more of Fez

Alright, here it is.

So as most of you all know I am in Morocco studying Arabic. Last weekend I travelled down south from Tangier to the old city of Fez with a several girls in my program. Fez in a nutshell is: crowded streets, lots of smells, outdoor market, lots of beautiful mosaics and no sense of personal space.

We arrived late Friday evening, exhausted, and dragged ourselves through the giant ancient gate to enter the old city (there is a old city in Fez and a new city). I am not really awake, and my first welcome is from this man passing by, "Ohhhhh myyyyy gooodddddddddd, youhavenicebreasts!" Usually, I just brush aside these comments because they typically happen to all tourists, but at this point I am just so damn tired, I just laugh in his face.

So we get to what looks like some hole in a wall for a hotel but it turns out to be AMAZINGLY beautiful on the inside. We all pass out and wake up the next morning for our private tour guide/ the man who takes us around to his friends shops they can rip us off.

After 6 hours of getting ripped off, we were really tired and dirty as hell. I managed to step in horse shit TWICE, ok it could have been donkey doo doo but who knows, not important. Anyways, before the day is done we stop by this medicine shop. I am curious about the alternative medicines used in Morocco so I begin asking questions (bad idea). This guy sits us down and shows us the first jar of some herb, in parenthesis it says "Viagra". He told us it was good for the "Jiggy Jiggy". He pulls out another jar of some black powder and says its good for everything. Headache, hangovers, whatever. He puts some powder in a pouch comes up to me and SHOVES IT UP MY NOSE takes his hand and closes my other nostril and orders me to sniff. I do so, idiotically. He then does the same to himself, and then COMES BACK TO ME with the SAME POUCH to shove it up my other nostril. Siiigggh. I looked up this powder on wiki and it turns out to be safe, and is used for a cooking sometimes. Thank goodness. Black Anise...if youre curious.

Ok, so next adventure, so we are all dirty and decide we should go to the Hammam, the public bath. You have to keep in mind the Hammam is something normal in the Arab world. We grab our towels and toiletries and head out in a giant group (nine girls). We arrive and disrobe to our undies until the old ladies start yelling at us. So basically our bras came off and I will never be shy about being naked AGAIN. In our undies we head to the first steam room. We gather we are supposed to sit and pour the buckets of water on ourselves. The women who work there are all old, fat and also in there underwear bottoms. Side-note: Saggy breasts are icky. So we paid to be "washed"...we all weren't really sure what this entailed, apparently I was the first to find out. As I was sitting in the corner of the room dumping buckets of hot water on myself with my peers, this old women comes up to me, turns me around and starts scrubbing my back. I try to tell myself this isn't awkward and the next thing you know, and I don't know how to put this nicely but whatever, she lies my head back into her lap and starts scrubbing my front, yup, I basically had my breasts fondled by a naked old women. Although going first was awkward, I was thankful because they definitely, used the SAME scrubber one everyone else. To top it all off, I walked into the next room and stood while I was "rinsed" which involved dumping three buckets of water over me. The first bucket was the normal dump over the head bucket, the second one, however, involved the old naked saggy breast woman pulling open the front of my underwear and dumping a bucket of water down my undies. And then repeat for the back of my underwear with the third bucket. Flabbergasted, I completed my journey through the hammam and walked home with the rest of the girls who were in my program...just stunned. No more hammam for Sarah.

Well, back to hours of hw. BYEEEEEEEE!!!!

I'll end with another pick up line heard in Morocco, (said in funny accent) "You have Crrrrrazy butt....but I like it."