Many people have asked me why I chose to go to Morocco. The answer is, of course, because I hadn't been there. Seriously, people. There's a big world out there. What kind of life are you living if you haven't seen any of it?

I went to Morocco in late February. The weather was cold. I went there by myself. Made the trip in sections, first stopping in London to see my friend, Jaime, and her new husband, Matt. Then heading to Morocco for 9 days. Then stopping by New York City on the way back to see my friend, Shereen. But this page is all about the 9 days in Morocco.

I flew into Casablanca from London. I was initially thinking I'd just head straight for Marrakech when I got in but I accidentally left my passport in Heathrow (bad idea) and was stuck in Casablanca for at least 24hrs while they flew it to me. Casablanca is a shit hole of a place. Nothing of the image you might get from old movies. It's really best left off the itinerary. But if you find yourself there, despite your best efforts, you should really go see the Hassan II Mosque on the north end of town.

This mosque is the third largest Islamic structure in the world and the second largest mosque, just after the one at Mecca. The minaret (the tall tower used to call Muslims to prayer) is the tallest in the world. And at prayer time they shoot green lasers out of it, towards Mecca so people in the country side can tell which direction to pray towards. Let's appreciate the sense of scale here, shall we? In the picture to the left, the people in the foreground are more than one football field's distance from the mosque. The tiny colored specs towards the lower middle of the image are people actually standing at the base of the minaret. It's really freaking huge. Inside, the prayer hall is two football fields long, one field wide, and half a football field tall. Every square inch of this construction is covered in finely detailed Moroccan artistry. And everything used to make this mosque (except for two marble pillars and a couple chandeliers from Italy) is from Morocco. Underneath, there's a hamam - a Moroccan style bath house (just for show) and two enormous wash rooms each equipped with 42 giant lotus-shaped fountains for the special washing that takes place before every prayer. This mosque is absolutely breath taking, and one of the only religious structures open to non-Muslims. The Hassan II mosque complex also includes a Quranic school and dormitory seen in the next picture. The whole campus is on the beach.

While I was waiting for the tour to start I met this very nice Moroccan woman named Kadija, who was kind enough to tell me, in French, what time it was. We sat together and had an awkward French-English conversation. She lives in Fez and recently married a very nice, very rich man and happily awaits pregnancy. This marriage, I gathered, was not arranged but a "love story". Even though he's a full twenty years older than her, she thinks he's absolutely handsome and is very happy to be married. She mostly stays at home since her husband is very jealous of her talking to other men. At first I thought this was odd, but after being in Morocco for 9 days I realized this was pretty common.

When Kadija's husband and mother emerged from the mosque's washrooms they let me take their picture. Kadija and I exchanged phone numbers and though I don't know how well we'd communicate over the phone it'd be cool to hear from my first friend in Morocco.

I was the only person touring the Hassan II Mosque that day that required an English tour giude. So I got a personalized tour. My Arabic tour guide, Mourad, told me all about the mosque, it's history, and how to make water-absorbing stucco out of dirt, soap, and eggs. In my McGuyver-like adventures this information may come in very handy someday.

Since the tour didn't take very long, Mourad offered to show me around Casablanca. I had walked around inside the Medina earlier in the day and found it pretty intimidating. The people you see outside in Morocco are mostly men, since the women stay home most of the time. And the city inside the medina defies all sense of orientation. So I agreed to the tour, thinking it would cost an arm and a leg but would be worth it. We walked all around the city and stopped at a bar late afternoon for tea (for me) and beer (for Mourad). After a couple beers Mourad declared me to be like a sister to him and invited me to meet his family. The Lonely Planet guide mentioned that this might happen so I took him up on it. We went to his apartment which, like almost all Moroccan buildings, looks like shit from the outside and is gorgeous from the inside.

Here, I met his wife, Elham, and his oldest child, Nisrene. Elham is Moorish (descended from the Muslims of Spain) which is why she has such a fair complexion. His family was so unbelievably hospitable to me. Absolutely, unbelievably hospitable. Here I am, a total stranger that some guy brings home to meet his wife and child without even calling ahead to give warning and do they freak out? No. They make me dinner. Elham asks excitedly about my life back in Seattle. Nisrene practices her insanely cute 5th grader's English on me, sings me songs by Cat Stevens, and shows me the astronomy section of her text book (pictured left). Mourad shows me how to eat food Moroccan style (smooshing it all against the side of a piece of bread before scooping it into your mouth with your bare right hand) and tells me all about his view of the cosmos and how science and Islam fit together perfectly. Elham gives me a necklace as a present. And the lot of them refuse to let me leave until I promise to stay with them next time I'm in Casablanca so they can have a huge party and invite the whole family to a big celebration in my honor.

It was totally crazy how hospitable these people were to me! It was a side of humankind I had never imagined existed. A lot of Greek myths talk about how important it is to take in strangers and show them kindness. But have you been to Greece lately? That kind of hospitality does not exist in present day Greece. But it apparently does in Morocco. A guest is a gift from Allah, they say. And trust me, they treat you accordingly.

Even though Casablanca is a crappy place to visit, I'll probably go back just to see Mourad and his family. This kind of connection is worth more than seeing all the bullshit tourist attractions in all of Morocco.

So, passport in hand and life-changing experience having been had, I boarded the first train out of Casablanca to Marrakech. And I'll have you know it was a very plain, boring train. What the hell were Crosby, Stills, & Nash smoking?

The train ride was very nice. The scenery was serene. Rolling hills and beautiful farm lands. The guy sitting next to me spoke no English and I speak no French or Arabic. However, this didn't stop him from giving me his phone number and trying very hard to get mine. He made me promise five times to call him (in French) and gave me a box of hot pink lipsticks from Canada. It was wierd. At the time I couldn't tell whether this was another grand gesture of Moroccan hospitality or if it was a pick-up attempt.

As soon as I got to Marrakech I rented a car and drove to Agadir. It's February. When a Seattle-ite goes to Africa in February there is an obvious expectation of sun. And Agadir is southerly, on the beach, and gets 360 days of sunshine a year.

I remember the rental car lady asking, in French, is this your first time in Morocco? Yes. Are you travelling by yourself? Yes. Is anyone meeting you before you go? No. Who's going to drive this car? Me. Are you going to hire a driver? No. Are you going with anyone else? No, just me. Are you sure? Yes, really, I want to drive across Morocco by myself. The whole series of questions repeated when we met up with her male boss just before I got the car to myself. When I returned the car intact there was indeed a bit of shock on her face.

Admittedly, the drive out of Marrakech was terrifying. There were people on bicycles, mopeds, and motorcycles weaving all around me, there were pedestrians in between all the cars, and the lane lines were but a mere suggestion not to be taken seriously by anyone. But after you get out of the city the drive is a piece of cake. Two lane highway for as far as the eye can see with very few cars on it.

This was by far the most relaxing part of the trip. But I'm from Colorado and Coloradans drive everywhere. For me driving is a form of relaxation. The scenery was better than from the train. I could really look at what was around me. I'd pass shepards with their flocks grazing by the roadside. There were towns that looked completely like those found off of every American state highway except for the arches on the strip malls with the medieval-style toothed terraces. Ocassionally I'd pass a village built into the side of a mountain, like the one pictured here, or pass a truck carrying hay stacked many times higher than what's legal in the US.

The drive from Marrakech to Agadir takes you through the High Atlas Mountains, the highest range in Morocco. The mountains are bright red, fading to blue in the distance. I stopped by the side of the road at one point to take a picture of myself against the background, so you'd know I was really there.

When I got to Agadir I found some totally posh hotel and checked in. I had dinner in the hotel's Moroccan restaurant where they had a belly dancer performing. She was not nearly as good as belly dancers I've seen in the US. I later figured out this is because belly dancing is equivalent to prostitution in Morocco. As such, its teaching is not encouraged.

When I woke up the next morning it was raining with a forecast of rain for the rest of the week. So it seemed that the five days a year that Agadir is not sunny happened to overlap perfectly with my 9 day trip. It doesn't take much looking around to see that Agadir as a city has about as much cultural appeal as McDonalds. It's filled to the brim with European tourists wanting a cheap, sunny beach vacation with none of that icky personal and spiritual growth shit getting in the way. So I left.

I drove straight up the coast to Essaouira. On the way out of town I passed a herd of camels hanging out by the side of the road. I took their picture because, well, I don't normally see herds of camels grazing by the side of the road.

The drive was gorgeous. Not as gorgeous as driving down the west coast of the US (which is a MUST for everyone who lives in the US) but gorgeous in its own right. Breathtaking views of dune-lined beaches and an inland jaunt through argane-covered hillsides. The car I rented had a radio and tape player. I didn't have any tapes and radio was useless outside of major cities so I listened to music on my laptop. Nothing like driving through Morocco jamming to hits of the 80s.

On the way I stopped at the Cooperative Amal in Tanamar. The Lonely Planet Guide which was my bible on this journey mentioned this as a good midway stop between Agadir and Essaouira. For those of you planning to stop there as well, it's not marked but if you're coming in from the south side of town it's on the right just as you enter Tanamar. It's a largish building with a couple guys outside selling soap and fossils. If you get to the gas station you've gone too far.

So, the argane tree grows exclusively in Morocco. It bears an olive-like fruit which locals collect during harvest. At this cooperative they showed me all the things they do with this argane fruit. First, they dry them and peel off the outer fruit and use it for animal feed. Then they crack open the shell to get at the seed inside. They use the shell for something, maybe animal feed as well or soap. The seed inside they grind up into a peanut butter type substance. They skim the oil and purify it and that oil gets used for cooking oil and cosmetics. Argane has been scientifically shown to be better for you than olive oil and is very good for the skin.

That's what I learned about the argane. But I learned a lot about the process too. See that photo of the old woman on the floor? She's cracking argane with rocks. She's sitting in what seemed to me like an old barn. It's dimly lit, very cold and drafty, and there's about thirty other women in the room. They're all peeling argane, breaking the shells to get the seeds, and grinding the seeds to get the oil. It takes a lot of work to get at that oil. More than with other vegetable-derived oils. And they don't have machines to automate this process, at least not at this cooperative. At the end of the tour, I was not at all upset at paying $15 for a bottle of the cooking oil. Something as trivial as cooking oil, something I always took for granted, is being made by dozens of women crouched in a cold, damp room making less than $1/hr. It's quite an eye-opening experience.

After that, I drove onward past more argane-covered hills into Essaouira (pronounced Essa weera). Like all big Moroccan cities, Essaouira is surrounded by a huge three-story tall wall used back in the day for defense against invaders. There's even turrets every few hundred yards for lookouts and on the west side of the city the old cannons are still pointed sea-ward. The picture on the left is a view from outside the medina walls. The one on the right is inside the wall where I found a clearing big enough to take a picture. See that hole in the building? That's the road.

Essaouira is a calm and beautiful little beach town. One frequented by Moroccans for vacations. The beach here isn't great for swimming though since it's so freaking windy. But there's a lot of kite flying and windsurfing. I had to park outside the wall and drag all my crap to where I was staying. Inside the city walls there's absolutely no room for a car.

I stayed at the Hotel Riad Al-Medina. It was awesome. And only $45/night for a single. Jimi Hendrix stayed here once, that's their big claim to fame. 'Riad' is the word used for a traditional town house. They've all got a cute central courtyard with the rooms distributed around it. All the buildings inside the medina walls are jammed together so it's just not possible to get a room with a nice view of the city. So a nice view of the courtyard makes up for that. This riad's courtyard had two fountains that dripped water and were filled with rose petals. There were always song birds flying around.

My room was totally cool. The bed was on a raised platform with curtains around and lots of cool lamps. The bathroom was all stone tile, though I could very clearly hear the French tourists next door having loud conversations when the bathroom door was open. The room looked out onto a second courtyard which wasn't quite as fly as the main one. On top of the riad was a nice terrace where one could look down on the bustling street below filled with people walking around looking at shops. The view was otherwise pretty uninteresting. I could see other rooftops in various states of disrepair, lots of clotheslines, feral cats, seagulls, and lots of tv antennae.

I took a walk around the medina and quickly got lost. I wandered past shops selling everything from camel skin babouches (shoes - and damn they stink!) to spices. Walking through the alleyways sometimes I'd find a artisan wood workshop. And sometimes I'd find some guy urinating on a wall. It was kind of hit or miss. Eventually I found my way to the west side of the city, up onto the outer medina wall where yet another breathtaking sunset was underway. The pictures here show some turrets. The one on the left shows some tide pools (it was low tide) and the one on the right shows the old cannons, with the bricks gleaming gold in the sunset light.

I had dinner at the hotel restaurant and had an awesome chicken tagine. All the Europeans were eating with silverware while I ate Moroccan-style. Afterwards I wandered out for a bit more getting lost in the medina. At some point, I found myself in the spice shop nearest to my hotel. It was run by a guy named Rashid. We talked a while. He made me tea. I bought a ton of cool spices and natural dyes. We talked more. He asked me if I'd like to visit his village and come to his house for dinner. By now I'm used to this and say yes. We agree to meet the next day and I'll drive us to his village.

The next day I spent my time getting lost all over the city. I spent a lot of time bartering with the guy who ran the shop pictured here with all the wood boxes. If you ever find yourself in a country where all transactions are based on bartering, make sure to try to leave the shop several times before agreeing to buy something. It drops the price so much!

Later on I find Rashid. We go around the city buying groceries for dinner (Moroccan couscous). We pick up his friend, a short Berber man who talks non-stop in Arabic the entire time. He's in the picture below, wearing a traditional Berber outfit. I think it's called a jelab. Berbers are the most populous group in Morocco and have covered the country by foot a million times over.

We drop the groceries off with his mom, who is doing the actual cooking, and take a small detour to see some properties Rashid is looking at for a friend in France. In the process we climb a hill covered in wildflowers and ruins to see the sun set behind argane trees in a nearly cloudless sky. The kind of perfect sunset you only see in dry climates.

Fortunately, the Berber man leaves after the detour and I am once again able to join in conversation. We head to Rashid's village. It's dark. The village is 3 miles down a rough dirt road. Rashid's grandfather owned an enormous portion of the village and split the land between his many sons. Rashid lives with his grandmother who, I learned, was the second wife of his grandfather. She bore 4 children while the first wife bore 5. I am wowed that a woman's whole life has just been summarized by the number of kids she had. But I call on my superpowers of cultural relativism and continue on (it's not ok for me to pass judgement on a culture different from my own, it's not ok to pass judgement on a culture different from my own).

Rashid's home is pretty nice. Like all Moroccan buildings I've encountered it looks ghetto from the outside and nice on the inside. All the rooms are arranged around a courtyard with a leaning tree and some geranium bushes. I get a tour of the place and see his room, his grandmother's room, and the room of one of his brothers who is married and has a baby. There is also a family room which is about 15 feet by 15 feet and lined on all sides with couch. Just miles and miles of couch. This is apparently a necessity in Morocco since families here are enormous and get together fairly often.

The living room/kitchen is where we sit and have tea and snacks (dried dates, almonds, and crackers). The kitchen's got a small stove, a white stucco fireplace, and a sink. When I look around I notice they've got Chinese china. I found out later this is availble at a lower price than Moroccan china. Wierd. The walls are either stucco or stone/stucco composite and the ceiling is wood logs. There are big stone and cement pillars holding the whole thing up and the floor is cement with a carpet. At some point the most enormous cockroach I've ever seen flies in and crawls into his home beneath the woodpile. I thought it was a bat at first. Ew.

After tea, snacks, and some chatting with his grandmother, we take our leave and head back to Essaouira, to Rashid's mom's house for dinner. His mother's house is outside the medina and is gotten to by a series of dirt roads with large pot holes. It looks like a crack house from the outside and is really, really nice on the inside. Like hand carved stucco and Moroccan tile work nice. I don't see much of this house. We mainly sit in the room with miles and miles of couch. They show me pictures of the whole family and I show the picture I brought of me and my husband (this came in handy sooooo often). We eat couscous with what tastes like pot roast on top. They hand me a salty lassi to go with dinner. I cringe but drink it, going for the full-on Moroccan experience. For those unfamiliar with the salty lassi, it's basically yogurt (in this case very thick and warm goat's milk yogurt) and salt. Supposedly this is very refreshing in hot climates but my Western palate feels strongly that yogurt should always be sweet. Thankfully the couscous is eaten with big spoons (I can't imagine eating couscous with my bare hands) and followed with mint tea, often referred to as Berber whiskey. His mom gives me some hot pink bangle bracelets. I painstakingly squeeze them over my large hands and admire them way too much to be sure my gratitude is obvious.

After what I deem to be an appropriate amount of time I retreat back to my riad and reflect on this utterly Moroccan experience which, though incredibly odd to me, is apparently just the way things are here.

The next day I try the riad's hamam. I paid for a massage and use of the hamam but thankfully I don't think they charged me, especially good since it was a total disappointment. The massage consisted of a super skinny Moroccan woman smothering me with argane oil and rubbing my stomach a lot (I take it belly dancing isn't the only thing Moroccan culture doesn't emphasize). And then I don't even get to hang out in the hamam afterwards. Lame.

I decide to walk on the beach and then head out of town. Every time I go to my car I get hassled by the "parking attendant" - a person whose job has been completely made up in order to make more jobs. You pay the parking attendant like 10Dh a day and he supposedly looks after your car. Everytime I go to put something in or take something out of my car the guy tries to get me to pay (in French) and I try to tell him (in English) that I already paid for two days, here look at the stubs you gave me. Note, learn French before coming back to Morocco.

The beach is gorgeous. Windy, but gorgeous. There's a guy in a little go-cart propelling himself with a huge kite, that's how windy it is. The water is red for the first 100 yards or so and then turns to a deep blue on the horizon. There are wind surfers on the water, men playing soccer on the beach, dads chasing kids playfully around, Moroccans jogging, and people all around generally having as nice a time as one can have at the beach without swimming or tanning. I definitely felt that I was by myself, which was relieving and disheartening at the same time. I wrote my name in the sand and took a picture, to prove to myself that I was really there (can you read it, it's in sandscript, hehe).

After lunch I jumped into my Fiat, my camel, and headed for Marrakech. The image here shows what the drive from Essaouira to Marrakech looks like. It's empty. I saw dirt and rocks, pavement and sky. It was great. It was also a perfect example of vanishing point perspective. Ocassionally I'd pass a town with old buildings used by farmers during their transit to and from the big cities. They look like riads but have stables on the lower floors for the camels and bedrooms are upstairs. I also passed a lot of carts pulled by horses and mules. These carts had shocks and rubber inflatable tires. The next step in the evolution is probably horse-drawn carts with windows and AC.

Driving back into Marrakech was nerve-racking. But at least the drop off point was on the outskirts of town. By the way, if you've read down this far I am absolutely astounded. This is a really long travel log.

I imagined I'd be able to just cruise into town and find a room at the hotel of my choice. Unfortunately, even in the off-season hotels are full on Saturday nights. So after checking around, I ended up at the Hotel Fantasia. Now, in the US if you see a place called Hotel Fantasia it's usually on Colfax (in Denver) or Aurora (in Seattle) or on some other seedy street in whatever town you live in. And this hotel looked about that caliber. It was gross. The left third of my bed tilted downward. The sheets were dirty and had small blood stains (the classic bed bug indicator). The bathroom was the size of a very small closet, with the shower head mounted directly over the toilet. After checking in I went to an internet cafe and emailed around until I found a better room for the next night.

I ventured out into the D'jemaa-el Fna. This is the big plaza in the heart of Marrakech. This plaza is what sets Marrakech apart from all the other places in Morocco. It's a veritable medieval circus. The huge plaza is filled with people, food stalls, juice vendors, and buskers of every kind. The air is filled with bbq smoke and the incoherent music of a dozen snake charmers. There are acrobats, jugglers, musicians, dancing monkeys (do not encourage the dancing monkeys - it's a bad practice), women making henna tattoos, old men telling stories, water sellers in colorful outfits, and snake charmers (who are also not to be encouraged since many of them sew the snakes' mouths shut). The plaza itself was too much for me to take in. I retreated to a cafe three stories above where I could watch the mayhem from afar.

At the south end, motorcycles and cars speeded through the plaza, providing many a tourist with near-death experiences. Buskers filled in the plaza, huge crowds gathered around every one. This is television for Marrakechis. The plaza is bordered to the north by food stalls and all around by juice stands where you can enjoy a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice for 30 cents. Yummy.

After mint tea and exchanging email addresses with the cafe host (who decided that since I speak English we should be email buddies, whatever), I ventured out into the plaza. I was immediately showered with harrassments in the form of kissing sounds and "Hello, Miss" in every language imaginable. One guy followed me around for an hour while I pretended to only speak Korean. While I stood there watching a belly dancer (covered from head to toe to preserve her honor) and a guy who drank boiling water, this creepy guy kept trying to guess what language I spoke and talk to me. Nothing bad happened. But the men were really freaking me out! Totally creeped out, I retreated to my gross hotel room for the night.

The next morning I checked out as soon as possible and headed for the Riad Zina on the north end of town. The taxi dropped me off some ways away since the roads leading up to the riad itself weren't wide enough for cars. I walked about a hundred yards down a dark cobblestone path and, out of the corner of my eye, saw 'D. Assebane' scratched on a wall in tiny chalk letters. On a whim I went down the narrow alley next to this wall which wound and turned several corners before heading into a low tunnel. When I came out on the other side there was a door to my right, 4 feet tall, with the words Riad Zina in white on a white stucco marquee. Honestly, they should have given me a free night's stay just for finding this place. Feelig like a giant, I crawled into the hobbit hole.

Riad Zina is nice. Clean. Stylish (Ikea/Alessi sort of post modern decor). But it's overpriced for what you get so stay somewhere else when you go. The owner was out of town and the lady who was managing the place while I was there asked me to tip her as I was leaving (which is poor form for an overpriced riad) and then had the audacity to ask for another tip for the other innkeeper.

Whilst in Marrakech I mainly walked around the souqs (market place) and D'jemaa-el Fna. The souqs are amazing. They're an enormous labyrinthe where every wall is covered with treasure. The shops are usually small but packed to the gills with merchandise. A lot of the walkways are covered, making it impossible to keep your bearings (I don't know about you but I often use the sun and tall landmarks to keep my sense of direction). Guide books offer maps of the souqs but let me assure you that these are all completely useless. Roads can lead under buildings and narrow to four feet wide in places while countless unmarked alleyways can be as wide as a road. I tried using maps a few times. It never worked.

The souqs are north of the D'emaa-el Fna and Riad Zina is north of the souqs. Several times I tried to just walk through the souqs to get to the plaza and that never faired well. In the best case, I'd walk a totally random path that led me out only after two hours of wandering. The only thing I can recommend is a compass with magnetic needle.

If you happen to be in the mood for shopping and lots of walking there's nothing more fun than getting lost in the souqs. They're sort of zoned by craft. There's the blacksmith souqs, the spice souqs, the leather bag souqs, the babouch (leather shoe) souqs, etc. The pictures here are of the babouch souqs and a guy selling nuts and dried fruits. The guy is standing in a hole in this mountain of snacks.

In addition to being exciting, the souqs are also phenomenally annoying. Marrakech sees more tourism than all the other places in Morocco and the salemen know it. They're very pushy and often stepped in front of me while I was walking to direct me into their shops. Add to this the continued harassment for being a non-Muslim woman and the souqs can drive you mad in only a few hours. But it was a strange new experience to have so many people playing 'Guess Her Ethnicity'. "Francais? Espanol? Japonaise? Chinoise?" When I told someone I was half Korean I'd get either "Oh" or "North or South?" If you know to ask North or South you at least took a geography class. But if you have to ask, it wasn't a very good geography class.

Actually buying stuff in the souqs is a whole adventure in itself. Sure, I've been to countries where people barter in the market places but never anyplace where 1) nothing had a fixed price and 2) the vendors tried to coax you into absurdly high prices. After some pain I figured out that if you decide beforehand what you want to pay and keep refusing to pay anymore you'll do just fine. Especially if you try to leave in the middle of bartering. "No, that's simply too far out of my price range. I truly can't afford a dirham over XX. I should leave now."

After much bartering I did come away with some awesome treasures in Marrakech. I got a belly dancer costume for my little niece (which was hard since Moroccans don't understand why you'd dress a child as a whore), finger cymbals, a tagine, jewelry (some cheap and some decent quality), some iron meteorites, and a trilobite fossil. Admittedly, the trilobite is part fake. Moroccans fossil hunters are paid per fossil, not per quality fossil so they often damage them during excavation so the sellers have to do some cosmetic touch up which means large portions are fake. But seeing as how my trilobite cost $10, if the entire thing turned out to be a fake I'd still be happy with it.

There were exactly two shops that I stumbled on more than once (that's how big the souqs are) - the rock shop where I got the fossil and meteorites and a wood furniture shop. The wood furniture shop is where I met Samir. He didn't try to sell me anything, which was good because I didn't want to buy any big furniture. He just wanted to chat. He told me all about how he drinks beer and smokes hashish and is so happy he got this great job selling furniture and oh he's making so much money now and he was dating this skinny girl for a while but Moroccan men don't like skinny girls they only like curvy women and he really wants to meet a full-figured Canadian woman and do I have any woman friends who are single and curvy? As an aside, yes, I did lie and say I was Canadian more than once. Bush was visiting Europe and it made me nervous to have foreigners know I live in a country that re-elected Bush when he was in the news there so much. Anyway, I told Samir I had some single girlfriends and he immediately gave me his phone number. I even took his picture for all the ladies out there. If you're a full-figured woman from Canada looking for a complete stranger from Morocco to marry...

Fortunately, after the claustrophobia and harassment of the souqs I emerged into the D'jemaa-el Fna and found my way to juice stand #27. I forget the name of the guy who works there but he speaks excellent English and is very sweet. He and the other juice guys shared their lunch tagine with me one afternoon. And when I was despairing about being harassed too much he introduced me to some friends of his - two American females in Morocco on Fulbright Fellowships (Mariam and Elizabeth).

walk around the souqs and the D'jemaa-el Fna, 99% of the people you see are men. But there are some women there. They're selling baskets or bread or doing henna tattoos for tourists. As a rest break I had henna done on my hands. It was gorgeous. Probably would've stuck for much longer too if I hadn't taken a bath two hours later. The women sitting together where I got my henna done were obviously a mom with her two daughters. One of their friends came by who, even from behind a traditional chador (scarf covering the face), had such a loud personality. She is seen here hogging the spotlight in the photo I took of the ladies who did my henna. It was nice to hang out with them. They weren't as friendly as the men I'd encountered in Marrakech and it was really relieving.

I wanted to see more of the sights (the medersa, the tanneries, the hamams, the palaces, etc) but I got the flu the second half of my time in Marrakech. In reality I probably got the flu in London or somewhere else in Morocco and it was dormant until I got to Marrakech but that's not my specialty so I dunno. If you go to Morocco bring vitamins and wash your hands at every opportunity (five times a day like the Muslims wouldn't be a bad idea). If you're drinking out of juice and tea cups that aren't being washed in soapy water and sharing food out of communal tagines with total strangers you should definitely keep your immune system up. Moroccan dwellings are not at all insulated from the outside and Morocco gets really cold at night and in the winter.

So I, unfortunately, did not get to go back to Casablanca and see Mourad and his family before leaving. But I'm sure I'll go back to Morocco some day. And when I do, I probably won't have to pay for a single night in a hotel.

about the author :

Kristine Washburn is an astronomy PhD student at the University of Washington, Seattle.  Her research involves spending copious amounts of time at the Super-Kamiokande detector near Toyama, Japan which she uses as a jumping off point for exploring the rest of Asia.  Every
spare dime of her pathetic grad student salary goes towards international travel.  In 2005, she went to Morocco to see more of theworld and reflect on her future.  
She came back with a profound new respect for the Muslim world and unforgettable memories of the people she encountered.  Her favorite parts of travelling are meeting new
people and visiting bath houses.  She aspires to see as much of the world as possible.  For more information visit  http://www.astro.washington.edu/kristine