A Totem Park...

Well, maybe if you were an ant and you had never really seen a native totem pole! :) This was our culminating project in our unit on Alaska. The kids had to come up with their own story and design blocks that would tell that story. Afterwards they transferred the design onto the "totems". They had so much fun with it and I think that the end design turned out great!

Ah, Ramadan!

You have to love it when even the McDonalds get's into the spirit. And we aren't talking just like Shamrock shakes here! They serve a whole addition to their regular meal for ftour. You just say you want the ftour menu and they add milk, dates, harira and Shebekia to your order for 10 dirham more. It's great!

Don't forget to scroll down and check out what I wrote about our new addition and our trip to Marrakesh. I also added a couple new albums to my photo page so if you want to check those out that would be fun. Don't forget to comment!

Meet George V (sanq)

While we were in Marrakesh we couldn't help but stop when we say this cute little guy. He was in a cage with tons of other bigger rougher turtles and since we can't adopt human orphans George is a great replacement. Plus he goes into hibernation for half the year so it's like we won't even have a pet! :)

Marrakesh

After a rather rough couple of weeks we decided that we just needed a change of scenery. So Saturday we decided to take a little day trip to Marrakesh, I mean if it's good enough for the hippies in the 60's, it's good enough for me! :)
We had a rather uneventful train trip there, but we were able to see a lot of the countryside which was nice. Sometimes though I felt like I was back in Eastern Washington, except for the houses! :)
We got there and were hungry so being the good American tourists that we were we headed for McDonalds! Just kidding, I mean we went there but it was more because it's Ramadan and we weren't sure of the restaurants that would be open but we figured that McDonalds would be a pretty safe bet! After lunch we decided to take a carriage ride around town, after some skillful bartering we were off. It was nice because the drivers would stop at certain points and let us get off and take pictures and stuff, and then when we were ready we could get back on and go. The end of our carriage ride was the famous Djmee Al-Fna. Never heard of that? It's the square in the middle of town where there's snake charmers, storytellers, henna designers, and just about anything else you could want. I have to say that it gives new meaning to the term tourist trap, since they will literally wrap a snake around you or put a monkey on you and then make you pay to get it taken off. I was expecting it to be crazy, and I did okay until a fight broke out and in the commotion a little dwarf guy tried to pick-pocket me and then when I turned around he winked at me. That was just a little much, and I needed to escape to the relatively calm world of haggling for souvenirs! :) After some great deals it was almost time for ftour, and that can get a little crazy so when in trouble look up right? Well, that's just what we did, and we grabbed a table at a little cafe that overlooked the square. It was a beautiful view and we got a lot of really great pictures. By the way, I have added some pictures to a new album on my picture link, if you want to check them out. After the call to prayer the whole square turned into a restaurant, which was cool, but unfortunately in the true Moroccan style, nothing got washed between people eating off of it. Consequently we opted for a different place to eat! We ended up at a fun little restaurant called Cafe Mabrouk! They had live music and it was just a fun atmosphere. After we were done eating, it was about time to head to the train station. So we fought our way through the injustice of the taxi drivers driving up the price by asking our server how much it should be to go to the train station and we demanded "the counter". After about 4 tries we all made it to the train station and were off! It was such a great trip and very much needed. There's just something about a roadtrip!

Our First Ftour!

As many of you know it's Ramadan here in Morocco. Ramadan is the time of year when the Muslims fast from sun-up to sundown. At the end of the day when the prayer call sounds it's time for ftour. (which I really think I'm spelling wrong, but I'm not sure of the correct spelling) It's the first meal that they eat to break the fast and then sometime around 10:30 or so they have another big meal, and then they sleep a little but wake up really early before morning prayer call to eat breakfast. So they are still getting their three meals in just between about 6 at night and 5 in the morning! Yesterday our friend Manal celebrated her 25th birthday and since she was fasting all day because of Ramadan we decided to have a birthday ftour for her. You traditionally break the fast with dates and milk, we also added some really good pancake like things that had spicy meat and olives in them, and a good old american apple torte just for fun. After we munched on those for a while we had Harira which is a tomato based soup that is another traditional food to break the fast. It was so yummy!
We had another meal planned but we just
decided to skip it because we were all full from
the ftour! However the birthday cheesecake
was another matter, once again proving the saying,
there is always a little square for dessert. :)

The Solar Eclipse!

Who would have thought that such a simple thing as a solar eclipse could cause such a big commotion! Well, here in Morocco it does! All the public schools were cancelled because of it and I only had 11 kids in the beginning of the day. I eventually got up to 14, but that's still 7 kids absent because of an eclipse!
In trying to explain an eclipse to my children, I quickly learned that what they believe is so hilarious. It took me an hour to explain to my kids that the moon doesn't have light on it's own, it's not a star like the sun. And that it's not any more dangerous to look at the sun during a solar eclipse than it is any time of the year. It's always bad to look at the sun, you just normally don't do it because it's so bright but during an eclipse you try to see it more. At 9:00 this morning my kids were literally fearful, like they thought some sort of laser was going to shoot out or something. Even the mosques did a special solar eclipse prayer today. It was definitely a day of interesting cultural information!