DAY 110

Sunday we woke up early, well 8am isn't early, but compared to the time that I had been normally been getting up, it was early. I went down to the outside terrace to find Jeff and Sam all ready there, but apparently just, because they were still waiting for the food to come. After breakfast we had a little time before we had to be in the kitchen for our morning cooking lesson. Today we made Shorba (Moroccan Soup), Tajine Berbère (Lamb Tajine with vegetables), M'ssillare (Preserved Lemons), Ghreybet Essmida (Semolina-based cookie). The Moroccan Soup is basically a vegetable soup and made also with lamb bones, but taken out before being puréed. Even though the Preserved Lemon is just lemons and salt, we learned the real way to do it, since preserved lemons are a big part of the Moroccan food culture. The cookies were really good because one of the ingredients is orange blossom water, which just gives it that extra something. A little after lunch We met the driver who would take us into town to meet our tour guied. While out and about in Marrakech, more specifically, Medina, we started with the Palais Bahia and then went onto all the different Souks. The Palais Bahia is 111 years old and was where the current Prime Ministers lived. The palace didn't have any furnishing and wasa little run down, but from what our tour guide was telling us about how the place was finished and all the other things, this was probably gorgeous and a real col place. I mean the place was still gorgeous and it had nothing in it and was run down, can you just think how it was when it was still a working palace. Anyways the tour guide also said some interesting things about the last Prime Minister. He had 4 wives and 24 harlems. The best part is that they each had there own mini suite. So you can just imagine the size of this place. There was also an abundance of cats and kittens. See in the muslim culture cats are thought of highly, the are considerd a "pure" animal. It's sort of the same (but not at the same time) like cows in India. In this palace in some of the doors they carved out a little hole at the bottom of the door for the cats. After the palace we went to the Souks. The Souks are another name for marketplace. We first went to the main Souk, which had this huge square in the middle. Then we went to the smaller, more specialized Souks. First we went through the animal one, and we saw everything from chickens, to rabbits, to turtles, to other simular animals, basically looked like a very big pet shop. Except these animals were for food not as pets. So instead of getting your chicken from the grocery store they would buy the live ones and then bring it home. Well you can't say it would be fresh :) We also passed by some clothing Souks, and then the spice Souk, which was really cool and smelled amazing. There were a couple of the Souks that I felt that I was back in the Old City in Jerusalem. One of the last places that we went was this rug dealer. The only sell REAL traditional Moroccan rugs. The reason why I have real in caps is because you can't get real traditional Moroccan rugs outside of Morocco, if you do they are probably fake or the person is crazy and cameall the way here to bring them back home. The man not only showed us around, but gave us a brief history of the traditiobal rugs, like where the styles came from, what was the reason or significance of a paticular design, etc... The last place we went to before getting picked up by our driver was this shop that was part of the spice Souk. The thing that I really liked about this place was not only did this guy sell the spice and the medicinal herbs, etc... But he had a special room, which we got to see. This room is were he kept the ingredients for Black and White Magic. I'm like this is so cool, all the times I would see place like this in movies and such and now I get to see it in real life and this guy is totally in to it. I say this because Sam asked him if he did any Black or White Magic and he said yes, but in the wierd "yes and I have a voodoo doll of you in the back, would you like to see it" kind of way. After getting picked up we head back to the house were we have some down time till cocktail hour. Tonights cocktail hour was really cool though. We were entertained by Morooccan musicians playing traditional G'naoua music. Something that was cool was that after playing for a while they had us get up and taught us how to do some of the dancing. They looked good, we looked like ADD chickens with thier heads cut off. This was due mostly because of the really fast and intricate foot work. After cocktail hour we moved down stairs to the dining room, where the musicians stayed and played through out dinner. Not only did they stay through out dinner, but long g after that, but it didn't really matter, because not only was it nice but we were staying up chatting anyways. After this I went up to bed and fell right to sleep, because even though I hadn't down much, I was still very tired.

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