Welcome to Morocco

I arrived at the Fez airport on Saturday afternoon, walked through Arrivals and ... didn't see a familiar face.  It is a really small, crummy airport.  When I walked outside, there were several sketchy looking men standing by the door offering taxi rides.  I have no idea what their vehicles looked like, and couldn't have gone with any of them anyway since I had no idea where I was going.  John was supposed to be there to pick me up.  Amazingly, the airport had free wi-fi so I was able to check my e-mail, but had no way to make a phone call.  Amazingly also, there was an information booth.  I asked the woman there if she would make a call for me on her cel phone, and amazingly once more, she did.  I called Kasey and she said the rental car showed up an hour late but John should be there momentarily.  That was all I needed.  I can sit and read for hours as long as I know someone is on the way.  And John did show up ten minutes later, very apologetic about the rental car.  Welcome to Morocco.

Kasey and John live in Ifrane, about an hour from Fez.  Since he had the car, John asked if I minded if we stopped at Marjane, the Walmart of Morocco.  So that was my first shopping experience in Morocco, not the casbah or medina.  And it does look like Walmart with clothes, toiletries, and groceries.  It looked like anything you can get in Walmart plus a few things that I did not recognize.

Kasey and John are both teachers at Al Akhawayn University and live in staff housing on campus.  They were able to get me an apartment in their building which is just perfect.  I spend most of my days with them and their cute one month old, Ruby.  Then I go upstairs to my apartment.

On Sunday morning, John stayed with Ruby while Kasey and I went to the Marche with their friends Lauren and Greg.  The Marche is the local market, with lots of fresh fruits vegetables, as well as cow, goat, and lamb meat hanging on big hooks.  But no pork.  Like John and Kasey, Lauren and Greg are a young couple who each teach at the University.  They are former Peace Corps, and have lived in four to six different countries over the last eight to ten years.  There is a very interesting group of young ex-pats here, as well as people from other countries.  They took me to a little cafe with no menu that served eggs and smoothies.  Communication is in a mix of French and Moroccan Arabic, with a little English thrown in.  Oh, it had snowed during the night and I took these pictures when we went out in the morning.  A lot of the snow had melted by the afternoon.

On Monday, Kasey gave me a walking tour of the university.  It was built with money from a trust fund set up by Saudi Arabia to pay for an oil tanker spill off the coast of Morocco.  The winds blew the spill away from Morocco, so they used the money to establish an English language, liberal arts college, designed to look like Swiss chalets.  Thus the A-frame architecture.  The name Al Ahkawayn means "two brothers" and refers to the kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco.



The students need to demonstrate proficiency in French as well as English in order to go to the University.  So there is a language program for prospective students who cannot pass the tests.  Kasey and John both teach English in the pre-university program.  This is pretty much a (Moroccan) rich kid's college; the students' cars in the parking lots are newer and nicer than the teachers'.  It is a very walkable campus with dormitories, classroom and administrative buildings, a library, cafeteria, store, gym, and Olympic size pool.  Well, almost.  Someone screwed up and the Olympic size pool is a few centimeters off, so they cannot use it for official races.  Only one person was in the very large pool when we looked in.

At the Marche, one of the meat stalls had a rolled roast that looked like prime rib.  I was a bit dubious, but the butcher assured us that it could be roasted and was not so tough it needed braising.  So we had him cut off a few pounds and took it.  Before I left Sacramento, I made roast beef and yorkshire pudding for Scott and Carrie, and in Alexandria, I made it for Steve and Beth.  With some trepidation about the quality of the meat, I made it again for Kasey and John.  (Fortunately she has a copy of my cookbook.)  Surprisingly, the butcher was right and the roast beef was pretty good, but the yorkshire pudding did not puff up like it should have.  Then Kasey reminded me that we were at altitude.  Duh!  Tomorrow I am making challah so we can have challah French toast for breakfast the next day.  Have cookbook will travel.

Today, Kasey and I hired a driver to take us to Fez where we went to the medina, one of the largest in the world.  In a few hours we could hardly do justice to the thousands of stalls although we managed to make a few purchases.  We entered through the Blue Gate.  I will be going back here to spend more time.  It was really interesting.



Tomorrow I am back on babysitting duty so Kasey can get some things done.  Oh, darn.