The First Week

We are one week into our Moroccan life and so far, so good! Danny went back to work on Monday. I am not really super comfortable going out and about alone yet so Lily and I really didn't do much during the week besides play outside in the garden.





We have a driver (Ahmed) and a house helper (Omar) who are really great. Ahmed speaks really great english, so he is able to translate everything for us. He doesn't think his english is good enough so he wants me to teach him english and he will teach me french. I feel like we have already learned so much french just in the one week we have been here. It is so nice to be able to learn from him! Omar doesn't speak much english so we mostly communicate with hand signals. He is at the house all day with Lily and I and takes care of the pool and all the other outside stuff. He is such a nice guy. At 5 pm he washes up and puts all his tools away and picks flowers for Lily and walks around the garden with her. She has him wrapped around her little finger! Also, between 4-5 everyday, two guys riding camels walk down our street on the way to the beach. Lily and I were outside on Tuesday when we saw it for the first time and then Danny and I saw them again today. They try and make it down to the beach so tourists can ride the camels at sunset like Danny and I did on our first trip here. I love seeing them walk down our street! I will try and get some pictures of them soon.







Danny stayed home from work on Friday morning so we could go to the souk (the outdoor market) on a weekday when it isn't so busy. The first place we stopped was to look at rugs. We just wanted to look and see what they had but those Moroccans like to make a deal so we ended up walking out with a new rug for our bedroom! They probably pulled out 20 rugs for me to look at and once I found the one I liked best they haggled with Danny for at least 20 minutes. Situations like that literally make me start sweating but Danny did a great job and talked them down to a reasonable price. We have been assured that Moroccans like to haggle and they aren't offended when you try and negotiate the price down. At the end of the purchase, they even threw in a little carpet square for Lily, haha! Hopefully they will remember us the next time we go look for a rug and just give us a low price right off the bat.



Today Ahmed came to pick us up and took us up in the mountains to a village called Immouzer where there is a little waterfall and a place to eat lunch. While we were there, an old Berber man who works for tips at the waterfall decided to show off for us by jumping from a rock into the freezing cold water.






We stayed to have a lamb tagine for lunch at the waterfall restaurant. A tagine is a Moroccan clay pot that you put either chicken, lamb, or goat and vegetables in and then cook it over coals. It is what Moroccans typically cook their meals in.




 We got back home around 3pm and had some moroccan tea out on the patio and enjoyed the perfect weather here. I am pretty sure we are going to be spending a lot of our time at home out on the patio. Lily wakes up from her afternoon nap, goes to sliding door and says,  "side, peas", which translates to outside, please.



She seems pretty happy here!