Revisiting Fez and Meeting Some New Friends in Azrou

So much to do so little time! We had our first weekend without any activities so a smaller group of us decided to return to Fez to do some shopping which we didn't get to the first time. I woke up with a bit of a cough and scratchy throat, and we were a bit worried about going with all the protests sparked by the anti-Islamic movie that was recently posted but we decided to go anyways. Just in case though, we thought the best way to stay safe was to say we were from Canada! When we got to Fez we spent some time just trying to get into the medinat itself and stumbled across some boys who showed us to a riad that had just been restored.  We went inside and it was great for my project! The woman that was doing most of the renovations was from Belgium and spoke French so we were able to ask her plenty of questions.
The place was so big and beautifully decorated! She took us all the way up to the roof so we could see over the top of the medinat. We finally decided to leave and so traveled back down the hundreds of stairs, thanked her for her time and information, and went on our way.  Well we tried to go on our way but ran straight into a dead end.  We turned around back to the entrance of the medinat to have a lunch of either delicious coucous or tagine with some of that Spanish melon. After we took a different route into the medinat and successful found some of the less touristy stores and more of the craftsmen's stores.  I bought several gifts for people (obviously not going to mention what they are here haha) and helped some of the others make purchases with my almost-there-French. A couple hours and exhausted students later we headed back to the Best Western.


The Tuesday after the trip to Fez the whole group went to Azrou where we walked around another Souk for a bit (I have to admit it wasn't that interesting, although we did see this adorable donkey) and then met with a Peace Corps. worker named Cheryl or, as the locals call her, Charizad.  She took us on a tour of an artisan center where she is helping out by creating a website to attract tourists and teaching English for.  We went to lunch where my professor asked her if she knew any places a student could do a homestay for a few days and she said her homestay family would love to. So it was planned that I would visit the family for a few days the next weekend to see how they lived and Molly would come with me.  Another great opportunity for my project. The trip in Azrou ended with a visit to some very special friends. Monkeys!

You are probably wondering how I got such a great close of up the monkey in the middle.  Well I had my camera in one hand, food in the other, and he was sitting on my leg while grabbing my shirt to hold on until I gave him the food. It was pretty darn awesome :). Khaleil was the best at getting the monkeys to climb up his leg so every one has tons of pictures of him with a monkey friend.  Then he helped me almost get the little guy in the left picture to scramble up my leg but not quite.  So we just settled for him helping me get a great picture of the little dude. The monkeys were climbing on cars and tried to make the alarms go off, would steal the entire bags of peanuts we had just bought, and would chase each other away to get  food from us.  It was quite worth the trip that day just to see them.  We went back to the Best Western and crashed again.

At the end of the week we were told we were finally moving to the nice apartments in the Best Western that would have lots of kitchen utensils and working light fixtures. Woohoo! So Becca, Jenn, and I all decided to move in at midnight on the last day.  We showed up at the desk and basically told us we were crazy for moving in so late at night but whatever here is the key, we will show you the room.  The only thing that was wrong with the room was that the stove didn't work for some reason but they sent an electrician to fix it the next morning. When he left I started to cook some meat for lunch...lets just say after about an hour and a half it was perfectly room temperature. Oh well. I had just gotten another email that said, 'Don't unpack your things, we are moving you onto campus!' Well I was already unpacked and repacking for my visit to the Berber village and my roommates had gone to Spain for the weekend so moving was postponed until Monday. Oh and lastly (I know someone who will appreciate this), I saw my first and only Ford Mustang in Morocco this week.