Day 2: My friend Mohammed

I slept 11 hours last night. WOW. So we woke up at 10 and went downstairs to grab breakfast before it closed at 10:30. Just your typical hotel breakfast with pastries. Don't forget that there's no bacon cause they don't eat pork. After breakfast, we split into two groups: 

Group 1 (earlier risers) - Andrew, Marissa, Joe, Meredith, Elle, and Tash

Group 2 - Ron, Christie, Alice

Ariel was still not feeling 100% so she rested today in order to be well before we start school activities tomorrow. We stopped by the McDonald's on our 45 minute walk to the Medina in order to get water bottles and to get some change. I say, "the McDonald's" because the only one in Fez is 100 feet from our hotel and is nicer than a Carrabba's. They don't serve Big Macs, but they have Big Tasties. They also serve McNuggets, McFlurries, and McFondues! Afterwards, we ambled on towards the Medina where we had a great day.

Fez is split into two haves like many Moroccan cities. One half is the Medina, the older walled in cities. These are the type of areas most people think of when they think of the Middle East. Small tight streets with 3 - 5 story buildings on either side. There's no space between buildings; they're all adjoining. The Medina is similar to the area Jason Bourne runs through in one of the Bourne movies or like the typical roof top jumping scenario you might picture. The other half of the city is the new part, in Fez's case, it's called Ville Nouvelle. It's modern, the streets are boulevard-esque with big medians, lots of roundabouts, and many bad drivers. For the first week, our hotel is in Ville Nouvelle, but starting next Tuesday, I will be leaving with a family in the Medina.

So anyways, we walked to the Medina and just jumped into a side street so as to get closer to our goal of getting lost in the Medina. We were warned to watch out for people who would offer to "guide" us and try to extort us; however, we had the complete opposite experience. Within three minutes of walking, an 18 year-old boy approached us but was a huge help. We tried to brush him off at first, but he stuck with us. His name was Mohammed, the most popular name in the world. First, Mohammed walked us to a tannery. Tucked behind a group of houses in the heart of the Medina is a tannery owned by a number of families. They have huge limestone pools where they coat lamb skin in a mixture of pigeon poop, water, and some other ingredients and let them sit for 25 days. Any given vat was like 6 feet deep, 2 feet wide, and 6 feet long with at least a couple hundred skins in it! After, they would move the skins to pools containing colored water for dying. All the dye was made naturally and from plants. It smelled awful, to describe it lightly it smelled like riding on a New York subway next to a vomiting hobo and his disgusting pet llama.

After, Mohammed took us to a spice pharmacy owned by a family friend of his. The man gave us a tour of odors, letting us smell about 15 - 20 of the hundred bottles in the shop and explaining the properties and significance of each one. They also did Henna tattooing there. Elle, Tash, and Marissa all had it done on the outside of their hands for good luck and I got one done on the palm like many men do. Before Moroccan weddings, all the women go to a Henna parlor to have there hands and feet done. It took less than 10 minutes to do each one, but we had to let the mixture settle on our skin for 2 - 3 hours after. As you can imagine, it was hard for me not to close my hand! We also got our first bartering experience. While we didn't do the best job, the girls bartered theirs down from 200 dh each to 150 and I reduced mine from 120 to 60 dh. 

After this, we walked to a carpet store where a man showed us his loom and explained the carpet making process. Blankets, which are made by men, take 4 to 5 days to make where as carpets, which are made by women, can take up to a year. He said men only make blankets because they want to go make money where as women are more patient so they make the carpets. He also showed us the three different types of each: cotton, wool, and cactus! The most surprising part about the cactus carpet is that they do not burn, as he proved to us with a lighter.

We then stopped by a pottery shop and bronze shop before Mohammed took us to his house to meet his family. His little brother Hatim who was about 10 had met up with us during the day and accompanied us too. He was the oldest of five with three little brothers and a little sister who is only 3 months old. His family hosts students all the time to the point that at the age of 18 he can speak 8 languages: Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic, French, Spanish, English (fluently), Japanese, Italian, and German. Moroccan homes are very vertical with a very central, steep staircase and rooms that branch off it on each level. We went to the roof top where his family was eating to talk and drink mint tea. His family was very welcoming and we played with his pet tortoise and baby sister. While there, Marissa got invited to attend one of Mohammed's family members weddings! Afterwards, he took us to a delicious roof top restaurant to have a 3 o'clock lunch and our first true Moroccan meal. He left us during lunch but it was so good. Most meals are communal plates where you use bread to scoop your food rather than utensils. We ordered four different types of a food called Tagine. We had two lamb, one chicken, and another type of chicken. The lamb dish featured prunes that were so good that they tasted like candy. We found our way out of the Medina after and split again into two groups. Elle, Marissa and I walked home while the other three took a cab. The best part of the whole day was that the only thing we paid for was lunch and the henna. Everything else we did was free! Walking through the Medina was an awesome experience with street vendors on either side for miles selling anything you can imagine.

We had dinner at 6:30 with Lala MJ and Si Ron. They took us to a nice restaurant called Restaurant Marrakesh. I had a delicious meal called a pastilla which was a chicken and vegetable mixture surrounded by dough and topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon. It was unreal. I also had a delicious house salad, which contained apples, carrots, raisins, lettuce, and corn and an incredible orange for dessert. After dinner, we got back to the hotel by "knife o'clock." We found out that it is a true thing because walking home in Villa Nouvelle, a woman walking by put her hand in Meredith's purse! Luckily, nothing was taken but it still reminded us that we should be careful.

I put up a lot of pictures on Facebook tonight. Be sure to check those out. I'm also going to try to include two or three photos with each blog post once I figure out how to.