ok so clearly we are not very good at keeping this thing updated... but here goes round three.

So the apartment is great, we've been slowly acquiring more things to make it a bit more homey (like the space heater Darwyn mentioned). Our first week of classes went well, once we had all caught up on sleep, and things are moving pretty quickly as far as material covered each class. We are going through the alphabet first, and learning the names and sounds of Arabic letters, and starting to put them together to make small words (like baab for door!).

The first weekend we went out on a tour of the medina, which was absolutely incredible. Fez is the third largest city in Morocco, after Casablanca and Marrakesh, and has the largest medina in the world. The city is split into two sections, called old Fez and new Fez. Old Fez is the medina, and is the old historic part of the city. It is entirely surrounded by walls, and no cars or bicycles or anything else is allowed inside, only people and donkeys. It is an insane maze of tiny alley-like passageways with shops on all sides, that wind around and connect together. It is built with five big rings, since 5 is the holy number of Islam. The center ring in the middle is all the food shops and food vendors, the second ring is all merchants selling textiles, leather, art, wood, iron work, carvings, etc. The third ring is all residential, with beautiful riad houses with gardens in the middle and incredible tile work, the fourth ring is the wall that encloses the city, and the fifth ring outside the wall is gardens and cemeteries. It was pretty hectic inside, but also quite wonderful, especially getting to see some of the mosques inside the medina, and the leather tannery. Soooo many leather things... holy. That afternoon we did some grocery shopping and checked out a local little cafe for dinner. Moroccan food = delicious.

Week two we had a day off on the Wednesday, so Tuesday after class we went with the three other people in our class (and one of their host brothers) to a local hamam (public bath house), thinking we were actually going to a natural hotspring. What an experience. The genders are separated, so when we got there (and after paying) me, Kendra and Maja (from our Arabic class) went to the women's side together, having no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The first room you walk into is like a large locker room, but without lockers, just long tile benches down the middle of the room and tile benches around the outside edge where women are changing or putting clothes back on and leaving. Normal attire is apparently just underwear and no bra, but the three of us had our swim suits on. Then you give your things to some women behind a counter where there are a bunch of cubby holes, and walk into the steamy abyss. The next room around the corner, is a enormous dark steamy room with a huge half-pool sized thigh deep bath, and one whole wall lined with faucets from the ceiling pouring our hot water. There were probably 200+ women, and half as many children there, with most of them crowded around the faucets filling up big pails of water and using the hot water and bars of soap to wash themselves, their kids and each other. The women were all also combing their hair, and so there was an outrageous amount of loose hair on the floor, the edges of the pool-tub, and free floating in the water. A few women took pity on us since we looked very out of place and didn't really know what to do, so poured water on us and helped us get access to one of the faucets for about 30 seconds. Unfortunately, since we hadn't brought any soap we ended up leaving feeling dirtier than when we had came... But it was an experience to say the least!

More soon!


Veronica