Yesterday I arrived in Fez and moved into my home stay. After being met by my home stay sister, we walked down the street for what seemed like an hour (at least to me as it was boiling hot and I was hauling about six months worth of luggage). I was prepared for the worst: cold showers, no western toilet, and a room hot enough to do bikram yoga in. Boy was I wrong.
As I entered the top floor apartment, the room opened up into quite honestly the biggest sitting room I have ever seen in my entire life. There are windows all along the wall looking out on the beautiful city of Fez and are always open, allowing a nice breeze to blow through the house all the time. There were two gorgeous balconies off the main two bedrooms, a kitchen with a dishwaser, washing machine and two refridgerators. My room actually has its own balcony so i can leave the door and window open and have a nice breeze. I am living way better now than my college row house (which contained mice, water leaks and of the course the power outages and shutting off of water). The family is very nice and I can communicate with them in French, but they mainly talk in Darija to each other, leaving me sitting there with a simple smile on my face as I have no idea what they are saying.
Last night at 8pm we found out the news that Ramadan has officially ended. This means that the fasting is over and the next two days are holiday where people visit with family and of course, eat. Being here for the last week of Ramadan has been a great experience. Ramadan is not so much observable through the use of street decorations and commercial sales, but so present in the fact that nobody, and I mean nobody, is eating, drinking or smoking in the street from sunup to sundown. I did not fast and so when we ate we ate inside the hotel restaurant and did not drink water in the street. However, each night we were able to take part in the Iftar (breaking of the fast) with the professors who gave us lectures during the day. The fast is typically broken with a glass of milk, dates and other sweets. Although sometimes we had fresh squeeze orange juice or my favorite, an avocado milk shake. After that, soup is usually followed along with bread and then a meat course of some kind. All the food is new to me, with the exception of the bread. I'm never quite sure what I am eating, mainly due to my lack of Darija skills. Everything I have tasted so far has been delicious, and I am trying to taste everything in front of me. Sometimes my stomach needs some encouragement to do, as I am not used to soup for breakfast. But in the end, my taste buds have not been disapointed by the endless use of spices, sugars and flour that Moroccan seem to effortlessly infuse together.
On a small cultural side note, I was watching TV with my home stay sisters yesterday and it was a cooking show. The special guest was a man and the laughed and asked me 'have I ever seen a man cook?' I just smiled and tried to think of how Anthony Bourdain would respond.
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