Taking it all in

The last day or so I've been taking it easy, as the day prior was rather intense. I signed up for a hammam (can't do hyperlinks on my phone but imagine the Wikipedia link is here, except it isnt, go look it up) and an hour massage following in my room. A hammam is a bath essentially but someone else bathes you. It takes place in a type of steam room. It starts with what they call bath soup (yet to figure out what that actually is), then a scrub down with this special glove that sloughs off all the dead skin cells and then a sand type thing that is made up of lavender and other things (only word I understood from the french).  After each step there is a rinse. I went in my underwear only and it's normally done by same gender. Afterwards I enjoyed a massage in my room.

Following my cleanse and relaxation I braved the nighttime square with an older Australian fellow named John. He was my body guard as I had been touched on my bum earlier by a stranger wand wanted a bit of male protection at night. We ate at a pop up restaurant (there were like 20 that all seemed to serve similar things but couldn't take photos due to bright light bulbs) and had a talk with an American and a German. The American girl was so happy to meet me as I was voicing many ideas that she agrees with but that her companions felt were strange.

Today I spent the day at the hotel booking my hotels for the rest of morocco (fes and chefchaoen, each one day), and lounging/chatting in and by the pool.

Until my cooking class!  As per usual, I not only wound up with a private class but as the lady only spoke Arabic and a little french, the manager Mohammad was in and out (but mostly in, luckily) to help translate. However his Spanish is better than his English so when he struggled with the English word he went for the Spanish. I think I practiced more Spanish and french then cooking but it was a great time. We made bread, abergine (eggplant) salad, cous cous and lamb tangine with apricots, prunes and almonds. They had me write the recipe down and should be interesting to try to follow on my own. I ate and saved some for tomorrow.

Have since been lounging about, talking to Mohammad and another worker whose  name is jawad(aka the name my bro used to call himself when he couldn't pronounce his r's, I still can't call him this without giggling a little) and learning about Ramadan and islam!