A weekend in Fes

As a part of our Cultural Based Training, we spend the majority of our time in the little town we've been assigned to. That way, we can really work on our language and integrating into our host-families. However! We do occasionally get a chance to go out and explore other parts of Morocco. We have two of these weekends during the three months that we're in CBT, and this was our second. (We spent the first doing our taxes and laundry, as one does)

Saturday afternoon, we packed up and headed to Fes. 

Fes is just as amazing as expected. We spent the majority of our time in the Old Medina, which is just a series of windy paths that are some how all interconnected and filled with people and clothes and food and electronics and rugs and everything else you could imagine. 

One of the highlights was the tanneries. It was also definitely the smelliest part, but gorgeous. The only way to see them is to go into one of the leather stores that overlooks the actual work area, so there are tons of store owners trying to pull you into their shops for a pretty long stretch of medina. We found one store that wasn't trying too hard to pull people in, so we went there. In addition to a great view, we were shown to the roof by the store owner's 9 year old son named Mohammed who could speak Arabic, English, German, French, and probably a few words of other languages, too. He handed us stalks of mint leaves to avoid the terrible smell and told us a little bit about what we were seeing. We also go to try out a bit of our Arabic on him, and he was entertained, to say the least.  I think we were nearly as impressed with him as we were with the tanneries...

We also found time to see the gates to the Royal Palace of Fes and the big ol' Western style mall, though they were much shorter trips.