Friday Feb 10

We had school as usual. Both of my presentations didn't matter/were good. It was rude to have class till 4 on the first real weekend bc we all wanted to get out of Rabat and see a different part of this marvelous country, but alas we had to stay there till 4. Couscous Friday was beeneen bisef (very good, or something like that). My "mom" got a new tangine/big plate to hold couscous, so she told me to take a PICTURE to show my family. I did. And then took a pic of my whole family, but my "dad" asked if I was going to put it on the Internet, as in he didn't want me to, so I don't think I will..... My "dad" mentioned Karima again... I'm warming up to it, and my "mom" said it means generous. Cool. Ok so that's all about the day basically. Nothing very interesting. A lot of ppl were going to Fes this weekend so after class a bunch of us gathered and we walked to la gare- the train station. We got out tickets and were there in time to make the 5:15 train. I was SO determined to get a seat on the train, but there was NO chance of that happening. Rachel idk what u would have done.... It was so crowded and we broke up (I stayed w/Alexa) and we got on. There were places for our bags, but nowhere to sit. This is a 3.5 hr train ride btw....... We talked a lot and two ppl interjected and practiced their English w/us. One girl, Chaimae, was SO friendly and talked my ear off. She has 27 cats (....) The names that I remember are "Miami", "York", "white", and "blessed-in Arabic" (bc the cat was born still born or whatever and her dad saved it's life). There were pix and videos also. She lives in between Fes and Rabat (closer to Fes) and she invited us over to her house. We also exchanged phone numbers and she has texted me once and called me three times in less than 24 hours. She ALSO gave me a bracelet (she didn't have "twice" to give one to Alexa-we are sharing it). Ok so Chaimae got off the train and then Alexa and I miraculously found seats. I had a little bit of an allergy attack (I honestly think from just HEARING about Chaimae's 27 cats) so I took a bennadryl and got veryyyy sleepy, but stayed awake. A man in front of us helped us get off at Fes, and gave us his number and said that he would show us around the medina tomorrow and would meet us at 10. We got to Fes at approx 20:45 Maroc time (3:45 pm NY time). We re-grouped w/a lot of SIT peeps and then split up again (we are staying at dif hotels). We got in 2 (red) petit taxis, and told him the address. We got to our destination and saw a "cafe boujloud" (our hotel is hotel bab boujloud). A man approached us and told us that he would take us to our hotel. Basically I won't get into the details but he was a total scam artist and brought us to a "hotel" that had a sign on it saying "HOTEL", we def didn't make our reservations there, and it was probably not even a hotel. We believed him for a little, but then we realized the situation and left his "hotel". We went to another one that still wasn't our hotel, and then finally found it. The men at the front desk were very nice and welcoming.... It was refreshing after the evil con artist tried to trick us. We got settled into the hotel (very nice) and went to a restaurant that my friend Sarah (with an h) researched before getting there. We were STARVING (couscous Fridays was 10 hours before)... The hotel that we were eating at was very nice and decently crowded. We got paninis (with French fries!!) that were okay in retrospect but delicious at the time because we were extremely hungry. We met some Americans who were from Winchester, Mass and knew Bobby-I have to remember to tell him that soon. We hung out with the people at the restaurant and met a lot of nice Moroccans. We met one named Noor and he told us about another place that had dancing and live music. He also showed his Moroccan government I.D. card, so we trusted him, but still -of course- had our guards up. We went to the 2nd place, and it wasn't crowded but it was fun. The dj was bad, but we are generally very happy people and especially when in Morocco, so we made our own fun. We got home pretty late and went to bed.