Fes

hola,

My last day in Chefchaouen was very relaxing. It rained for the better part of the day, so the canadians and I spent most of the day trying out the various cafes trying to determine the one with the comfiest chairs and best tea/coffee. We grabbed some snacks from the street vendors...nuts and raisins, snails in a salty soup, and some sort of hummus concoction. The locals love the snails, and gather around the cart using safety pins to grab the snails out of the shells. We wandered around the medina and wiled away some time in various carpet shops, mooching some free tea...it was brilliant. We had dinner at our favorite carpet family's house. We brought some moroccan desserts and pomegranate...mmm, delicious. Dinner consisted of chicken, dates, lemon peels, and eggs in a saffrony sauce with bread....Moroccan style, and with about 10 guys centered around a dish, it was serious business. the food went fast, and there was little to no conversation until the food was gone.

The next day I hopped on a bus to Fes, and spent the night at a youth hostel in the nouvelle ville. It's a pretty westernized city and looked very similar to back home. Met some cool kids from Poland and the next morning I headed into the Medina. Fes is an ancient town and has two medinas...it is ginormous. It is a huge university town and has ancient quranic universities dating back to around 1200 ad. There were some beautiful buildings scattered throughout the maze of streets. Some guy who claimed he wasn't a tour guide showed me around town. He showed me a lot of the local craftsmen at work. I saw an old palace that is now a sort of ghetto where a bunch of poor moroccans live...even though the palace is falling apart, it is still not too shabby of a place to live. Apparently some German guy bought the whole thing and is planning on fixing it up. I went to see the tanneries, which are pretty much amazing. They take the skin from sheep and goats and such and turn it into leather for making goods. It was pretty amazing to see. The leather products were so soft and such great quality. I was then sneakily ushered into his home where I was fed tea and fresh crepes and olives, and then hennaed up...no choice there, they just kind of grabbed my hand and went to work. Turned out pretty cool though, so no complaints there.

I did a bit of shopping in the souks and then grabbed my bags from the hotel. On the way out, I ran into the canadians (who left chaouen the day after me) and we had some more tea and snacks. I then took the train to Rabat, the capital of Morocco, and went to the CCS homebase. All the volunteers were gradually filtering in from random parts of the world, so Saturday was mostly spent unpacking and getting to know everyone. So far, they are a pretty sweet group of people. Should be a fun next couple of weeks.

hope alls well back home. look forward to hearing from you all!