Chefchaouen

I am currently in a small town near the atlas mountains in northern morocco. It's called chefchaouen and the houses here are a beautiful white with various shades of blue for accents. It's quite lovely to walk around. The people are very friendly and I've been hanging out with two brothers from canada a lot. We have made friends with a family that sells berber carpets and we go over to their shop every night for tea. (I think the fact that we all bought some carpets from them helped a bit;) They invited us to dinner tonight so it should be cool. They are a very entertaining (aka crazy)group of people and have even done some dancing for us...quite cool. Their entertainment primarily consists of making fun of the younger boy who works there who they call Mr. bean. he is about 15 and jumps around like the energizer bunny, knocking over tables with tea glasses all the time. fun kid. one of the guys has all these crazy sayings that he's picked up from tourists, like "plastic fantastic" and others that probably aren't too appropriate. some guys have given him some pretty good pickup lines though that are hilarious.

most of the town speaks arabic and spanish, so it is a bit difficult to communicate well, but some people understand a bit of english. It is a fairly cheap town...we grabbed lunch of fresh bread, fresh goat cheese, green olives and dates for not quite $2. and last night, I had a really good sandwhich for less than a dollar...they put everything on it including tuna, salami, noodles, fries, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, ketchup...you name it. It was amazingly quite good, but that may have been due to the fact that I hadn't eaten much all day;)

before coming here i spent a fairly miserable day in tangier, the port town close to spain. it's a pretty shady city and most people try to get out of there as fast as possible. not the best place to be. essaouira was amazing though. met some really cool people and had a great time. on fridays the shops all close down and people get together with friends and family to have a lunch of couscous. I met some guys and they took me into their shop and I had some authentic couscous...a huge, heaping tray that we all ate out of with spoons. It was delicious. I met a huge reggae/hippy fisherman who was pretty sweet. he took me to his friends spice shop where I had the most amazing tea ever. no sugar added, but it was delicious. they put about 11 different spices in it, and it is out of this world. he showed me where the locals go to eat fish, and it was soooooo good. they buy the fresh fish at the market, and then just off the market is a little restaurant where they take the fish you just bought and grill it ith some spices. they then give you bread, olives, a cucumber/tomato salad, and some spicy red pepper sauce that is delicious. probably the best meal I've had in a long time. the whole thing, including the fresh fish, was about $5.

anyways, I'm gonna head out now, but hope everything is going well back home. Take care and big hugs!