so i'm not sure if the synagogues are functioning or just attractions. not much else is going on. i'm reading paul bowles' novel The Sheltering Sky. i like it. i relate a lot to the things he's talking about. he doesn't give a lot of description of the culture so i think you would miss a lot if you had never been here. i think that's part of the point. it's the story of some americans who wander into north africa without knowing much about it and their observations are scattered and they sometimes miss really important things, things that paul bowles of course would have noticed. it leads to some confusion on their part, which is completely understandable.

have you got the january edition of national geographic? the french edition has a big story about the berberes of maroc and i'm hoping the american edition has the same story. there were some amazing pictures in it; some of them reminded me very much of amellago. i'm going to get going; walking around helps warm me up. hope everything at home is well.

today lindsay and i went on a tour of the medina with one of the official guides. official guides have taken certain tests and paid a fee and are registered with the city and wear official badges. that’s opposed to the faux guides who are often mere boys who wander around the medina and try to get tourists to follow them. the faux guides speak a remarkable number of languages, and often guess correctly. they’ll come up to you and offer to lead you to “the best leather shop in fes” or whatever other shop owners are currently paying them commissions. it is illegal to be a faux guide (as we’ve learned), but the interesting thing is that there are a large number of actual faux guides wandering around the medina with impugnity. what we think happens is that the actual faux guides pay regular bribes to the medina police who then allow them to continue operating, while regular moroccans who are friends with foreigners and not faux guides, and thus not regular bribe payers, are arrested.

anyway, back to the official guide. he didn't say anything terribly interesting and he wasn't very talkative, but he was able to answer questions when we asked them. he seemed more used to taking tourists to the various leather and pottery shops. the best things about being with him were that when you're with an official guide, none of the faux guides or shop owners hassle you, and he also knew all the 9000+ streets of the medina so we were able to walk around without fear of getting lost. these two things alone make it very worthwhile to hire an official guide. usually when i walk around the medina i stay to the two main streets, tela kubira and tela seghir, but today we went all over and took lots of shortcuts and it was fun. we were hoping to learn more history, but oh well. i guess we know most of the really important history already. he was able to tell us some things about architecture, but the best part really was being able to take whatever turn we wanted to and knowing we would be able to find our way back.

abby is sick again. she woke up at 6:30 this morning and threw up. we don't know why she keeps getting so sick. she's been in bed all day. i am going to the super market tonight to pick up some stuff for dinner. there are very small corner stands in the residential parts of the medina. they have lots of stuff, like packaged cookies and fresh bread and soda and water and eggs and uht milk and laundry detergent and shampoo and gum. the shop owner stands behind the counter (the shop front is just big enough for a small counter) and you walk up to the counter and ask him for what you want and he turns around and picks it out from his stock that sits in the small space behind the counter. it’s really amazing how much stock they can fit in that small space behind the counter. then there are the market stalls in the medina. these places are very specialized. one only sells olives, another sells figs and dates, another sells meat, another sells chickens and eggs, another sells fruit, and so on. these also have a counter, but the shop behind is less cavernous and the goods are usually out front in baskets or hanging from hoooks. this is all the medina, which is one of the only remaining functioning medieval cities in the world. they say here that there are two others, damascus and somewhere else. i'm not sure if that's true or not. but it reminds me very much of what medieval london must have been like before it burned down, except that fes is made out of stone and london was wood, hence the fire. but in london there is still a street called poultry lane, one called fishmongers, one named after cloth in some way. it's the same way in the medina. you'll find different little streets with different specialties. but when the french occupied, they didn't want to live in the medina, so they built the ville nouvelle, which is kind of like westminster in london: the rich suburb for the people who want to get out of the cramped city. this was rather recently, like 1917 or something, so it's a fairly modern city, if slightly run down (some of the more candid moroccans will admit that not much has been done as far as public works since the french left in the 1950s). it is way more modern, though, than the medina: grided wide streets, all big enough for a couple of lanes of cars, more spacious lots, bigger stores. in the ville, you can walk into most shops and pick things up for yourself. they still have a little street for tailoring, but it reminds me much more of the fabric district of atlanta than the places in the medina, which truly could be from the middle ages. they also have a central market, which is located in a small square and reminds me much more of that market in seattle.

one of the great things about the ville is the supermarkets. there are two i know of, though i've only been to one. i'm not sure if you have maps of fes, but asima is out to the west, just past where blvd hassan II ends and the other that i haven't been to is to the north of the ville. asima is almost like a western supermarket. they have motion sensor glass doors and many aisles of food and check outs with scanners and tall ceilings and bright lights. it is certainly a refreshing change after staying in the medina for a few days. i don't think i could stay in the medina full time; i might go a bit mad. it's loud and there are certain smells and there isn't much variety in the food. but i manage to go to the ville almost every day, or at least every two or three days. asima is kind of funny, though. they have a produce section, but they never have fresh mushrooms and only some days they'll have basil and things like that. you never know quite what you'll find and it often won't be nearly as good looking as we would expect back home. but they always have dried figs and fresh dates and five kinds of olives, so that kind of makes up for it. then there are the aisles. they look pretty western, you would almost think you were in europe, but there are some surprises waiting.

lindsay has to get going to class, so i'll try to write more later tonight.

still in fes

thank you for all your e-mails. it's so nice to hear from you. i'm glad that you are enjoying my stories; i'm never quite sure what details to include, so i usually just include most of them and hope it's not too much.

dad and teresa both asked for more about lahcen's sister's house. the building itself was no more comfortable or uncomfortable than most moroccan houses. it was kind of dingy and in the outer working class suburb of a city, whereas amellago was very clean and like a rural village. rich definitely seemed more run down and shabby. but the trouble was with the family tension. lahcen used to be close to this sister, who is now 19, but two years ago (she was 16 then) she decided to marry this guy. in morocco when a girl marries a guy she moves in with him and his parents. many houses are comprised of lots of people. so she now lives in his mom and dad's house with his three brothers and one sister and another wife and her child. the house is pretty segregated: the women cook and clean and serve and all wear hijab (which is a real sore point with lahcen) and they never eat with the men and they only eat in the kitchen the leftovers of what the men have sent back. because we were foreigners, the three of us sat up in the front sitting room with lahcen, the men, and the grandmother, and of course we were served first (as any guest would be). but we didn’t see the women at all til a little bit at the end of the meal. lahcen disapproved of the marriage at the time because he thought she was too young, and so this was the first time he visited since the wedding. he didn't even know which of the brothers was his sister's husband. he's also really shy, so he felt really really uncomfortable and the person he came to see (his sister) was kept back in the kitchen out of sight the whole time. so he didn't know the family at all and he didn't get to talk to his sister very much and he was angry at the condition of her life. the family didn't speak anything but berber and a little bit of arabic, so lahcen was our sole mode of communication and he was hardly saying anything at all so the three of us just sat there and smiled a lot and laughed when the father suggested (quite seriously, i've been assured) that we should take his 13 year old daughter back with us to the US. this is a common request, one omitted so far only by lahcen's family in amellago, which makes me like them even more. lahcen kept trying to get up and leave and so we would get up with him and then they would grab our hands and lead us back to a room to sit down again. there was a lot of weird tension. i have to get going to meet lindsay. more later.

Re: Are you back in Fes?

i am back in fes. we got in late last night from amellago to rich to fes. it was a long day of traveliing. thanks for your e-mails; i'm starting to get kind of lonely for home and it's nice to hear familiar voices in my head when i read my e-mail. that's funny that you (mom) remember me riding a camel when i was a little kid. i think i vaguely remember that too. about the eid: we were at a cafe in rich when the slaughter happened, which was ten in the morning on friday. so we didn't see anything or hear anything, which was nice. i think abby would have completely flipped out. the one thing we did notice was that, since we had arrived in morocca there has been a constant presence of sheep and goats. every market has zippers of sheep/goats for sale, people are dragging their family’s sheep through the streets (they pick up its hind legs and just start walking and the sheep just struggles to keep its front legs moving so that it’s face doesn’t drag on the pavement as it’s being hauled behind its new owner), every street you walk through, every house you go to, there is the constant sound of bleating and baahing. well, when we emerged from that cafe, the main thing i noticed was a complete silence. not a bleat or a baah to be heard for miles. the massive sheep/goat presence we had experienced the weeks before was very suddenly completely gone.

we went to lahcen's sister's house in rich for lunch, though, and had very very fresh lamb kabobs. it actually wasn't all that tasty (lahcen says that meat is always better the second day). i was really uncomfortable at the house, too. lahcen was really uncomfortable, too, so that didn't help. then his sister's husband drove us out to amellago. it was a really different experience from anyplace i’ve ever been. the town has no electricity and very few stores, certainly not anything with normal operating hours or signs or regulations. i have never been so far out of reach. there was one phone in the village, but it was always busy and there were certainly no internet cafes. lahcen’s family is really lucky because they have solar panels on the roof for lightbulbs at night. they also had gas tanks that you could put a mesh thing on top of and then when you light it it will function as a lamp. the house was made totally out of mud, there was very basic plumbing: one of the toilets that’s a porcelein footstand and there was a small family style hammam that was heated with a wood fire. none of this was automated, of course. the family is very fortunate in that they have a private well in their own courtyard, so in the morning one of the sisters has the chore of drawing up water from the well and filling these large plastic barrels. one of the barrels is placed in the toilet/hammam area. there is a small bucket next to the toilet, and when you use the toilet you take water from the bucket using the cup that sits in it and pour it down the hole. this essentially flushes the toilet. it really works out pretty well, but it’s not as much fun when you’re throwing up all night because you have to squat over the toilet (the ground is dirt and the stall has no light and there’s no place to sit and nothing to rest against except for the toilet flushing bucket). the entrance to the hammam is right off of the toilet stall. it is a fairly good size room, definitely big enough for a few people to bathe at the same time, and the ceiling is almost high enough to stand up straight (i had to crouch a little, i think lindsey could stand). the room juts out onto the central courtyard and there is a place in the courtyard where you can build a fire underneath one of the walls of the hammam. there is a large water container sitting above the fire (which you fill up from the well), so after the fire has been going for about half an hour the inside is very steamy and warm. you take a container of cold water in there with you and your own personal bucket and they have very low small wooden seats to sit on so you are not sitting on the floor. you use a plastic cup with a handle to scoop water out of the hot bucket and then add a little cold water so it doesn’t burn you and you sit on the stool and pour the water over your head. i was really glad i had been to the big city hammam because i had a much better idea of how to bathe myself. that family hammam was really such a luxury. i would love to have something like that at my house one day, but perhaps tiled instead of made with mud.

most everyone is the village is a subsistance farmer, so when we had chicken for dinner one night we heard the bird being killed that afternoon out in their barn area, which was conveniently adjacent to our room (i think that squicked abby out a little). i got food poisoning and threw up in the middle of the night; that sucked. i just started eating food again today. almost all the food came from their house: we had milk from their cows, eggs from their chickens, cous cous that was hand rolled by their mother, vegetables from their garden, etc.

his family was super nice, at least i think they were because they only spoke tamazight (the berber language) and a little bit of arabic. they always smiled at us. his brother was awesome, though, and treated us really well. he spoke french really well and a little english, so we were able to communicate a bit. maharoc, as he is called ( his official name is mohammed, his berber name is maharoc, and it is a statement to go by your berber name rather than your official arabic name) was really really kind to us and showed us around and kept us fed. i liked him a lot. lahcen has three little sisters who are still at home (seham, 9; miriam, 12; and suehad, 14); the two younger are still girls and are very sweet, but the oldest i thought was at least 18 when i first met her. she was kind of rebelious towards lahcen, i think because she has started wearing a head scarf since he was last home and he was chiding her for it. many berber women do not traditionally wear hijab and he is slightly upset that his sisters all do now. while in amellago we hiked around the gorge and walked through the fields and just generally lived. i got a big gash on my forehead when i was out walking in the gorge in amellago (it's in the high atlas mountains) and i've been trying to find hydrogen peroxide since we got back to fes. it's not horrible, more of a big scrape than a gash, really, but i really don't want it to get infected. people are giving me weird looks in the streets, though, and that's kind of fun. it's cool to have battle scars.

we took the local bus from amellago to rich. it was like a vw minibus except that there were rows of seats on it. abby and i got to sit in the front seat, but lindsay and lahcen sat in the back. apparently a woman in the back was throwing up into a bag for most of the hour journey. i felt really badly for her. the little bus is packed full of people and really stuffy and rattles and jumps a lot as it goes over the unpaved sand road. in rich we got another local bus company to take us to fes. it kind of sucked, definitely not as good as the ctm bus company, but it got us here safe. the ctm buses are the only buses that run on a schedule; all the other buses wait at each stop until they are full again before they take off. but apparently they just stopped the regular ctm run to rich, so we had to make do. at least the bus filled up pretty quickly at each stop. now back in fes we are planning to go to volubilus sunday and casablanca monday and then home tuesday. there is a mosque in casa that abby wants to see so we are going there a day early. we are thinking of trying to catch a football match on saturday if they are playing in town. we haven't planned wednesday, thursday, and friday yet. it's weird to think that it's just that short. i'm excited about coming back home, but i'm also getting used to being here. i guess that always happens: you get used to your new place and it seems strange to be going home. i'm just about ready, though. i really like hot showers on command and being able to understand people on the streets. it’s great to be here but i don’t know how i would do it for more than a couple of months.

i should get going. i'll be in better contact now that i'm in fes, so you should write me.

The Sahara friggin Desert

i'm in er-racchidia (pronounced errashidia) right now. i can’t write a lot right now, but I will catch you up later. after the last time i wrote abby and i took the night bus to erfoud and from there a friend of lindsay and lahcen, picked us up and took us through rissani to merzouga. the place we stayed in merzouga was amazing, the lap of luxury. the people were really nice. really really nice. it is owned by this guy named larabi and he has 8 brothers. we met ismail, the youngest (17) and a real charmer, mustapha, 21, kind of bookish and studying english in meknes, ali, 23 who used to work with lahcen, and larabi who is the second oldsest at 34. i was feeling a bit sick when i got there; when we got off the bus i was running a pretty good fever and had the chills and the shakes. i think my chest infection was really starting to get to me. but an old freind of the family who spends all his free time with them at the hotel, is the nurse and director of the health clinic in the town of merzouga. he took me under his wing, told me what to do, and even gave me antibitotics from the village clinic. he also speaks english and was a really nice companion for abby and me while we were there. i'm feeling much better now.

we came to er-racchidia last night and we're going to rich (reeshe, as in nouveau riche) right after we leave the internet cafe. lindsay and lahcen are coming in to rich toight on the night bus, so we'll meet them there and then all four go to lahcen's house in amellago, which is a small town near imilchil (i don't knoz if it will be n your map). we'll be there fr the eid ( a big feast celebrating the story of abraham and isaac where every fa,ily slaughters a sheep in remembrance). then we'll go back to fes. the erg chebbi, the bg dunes outsid iof merzouga, were really incredible. i got a really great tan in just a few days ecause the sun is really hot and bright. we rode camels out into the desert for te sunset one night. cool. er-racchidia is a very not touristic town (as they would say here), and rich is even smaller. it's a nice contrast to the very touristy feeling in merwouga. got to go. all my love and more writing later. (sorry for all the typpos. the backspace key gets stuck down very easily so i'm afriad to use it because it erase s everything.)

Feeling a little better

i'm feeling better today so hopefully i can stay down here in the internet cafe a little longer today than i could yesterday. it was kinda scary yesterday because i couldn't breathe really well and my lungs hurt and when i coughed (which i did when i got short of breathe which was fairly often) it felt like someone had kicked me in the chest. my lungs burned. anytime we were walking anywhere yesterday i had to pause to gasp for breath every few feet; i was barely able to keep up with everyone else. abby thought it sounded like asthma and lindsay thought it sounded like bronchitis. whatever it was it was certainly unpleasant and it kept me from staying in this cold room for long and forced me upstairs into the sunshine. yesterday lindsay took me to a pharmacy (which here is a bit like a doctor's office: you describe your symptoms to them and they go into their stock and find something to give to you. everything is behind the counter with them. they gave me this syrup that i'm supposed to take three times a day. i took it last night and then held a hot water bottle to my chest to help loosen up the congestion down there. i started coughing up all sorts of stuff this morning. its starting to feel bad again, but i think its the fes air. there's a lot of pollution outside and inside is cold and damp. i think that going down south will be good for my health. it's funny how you get sick when you go someplace new. abby got a stomach thing and i got this chest thing. there are so many things that can disagree with you in a new place.

last night was really interesting. that's a shitty word to describe it, really, interesting doesn't begin to cover it, but i'll just tell you what happened and try to think of a descriptive word later. abby wanted a hot water bottle at night so we were going to go into the market area just near our house and pick one up. lahcen called lindsay right before we were about to leave from the internet cafe and said that he wanted to come hang out with us. he came and met us in the al batha courtyard that is kind of the main gathering place for the neighborhood and is just outside one of the main gates to the medina. lindsay said that she didn't know if he should come into the medina with us because the police always give them trouble. but he said no, they had always gotten out of it before and that he just wouldn't talk to the store owners (you can get in trouble if you try to bargain for foreigners). so we headed towards the medina. there were four police officers standing right at the entrance and so lahcen took out his cell phone and walked ahead and we talked as if it were just the three of us. but the police came up to him anyway. they were trying to take lahcen away from us to get their bribe (they won't take bribes in front of foreigners) but lindsay kept following them. the police then decided to escort the two of them to the police station by the market. abby and i were standing around because we were a little in shock and we didn't know what to do, especially didn’t want to make anything worse, but two of the officers stuck around to "escort" us. so we went off in groups of four to the police station, which was right around the corner. we got there and stood around for a little bit and then were escorted to another office around the corner which i later learned was the bureau of tourism. two officers escorted lahcen in a kind of frog march way (holding his arms tightly and dragging him along) and two officers escorted lindsay but without touching her and abby and i only got one officer each. lindsay and lahcen were talking to the officers in french and arabic and none of the officers spoke english so neither of us had much idea what everyone was saying. we had to walk a bit through the market to get to the other office and it was really interesting to see the looks on people's faces as we were escorted and lahcen was dragged through the crowded medina. people were looking at us with pity and concern. the first office we went to was a rather large place made out of stone and marble, very imposing, with a large airy "reception room" in the front. the second place was a hole in the wall shack that was very dark and cramped. one of the guys kept rubbing lahcen's hair like he was a small child. lindsay was in tears trying to figure out what to do. finally, lahcen had lindsay call lahcen's boss and have him talk to the police guy to assure him that he was employed and thus not a faux guide. the boss agreed to come down to the shack and take lahcen home. when he got there, they talked for a bit and then sent us home. the guides had been extremely nice to abby and myself and had tolerated lindsay alright (she apparently kept yelling at them that they were trampling on people's rights) but they hadn't treated lahcen with any kind of respect. it must have been fairly humiliating. so lindsay and lahcen go home and abby and i go and get the water bottle and then meet them at home. we hung around for awhile, still in shock and trying to laugh but really happy to all be together, and then we three girls went down to lindsay's evening class. after class we went to the super market and picked up things for dinner and then went to the train station and picked up the tickets for tonight's bus ride (9pm to 6am). lahcen had said he would meet us at the center after her class or that we should call him on his cell phone. he wasn’t at the centre and she couldn't get in touch with him and is phone had been off and on lately so we thought that probably his phone was just malfunctioning, so on our way back to her house we asked the guys on the corner by lahcen's riad if they had seen him that night. they said that at 7 the police had come to the riad and taken him out in handcuffs. apparently the police chief was upset that they had let him go. they took him down to the main jail. so lindsay and abby and i and hussein (an aquaintance) and hussein’s boss (who is an older white guy and owns a riad) and rishad and mohamed and dilla and said (four of lahcen's friends from the neighborhood who hang out on the corner with him) all hopped in taxis and went down to the main jail. said and rishad work in shops and they had packed a bag of bread and water and cookies. when we got to the jail, the guards said that nothing could be done till the morning. not only would they not let him out but they wouldn't let us see him or even get the food and jacket to him (it's very cold in the jail; it's cold everywhere, but lahcen didn't have a coat on and there's no heat and they wouldn't have given him a blanket). they suggested we go talk to the main bureau of tourism. we went down there and after waiting around for close to an hour (it's now about 11 oclock at night) we found someone who would help us out. lindsay and hussein and his boss went with this guy back to the jail and hussein was allowed to go give him the food but not the jacket. then we went home. we woke up early this morning to go back down there. this time the husband and wife who own lahcen’s riad were down there, too. we got there just before 8:30. the owners apparently know some people (which we have found out is the only way anything gets done around here), and they let lindsay and the wife in. the three of us waited outside. lahcen had told us earlier that day that the penalty for being a faux guide was one to five months in jail. the husband told us that if we didn't get him out today it was likely that he could spend a month in jail. i couldn't tell whether or not this concerned him. lindsay and the wife came out shortly, which didn't seem like a good sign. they said that he might have his trial at ten, so we should come back then. so the owners went back to the riad to check on their guests and abby and lindsay and i went to a cafe and got orange juice and coffee and this magnificent bread called malawi with honey smeared on it. we all met back at 10. lindsay and the wife went back in and thw wife ran into someone that she knew. she explained the case to him and he said that it was actually a law that moroccans were not allowed to walk with foreigners anywhere in fes unless they were related. he did say that it sounded like a mistake that they had been so quick to arrest lahcen since he worked in such a reputable establishment. he was sorry that the process had already started because lahcen would now have to go to court, which he unfortunately wouldn't be able to do until the following morning. but he said, he'd bring lahcen out and let lindsay see him. so lindsay took the thermos of hot tea and the dates and figs and dried apricots into him. she said he was crying and kept saying how cold he was. again they wouldn't let her give him a jacket. she asked if he could have a blanket, then she offered the guard 100 Dh if he could have a blanket but he wouldn't take it. another guard came up to her later and told her that he was berber and since lahcen was too he would see that he was taken care of and try to get a blanket for him. so, now the story is that he will get a trial tomorrow morning, he and lindsay will have to fill out a "friendship card" that says that they plan on getting married, the owners will have to fill out an employment card that says that he works for them, and then they'll let him out, probably around 10 tomorrow morning. so we came home, had lunch, lindsay went to her class, abby and i are here, then we go pack and meet up with lindsay (we're guest speaking in her class again today) and then abby and i get on a bus and lindsay goes home by herself. lahcen will spend another freezing, hungry night in jail, but then enshallah he'll be out tomorrow morning. it seems really stupid to us that foreigners are not allowed to walk with moroccans unless they are carrying papers filled out in court that say they are planning to get married. we think it is really stupid that this very gentle, very friendly, very nice guy was hunted down and thrown in jail. i don't really understand it. it makes me really angry.

after last night, when abby and i were hanging out with the guys from the medina on a dark street corner in the ville nouvelle for hours while lindsay and hussein and his boss ran around trying to get stuff done, the people in our neighborhood are a lot nicer to us. rashid says hi to us everytime we go by and this morning when we saw him he came and shook our hands and asked us how we were. all the other shop owners and workers all know the story (its a tight knit neighborhood) and they all say hi, too. its weird how i feel a little bit at home now here, not just with the streets but the other people who live here. i had made friends with the doughnut guy earlier, but now i know a lot of people. i should get going and get packing. i'm not sure what kind of internet access i'm going to have on the road, but i'll try to write before the week is up.

Food and scenery, what more could you ask for?

Abby and I are leaving tomorrow early in the morning (hopefully) to go down to merzuga and see the sahara desert. there are apparently 700 foot dunes down there. i have a bit of a cold so i'm hoping the drier, warmer air will help to clear that out. lindsay talked to one of her friends there this morning and he said that it's 24, 25 degrees celsius down there. that sounds really nice right now.

azrou was good. it was nice to be out of the city and in the country. the bus ride tomorrow between rich and erfoud is apparently really beautiful. there is some amazing landscape in morocco. when we were leaving azrou it was dusk and it was so pretty. all the hills around the town were lit up in orange and pink. i've never seen anything like it. i just wanted to keep looking at it. the guidebook says that the dunes are even prettier and that some of the mountains we drive through to get there are unbelievable. there are a couple friends in merzuga that we're meeting up with and then we'll go to a little town with a g name (gamalila or something like that) and then we'll go into the valley of the roses with another friend. it's really nice that we have friends all along the route. we'll be gone from tomorrow morning (friday) to thursday night probably. it's funny to think that that is almost as long as we've been in morocco. but then the first few days are always the longest.

lindsay and i went to a hammam this morning (abby wasn't feeling well so she stayed home). it was amazing. it's like a big communal bath, with the whole room as the bath yet not a pool. it is a pretty large tiled room that is very warm and kind of steamy. there was a fountain of hot water on one side and all the women sit around with buckets of water. you fill your bucket at the fountaina and then sit down anywhere on the tile (the whole room drains out so there is no standing water) and you pour the water over your head and wash your hair and just keep washing yourself over and over and pouring lots of hot water over yourself. it was the first time i've been warmed to the core since i've been here. i even got to shave my legs, something that isn't remotely possible anywhere else since it's so cold. lindsay and i paid a little extra and this older woman came in with us and washed our hair with this little brush thing and then rubbed us down with soap. we stayed in there for over an hour, washing and pouring hot water over our heads. some hammams are very touristy, but this had only neighborhood people and us in it. there were two mothers with their daughters, the old woman who works there, and this woman named latifah. she struck up a conversation with lindsay. it was very friendly. it is near impossible to meet women around here because it is all men in the cafes and the women on the street are going somewhere and don't talk to anybody. but it was really easy in the hammam. they were really friendly. and whereas here people are very shy about some things, bodies are not one of them. this woman washed lindsay and i up and down while latifah casually chatted with us and washed herself. i don't think people in the states would go for the hammam thing because everyone is naked in one room together (separated by sex of course) and bathing but here it seems very normal. i brought lotion along with me and after my bath i slathered up. i feel cleaner and fresher than i have in a week.

we came back after that and got abby and got lunch at the local sandwich counter. they finally half understood the tortilla style thing that lindsay was asking for, which is turkey and egg and pommes frites all grilled together (she's been promising it all week to us, saying it's really good, but no one seems to make it right); they put the egg in but not the pommes frites, which was fine because the fried egg was really the thing i was after. abby is having lots of problems with her stomach; hopefully her body will get used to the food soon. we're going to lindsay's class tonight to talk to her intermediate group. we're supposed to tell them about who we are, where we're from, what we do, and what we think of morocco. i'm really looking forward to it. the class has mostly 17 and 18 year olds. i'm getting really cold down here in this basement internet cafe i use, so i think i'm going to go back up into the sunshine now. i'll write again when i can.

Still Going...

Yes, mom, to answer your question, Asrou is only an hour and a half from Fes by car. It is different though in a very lovely way. Morocco isn't too big, but there are large variations throughout the country because of the four different mountain chains, the two coasts, and of course the sahara desert. The air here is really fresh (i didn't realize how polluted the air in fes is until i got out of the car in asrou and could breathe well for the first time in days). The sun is really bright and things aren't so damp. I've been feeling a little sick for a few days, i think because of the cold and damp, but i'm rapidly feeling better up here. We came here the way most Moroccans would, by a grand taxi. It's basically an old Mercedes, just a regular sedan, but they put four in the back seat and two in the front passenger seat for seven total in the small sedan. It's very cramped, but slightly cozy in a weird way. Abby and I sat in the back with two men and Lindsay sat in the front with a woman who was sniffing something from a little tin off of the back of her fingernail and using the mirror on the back of her cellphone to watch. It was very strange. She was Moroccan and young and dressed in modern clothes. We have no idea what it was, but it looked like some kind of dried plant (maybe tobacco? can you do that?). It was a beautiful drive, going up through the mountains. And a grand taxi is really cheap. I paid 25 Dh to get to Asrou, which is the equivalent of three dollars. It's by far the cheapest way to travel short distances.

We're staying at this really nice hotel in the center of town (it's a very small town) with some heat and warm showers (a rarity). it's definitely spartan but at least it's not freezing, and it's very reasonably priced. Lahcen used to work as a chef in a hotel in asrou, so he knew about this place and encouraged us to stay here. His uncle lives in town and he is very close to his uncle. His family is Berber, and they are famous for their hospitality. When he told his uncle that we were in town, his uncle actually came down to the hotel and waited outside for us this morning. We didn't know, and we didn't get out til noon, so we missed him, but he insists that we come visit with him at his house tonight. He has three children: Hamsah, Mohammed, and Miriam; who apparently adore Lahcen. Lindsay says that when they visited before Christmas, the children hung all over him and hung on his every word and wouldn't leave his side the whole time. They are 11, 9, and 3. We're bringing twix for Miriam, the youngest, and we hope to get some kind of card together that the kids can decorate or sign to bring back for Lahcen.

It's funny: everytime I introduce myself or am introduced to a Moroccan, their eyes light up and they look at me a bit closer and then lean in and say "you know that Miriam is a Moroccan name?" It seems that everyone here has a sister name Miriam. We visited some of Lahcen's friends who work in a carpet store here, and we sat in their shop and drank mint tea and ate little chocolate pecan treats (very french seeming) and chatted. They were very impressed to learn my name, and then when they heard Abby's they decided to call her Abir instead so that we could both have moroccan names. Abir means sunrise.

On to the food. Last night we ate at the hotel restaurant, which was very nice and kind of upscale (at least the most upscale place we've been yet). It seemed very french in it's set up, but the food was a mix of Moroccan and French I think. We had a potato soup to start off which was pureed potatoes, carrots, and leeks. It was very tasty. I think there must have been some butter in it, too. Then we wanted to get the house specialty of a tajine of rabbit and prunes, but they were all out of rabbit, so we got a tajine of veal, prunes, tons of peas, and carrots. I had seen the pictures of the tajines full of peas but i hadn't seen one yet. I was kind of disappointed when i saw them. At least they were a little smaller than american peas so i actually had a couple bites of them. We also got a side dish of sauteed potatoes, which were lovely, and then creme caramel for dessert. the whole meal: three soups, a veal tajine for two, sauteed potatoes, three sodas, a liter of water, and three creme caramels plus the bread and butter cost only 200 Dh total. that is maybe 23 dollars. I had never really had veal before, but it was really well done and it tasted okay. it went really well with the prunes. it sat pretty heavy in my stomach, but i was able to digest it. That is really the first red meat i've eaten because it's usually really easy to get chicken, but red meat is very common in morocco so i figured i should try it out. Then this morning we went to a patisserie and had fresh orange juice, cafe au lait, croissants, yogurt, and a baguette with cheese (a soft white not very strong cheese; it was tasty).

Speaking of stomachs, though, poor Abby is having some stomach problems. She has been very careful about not getting strawberries in her panache (you don't peel them) and about not eating uncooked peppers or things like that whereas i have been throwing caution to the wind and enjoying my full flavoured panache, but she is the first to get sick. She woke up early this morning with dry heaves (which was weird because she hadn't thrown up or anything, we don't know why they were dry) and has been having trouble all morning now. She just left the internet cafe to go back to the room and lie down. It's lucky that our hotel is in the middle of town, because we are just down the street from the patisserie and the internet cafe and those things. I think she'll lie down until 4:30 when we are going to meet the uncle. We will probably have atay there (atay is the arabic name for the ubiquitous mint drink; it is difficult to find regular black tea, or "the lipton" as they call it in french - the is french for tea) and they might ask us to stay for dinner. There is a big market (the once a week souq) in Asrou on Tuesdays, so we will check that out. Asrou is a Berber town and one of the best places to buy the Berber rugs, which are really beautiful. They also make these cloaks called gilabas which are head to toe ordeals with pointy hoods that many Berber men wear. They are made out of the same weaving that the carpets are. They are really warm and water proof. I should get going. I'll write when I get back to Fes. Write with more questions. There is so much going on that I'm much better when I have prompts.

Just a short one...

I'm really, really enjoying being here. I forget how much I love traveling. Being here has convinced me that i need to go somewhere next year. I need to travel, to live somewhere different. there are so many things going on in the world. i have to live somewhere else, to experience that place, not to forget how life in the u.s. compares to life other places. the u.s. feels like such a bubble to me right now.

A Moroccan Good Time

so, to answer your e-mailed question, i have not yet bargained at a market. the kinds of stores we have been to so far are not bargaining stores. we have been to juice stands and restaurants and things that might be called drug stores or general stores or corner stores. but one doesn't bargain at these kinds of stores. we have walked through the markets of the medina (which is the medieval part of the city that we live in, famous for its markets) but we haven't bought anything there.

today was the first day that abby and i really went out on our own. lindsay and lahcen are working all day today, so abby and i caught a taxi from the medina to the ville nouvelle or new city. we had lunch and juice (you can get fresh squeezed juice from little juice shops that are all over the city: orange juice "cheen" or "panashay" which is a mixture of orange, strawberry, avocado, melon, banana, and possibly other things) and sat in the sun and talked. sitting in the sun is very nice because we are very cold. the medina is very very cold because the walls are high and made of stone, so it's like being in a cathedral where the sun never shines. no wonder so many women prefer to stay on the roof and do housework there because it's so much warmer when the sun shines on you. le ville nouvelle is a bit better because there are more wide boulevards and modern streets and not as many tiny alley/passageways as in the medieval part, and so more sun gets to the ground level in that part of the city, but it's still cold inside lindsay's classroom because the building is made of marble and shaded by trees. it would be lovely in the summer.

then abby and i caught a cab home and went out into the medina exploring. some people had warned that people should not go exploring in the medina because they would get lost. but lindsay and lahcen said that was rubbish and that as long as we stayed to the two main streets we would be fine (the two main "streets" are more like sidewalks than streets; no cars because it is too narrow so everyone carries their goods in and out on donkeys). they were totally right. we went in, found a neat little wood crafts museum with a fantastic view from the roof and then found our way out of the medina again a different way quite easily. we were a little proud. we were also quite flattered, because everyone in there told us how nice we were and how pretty our eyes were. it seems like there are always many men ready to give us extravagant compliments. they are especially friendly on those main drags (tella kubira and tella seghir run parallel and are the main streets of the souk).

it is nice that the people in lindsay's neighborhood are getting kind of used to seeing us, because now the corner store, sandwich shop and beignet shop people say hi but the random men who seem always to be hanging out on the street visiting with each other just keep talking to themselves instead of trying to get our attention. it makes me feel more like a person.

as far as other trips, there is a national holiday this weekend, so lindsay has a three day break. we are going to go to asrou tomorrow morning together and hang out there for sunday, monday and tuesday. there is a big souk there on tuesdays, so we might get to bargain then. we haven't figured out exactly how we're spending the rest of our time. lindsay and lahcen don' t have many good friends in fes. one of the reasons they bonded was because both of them are relatively new to the city. lahcen is originally from a berber town down south and just moved to fes a couple years ago. none of his family lives here. we did get to meet one of his friends, though. hussein and lahcen both are the caretakers and lahcen is also the chef of two riads in the medina. they are like bed and breakfasts. from what we can tell, europeans buy them and then hire a moroccan man and a moroccan woman to take care of them. the woman is the housekeeper and of a lower class and the man runs the establishment and is considered fairly high class. but they do all the work. we hang out in lahcen's riad a lot because it is heated. we also got to visit hussein's riad. we sat on the roof and drank mint tea. it had a lovely view of the medina.

now, speaking of mint tea, we get to the food. mint tea is really good. it is black tea with tons of fresh mint floating in it and loads of sugar. it's kind of a tradition. there is a whole ceremony of sorts that goes along with drinking tea, and you drink it everytime you get to a new place. then there's the juice. i really like the juice. we've also had couscous, which is different than what we call couscous. is is the grain, but it's also a whole meal with meat (we got the chicken) and vegetables and sauce stuff on it. quite good. also chicken tajines, which is kind of like the chicken at la teresita, very soft and falls off the bone, cooked in this teepee looking thing with pommes and this thing kind of like celery. there are lots of sandwich stands on the streets which have a hot grill and take various kinds of meat and grill it and put it in a hoagie. pretty good.

time running out, more later.

Welcome to Morocco!

Hello, everyone! Well, we finally made it, after all the flight delays, but we're here safely now. Things are really good, except for the crazy french keyboard that is making me type really slow. our flight left tuesday afternoon at 5, and we got into casablanca at 5:20 yesterday morning. we took a train from the casa airport to the main casa train station and then the four and a half hour train ride to fes. neither of us could sleep on the plane, although i made the effort and closed my eyes for an hour. i also slept on and off for a couple of hours on the train. abby was incredibly tired when we finally got here. luckily, we did very well getting to fes and lindsay and lahcen met us at the station and negotiated the taxi.

Lindsay is well and i really like lahcen; he's very friendly and tries to make lindsay happy, which (luckily for us) includes helping us out a lot. he speaks limited english, though in the past two days he's proven to be it better than lindsay thought he would be, and abby speaks limited french and i speak only english. at first it was really awkward hanging out because of the language barriers, but it's starting to seem normal. i'm starting to understand some of lindsay and lahcen's french conversations, and he can understand almost all of our english conversations. he's been trying to get us to practice language: abby french and me arabic. i can say some useful things now, but i can't understand responses or hold any conversation save "hello, how are you? i'm good, thank you" but that usually makes people more friendly. the unfortunate part is that then people start talking to me in arabic, see my blank stare, start talking in french, see me straining to understand, then get really disappointed. then they usually say something in mixed french and english, and i reply in the same with small smatterings of arabic thrown in to keep me on their good side. it's amazing how surprised and happy people are when you speak even a little arabic, and it makes you realize how many people come here and rely on french and expect everyone to speak french to them. Lahcen is determined to teach me more arabic, and i'm very excited to learn. he's a very good teacher: he teaches me phrases that i can use right then and then he drills me on them as we're walking. he keeps joking that i'll be bargaining in arabic by the end of the week. he's doing the same to abby in french, but she's not as interested in learning it; I think she's still shell shocked from her high school language class experience and is convinced she will never learn any of it.

lindsay's place is nice, if a little cold. it's actually very cold. i slept with two sleeping bags and a blanket last night. there is no heat and the high stone walls cool it a lot and keep the sun out. it would be perfect in summer... i'm always surprised when i walk outside and find out how warm it is. i'm having a great time. it's really an amazing place. very different, yet strangely similar. it definitely seems like a third world country in a lot of ways, and some things that we take for granted are very difficult here. take heat and hot water for example. i had to get up first for my shower this morning, which meant getting out of my by-now-almost-warm bed into the freezing air, going downstairs, turning on the gas for hot water, waiting for ever for it to warm up and still not having it get very warm, being absolutely freezing because the air is freezing and the tile is freezing and the water is perhaps luke warm at best, shivering for half an hour after the ordeal was over. i'm also starting to feel like i have a cold and i'm positive that it's because everything inside is so damp and cold. it never dries out or warms up. but there are lots of absolutely amazing things as well. i'm so happy i'm here; i've never experienced anything like this before. I'll try to say more about that next time. But for now, my hour at the cafe is up.