Our lovely amazing fan

     WE BOUGHT A FAN!!! This fan is amazing. It is square and has a timer that goes up to an hour, three speed settings, and TWO rotating things. It’s a God send and I’m sitting on the floor in front of it right now. I am not sure why they don’t have a fan, but they don’t seem to have a problem with it. Welcome to the good life! Zanib took us to her apartment which is really nice. There are three rooms where all the walls are lined with couches and we settled in the “coolest” room to see videos of Ayoub’s birth party. Zanib explained how she “took” her baby and her husband did not know. This confused Colby and I a lot. We first thought that she literally stole the baby and her husband thought that it was her own? Then she explained that her 18 year old friend had it out of wedlock and she adopted the baby. Her husband thought it was from an orphanage. Confusion crisis solved. We then looked at photos from her wedding where she wore at least 5 exquisite dresses including one traditional “Fes” dress that made her look like a purple Pharaoh. I started yawning and nodding off from my lack of coffee and she encouraged us to take a nap. We woke up an hour later and she really wanted us to play dress-up with her clothes, so what the heck, we did. It was fun trying on her dresses and wrapping ourselves in scarves. I felt a bit ridiculous, but she seemed to love the little white American girls wearing her clothes. We then met her husband and all of us went to a very nice and expensive hotel that overlooks the Medina for tea and coffee. We got there right after sunset and the Medina was amazing.
     The next day, Colby and I headed out to the markets near our house. I bought a shirt that is kind of ugly and then we looked at rugs for Colby. We somehow ended up in a Berber rug store that was eerily silent. The two men (CusCus and man with dreadlocks) laid out about 20 rugs for us to look at even though they knew we had no intention of buying. The rugs were gorgeous, but were too expensive for our budget. We made our way up to the top of the market and met Gawad who I bought a hamza and wallet from. He was so funny and had obviously watched too many American movies. He called us scallywags and Chevy Chasers and Charlie’s Angels and gave us “romantic prices.” He knew Ethan, the boy we met at the Fes airport and was extremely excited to meet us. After, we went to an open air market with many men. We knew it probably wasn’t the best idea, but it looked interesting. We walked quickly through but not without being called out to many times. One boy was persistent and said “Spice girls, spice girls, let me kiss your ass. Let me, let me.” Now, at first, we tried holding in smiles because he called us spice girls. But after following us for a long time and me telling him to fuck off in Spanish, we were pretty irked. The culture here is very respectful and Moroccan men would not say something like that to Moroccan women. So the fact that he felt it was appropriate to say that to obviously Western girls showed us the respect that they held for us. We walked quickly back to our safe haven and our lovely amazing fan.