Morocco day 2

Isn´t all this detail so exciting????!
day 2. woohoo.

Today was our only full day in Marrakesh so we figured we´d make the best out of it. We woke up and Josh and I went to go eat breakfast while Cortney showered. It only cost 2€ and was delicious. It consisted of freshly squeezed orange juice, bread, tea, and freshly made Moroccan crepes that the women of the hostel had prepared (I am not sure what they call it so that´s pretty much what they looked like to me were really thick crepes).  Well worth the money for sure.  We then got ready for the day and headed out with Mohamed as our guide! He wanted to go with us to the Jemaa el Fnaa square and there was no way we would say no to that. He took us through some maze of roads to get to the square, a much different route than what we had taken the night before, good thing he was there to guide us. While on the way to the cafe, a woman grabbed Cortney's arm and wouldn't let her go, wanting to give her henna.  She kept insisting it was free because there was a festival tomorrow, and when Mohamed and I came to see what was going on, she grabbed my hand as well and started doing one on mine! Of course in the end, she asked for payment. It was ridiculous. So we overpaid her and learned our lesson once again. It was amazing though to watch her make ornate designs on my hand in less than 30 seconds. I was amazed. We ended up at a really awesome café sipping Moroccan mint tea that was up on a terrace overlooking the whole square. It was amazing seeing the city from above. It was nice sitting there for a while watching the locals do their daily chores and business on the bustling streets below. 

We had our hamam scheduled for 3:30 p.m. so we had only a few hours to see some more things. We took off to the souks to get to the old Qu'ranic school (Ben Youssef Medersa) where children used to go to be taught about the Qu'ran.  Mohamed had some things to do back at the hostel, so he dropped us off at the steps of the school and told us he would see us later.  It cost 5€ to view both the school and the museum that was near as well. There was a beautiful courtyard decorated with traditional Moroccan motifs and with a peaceful reflection pool in the middle. It reminded me a lot of the courtyards that can be seen at the Alhambra in Granada as well.  The rest of the rooms in the 2 floor building were full of rooms for the students who attended the school. There were some with rooms above the other that could only be reached by ladders that were built into the corners of the walls. There were also a few rooms that had been set up to show what they would have looked like when in use.  We then went to the museum that was mostly filled with artwork and traditional things such as costumes, camel saddles, and Moroccan lanterns. There was also a very beautiful covered courtyard in the museum as well with a very impressive metal chandelier in the middle. We didn´t have much time until our hamam, so we saw the basics of the museum and decided to try and find our way through the souks to the other side where the main square was located. Mohamed had told us before leaving that all we had to do was go straight the whole way and we would eventually find our way out. He was right! I was amazed. we didn´t get lost once while in the maze of souks. There are so many sights to see and scents to smell while in the souks. The air always smells spicey with hints of cumin and other middle eastern spices and leather with vendors selling everything from leather shoes, traditional clothes, magnets, dates, and even lizards and turtles! They all want to be your best friend or compliment you in hopes that you will buy something from their shop. A few of them tried complimenting Cortney and I saying ¨ohhh look at those chickens. Chickens with lemon sauce.¨ I don´t know if they were trying to say we were a tasty dish or what, but we just laughed a lot about it and kept adventuring to the outside.  We got to the hostel after a long hot walk and waited until the ladies came to get us for our hamam.  Josh wasn´t lucky enough to get one. :) One of the ladies came and got us holding some buckets. We went ot get Caroline, the woman from Switzerland, in the other building and grabbed some more things and then set off for our next adventure!

The hamam was one of the most extraordinary experiences I have ever experience, life changing even. Cortney said the whole time we were in there, she felt like an agent working for National Geographic doing some sort of article on Moroccan lifestyles.
It wasn´t far from the hostel, maybe a 5 minute walk. The building was not what I was expecting. When I was thinking of what the hamam would probably be, I kept comparing it to the Turkish bath I was lucky enough to experience while in Jordan 4 years ago. It consisted of sitting in a steam room, scrubbing your skin, getting cold water flicked on us, and a massage: in other words, the high life, the luxurious life kind of thing. A traditional Moroccan hamam is really a bath house for women and their children.  It is used many times as a social gathering as well. No men are allowed in and women can gossip and talk amongst themselves.  The building consisted of a wide spacious room for changing and drying off where we started.  We had brought our swimsuits, but it ended up that a traditional hamam does not use swimsuits seeing as it is a place to bathe. So the woman who had come with us, her name was Latifa, told us to undress. At first I felt so awkward. In western society, we have so many taboos that should be followed. This was something I had never done before. That is not something that occurs regularly back in Idaho. Definitely not. But as I sat there waiting to be taken into the other room, I began to feel a lot more comfortable and at ease. No one was staring and they were all doing their own thing. We were led into these 2 other rooms that were tiled, with hot water faucets that ran along one wall to fill your buckets up with. The tiles were heated and nice and toasty to sit on by I´m guessing the hot water pipes that ran underneath them. And then we started the whole traditional hamam experience, with many coatings of henna and orange masques to cleanse our skin that we let soak while laying on the hot tiles, and scrubbing the dead skin off that had accumulated over the years. That was pretty disgusting to see. The amount of dead skin that I had on me. Gross.
All in all, I seriously would never have imagined I would have been so comfortable in a situation like that. It was such an amazing experience. Most likely, if you visit an Arab country, you end up bonding and making friendships with the men instead of the women. The women are reserved and conservative so you don't get to speak with them much. This gave me the opportunity to make relationships with the women in the Moroccan culture that is normally hidden from the outside world and to see their real personalities come to light. It was also so nice to be in an environment where body size doesn't matter. I did not see one ugly person there, and they were all so comfortable in their own skin. The media in our western society tries to conform all women into a certain square. A certain look and a certain body size.  But that´s the unique thing about humans, no one is the same. Each one of us is different and that´s what makes this world so interesting to live in. Of course in 2nd and 3rd world countries there is not as much media that guides the standards for body size like there is in the western world. Many of the people in a country like Morocco are just working for their next meal.

My skin felt so baby soft after the hamam! I felt as good as new. :) Though they had used all my shampoo in the hamam for the rest of the trip, so I would figure that out later. We decided to head out to the square again since the evening is when all the fun begins down there! We stopped at a little place to eat before getting to the square and ate some more of those thick Moroccan crepes (msemmen) with some more mint tea of course. This one was filled with some type of delicious cheese though. I tried to enjoy it as slowly as possible, but that wasn't going to happen, it was too delightful! And ridiculously cheap. We then headed towards the square and hung out there. Cortney and I wanted to at least get ourselves some scarves to wear on our desert safari we were going to take off on the next morning, so Mohamed went with us to find a good price on scarves. He refused to pay more than what he thought they should be worth, and if someone wouldn't give it to him at the price he wanted, we moved on to the next scarf store. We found some pretty ones we liked and then decided it was time to try some traditional soup!
We had soup at one of the booths in the middle of the square again. It was about 30 cents a bowl and tasted like a mixture of tomato and chicken noodle soup. You ate it with this ridiculously sweet sort of candy pretzel thing that was so sweet I couldn't stand eating it alone, only with the soup. We also tried the 40 cent freshly squeezed orange juice, now that was a little piece of heaven in a cup!
After that, we decided we should go back to the hostel since we had to wake up so early the next morning. We just hung out in the hostel and on the roof. We drank this yummy soda pop that was apple flavored up there while we just talked and hung out. We still didn't get to bed at the time we wanted, but we were hoping that we would be able to sleep while on the long drive to the Sahara that we were going to make in the morning.