Marrakesh is beautiful

Camilo and I continue to shop and eat our way through Morocco. We arrived in Marrakesh after a painless bus ride (no goats, crying children, chickens, breakdowns or large African women taking up 2 seats). Our hotel is really cute - a beautiful terrace and actual furniture in the room. A maid brings us each a towel every day. It's glorious. And $25 a night.

We've done a lot of walking and spent most of the first day walking through the souks, looking at everything from leather bags to lanterns to silver platters and woven blankets. Since I'm not going to be back in the US with an apartment for a couple years I have resisted the urge to purchase everything in sight. Also, I decided not to bring souvenirs home for everyone. I started making a list of people I wanted to get things for and it got to be really unwieldy, at which point Camilo (correctly) pointed out that it would be cooler to get people souvenirs from my next PC country, where the trinket will actually mean something. So souvenirs will have to wait until 2009, y'all.

Yesterday we went to the new part of town, where there were real shops and Cam bought some pants and I bought a sweater. They had changing rooms and everything - the salesman got a kick out of us explaining how you had to go to the market and bargain for fabric and then go to a tailor in Guinea. We were just so excited about buying ready-to-wear clothing! Thank goodness it's not so cold here, because we were both frozen the first couple days.

A highlight of both days has been the fresh orange juice. They have all these carts in the middle of the square where a big glass of fresh squeezed oj is 30 cents. Yum! And, embarrassingly enough, we ate at a Pizza Hut yesterday. It was delicious and I refuse to feel too ashamed about it.

Today we decided to be a little cultural and went to the Jardins Majorelles. They are owned by Yves Saint Laurent and are very cool, but small and packed with tourists, so we didn't stay long. Cam, of course, got some great photos and I hope he'll get them posted to his flickr site soon. This afternoon we headed to the Palais Badii, which was mostly in ruins, but you could walk around the underground prison and through the grounds and it was pretty interesting.

One thing that's made me laugh about Morocco is the stray cats and dogs. They are so cute! And well-fed. I think it's hilarious that there are still all these stray animals, but they are just in much better shape than their counterparts in West Africa. I wanted to play with these kittens today, but Cam reminded me that just because I'm vaccinated against rabies doesn't mean I should test my luck.

The PC medical office says I should be cleared in 2-4 weeks and then I just need to wait for an invite. I know I'm supposed to be flexible about my assignment, but I'm not. I want to continue teaching English in West Africa. F*&k flexibility. I've been really flexible about being evacuated and having to restart my service and everything and I see no reason why they can't accommodate me a little. But it's Washington, so I guess I'll just have to hope for the best. The good news is that PC Guinea says they can hold my stuff until we hear if the program will reopen. If it doesn't they will arrange to ship my trunk to my new country of service. Effectively, that frees up about 80 pounds worth of junk that will now be food products. Because that is what every PCV should pack.

Tomorrow we take the train to Casablanca for 2 nights and then head to Fes. Whoohoo.