Eurocco: Fez Week 3 Sunday-Tuesday

Sunday: We finished our first week of Cait's classes be returning to the Old City. We had plans to eat again with Aisha's family. We ate with them the Sunday previous, but I still haven't blogged about that dinner, because I'm saving the whole (rather unflattering) story for its own post, and so I skip over dinner in this post too, but know that is the reason we went back to the old city.

First, we had to gather up all our stuff to move out of the hostel while Cait went to more of the women's rights conference. So we hung around the hostel, had breakfast and then went to Central Park to wait for Cait. Tallulah took a nap while Atticus scootered and we got some food. Then we hopped on the bus (we stashed some of our stuff at a professor's apartment).

Before we got to the old city, however, we had to decide where we were going to stay at night. The hostel, along with being closed for 5 hours during the day also has a curfew of 10pm. Since we weren't expected at Aisha's house until 7pm and had no promise of when dinner would start, making it back out of the city and getting a taxi to be back at the hostel by 10pm seemed unlikely. The few options in the city were to stay with Kyle and Vareena again, stay in the hotel just off of Plaz Batha or to find another place to stay. Looking back, finding a cheap hostel might have been best, bothering Kyle and Vareena again and waking them up to get in at who knows what hour was probably second, and staying in the overpriced hotel was probably third. Of course, we did the third option. It was mainly my desire to stay somewhere nice after have been transient for a week. The hotel had a pool and lots of open space to run around in, which was nice, but the pool was too cold to swim in for long and the price was too expensive (for Morocco, and pushing it for the US). Still we had a nice enough stay, the breakfast was really good and the kids appreciated the room to run around in that wasn't the park or the playground. Tallulah just wanted to play in the fountains, and we let her some, but always with the worry that someone was going to yell at us.

The view from the checkin desk

There was a cat with a new litter of kittens in the shrubs next to the pool. Just so you don't forget you're in Morocco.

Our kids play with plastic bags in hotel fountains. Get over it.

We went to the dinner appointment, which was nice, although we got lost the second we got into the city. Anyway, with the help of a prominent mosque as a landmark and another miraculous usage of a pay phone (people can call a pay phone back?) it all worked out, and we got back to the hotel just a little after 10pm, and settled into bed while Cait did a little homework. The next day, Cait left early to go to class. I took the kids up to get breakfast, and then we wandered/scootered around the hotel until our noon checkout time. There was some idea of seeing if we could stay and swim with the kids, but the pool was still deep in the shade (the little sunlight it received the main reason it never got warm) and the day wasn't hot enough to justify trying to keep both kids happy there by myself.

So, I packed up the kids and we took a bus back to Cait's school, where Tallulah took a short nap and Atticus played. Cait came back to the hostel with us when it opened back up at noon and I think Tallulah slept a little longer. I'm pretty sure we went to the park during the 3-6 break, but honestly, the next couple of days in the hostel were just kind of blur. The prospect of moving into an apartment now seemed tantalizingly close and we kind of went into survival mode until then.

We did have a nice break Monday night, when we went to a concert put on by Cait's school with some local musicians who played what I think was traditional Moroccan music, but maybe just an interesting ultra-modern trend. The kids both liked it, although Atticus was tired and grew bored quicker than Lulah, who was enthralled. She liked the rhythmic music and the jumps and twirls of the musicians. There was a point where everyone got up on the stage to dance, and we went up with the two kids. Lulah loved it so much that she refused to get down. So for the next few songs, she danced on the stage with the musicians. There's some video of this somewhere, but it is not making it into this post, unfortunately. Letting our child interrupta legitimate concert might seem bad form, but I guess my assumption is that all Moroccans love Tallulah, and these musicians certainly did, so we let her stay up there for a while. She loves attention so much more than Atticus ever has.

Taken by Atticus

Tuesday:

Like I said, I'm not really sure what we did this day. I'm thinking there was another fairly successful trip to the Fun Park this day or the one before. At the Fun Park, there are two main play areas, one for little kids and one for bigger kids. Atticus seemed to get bored of the little one the first time he tried it, so we were going to have him go in the bigger one. They had told us before that he had to be four to go in, and since his birthday is pretty soon, we just told him to say that he was four if they asked him, which they didn't. Anyway, he didn't play in there for very long after Cait left to go to class, because he was intimidated by the bigger kids with no parental backup, since Tallulah also screamed anytime I left her in the little kids area. So I payed another 15dh to have Atticus come in with us and that worked well for a number of hours. But now he insists that he is four, so, honesty is really the best policy, I suppose.

Tallulah trying on shoes at Carrefore to replace a pare we lost (another story for another day). We decided against them.

I'm pretty sure we Skyped with Jon and Tallia and Austin and her boyfriend whose name I've forgotten this night, but it might have been the night before. Both of these days were really hot, and the nights were too. The little rooms we were in didn't let much air circulate, even with the window wide open. The second night we left our door open too, like everyone else in the hostel, and that seemed to help.

WARNING: NASTY TRAVEL WEARY FEET PICTURE AHEAD:

This is my foot right before jumping in the pool. This was pretty much as rough as my feet got, since the hostel showers were not nice enough to entice me.