Dog Days

Tonight the city is celebrating the end of Ramadan. Halleluia, I say, because it's been a royal pain in the butt. Everyone is fasting during the day so cafes are closed and at night most restaurants only serve limited menus. Hence, all we've really been eating is pasta with vegetables that we cook ourselves. We had "breakfast" at 6 pm with the family on the first night we arrived, and it was delish - mainly sweets, followed by soup. Also our neighbors offered us some harira (traditional soup) one night. They are 2 Moroccan sisters who occupy the third and final studio here, very nice girls who taught us some more Moroccan words. Also, everyone is tired during Ramadan because they stay up till midnight to eat "dinner" and then get up at 5 am to pray. The one benefit is that things are lively at night due to the weird schedule - for example, I'm in the medina right now, which at other times may be too sketchy for women after dark. But there's tons of people out now and loud traditional music playing and stores are open.

Unfortunately, just as we were starting to feel like the luckiest girls in the world for landing this great place to stay at such a cheap price, we found out we will not be able to stay there longterm. So we are now scrambling to find apartments, which really sucks as I'd much prefer to live with a family than spend all my time by myself. But we can stay here a month or even two while we look.

To add to the reasons I want to stay, I found a girlfriend for Billy! She followed us home on our walk one day, and again the next day, and I told Nazha to come see how pretty she was (German shepherd mix, 1 year old) and she said "Invite her in!" So they actually took her in one night, which I thought was incredible though perhaps a bit irresponsible. Btw, what I said about Moroccans not having dogs is b.s. from the internet - nearly every house has one, mainly as a guardian, not so much a pet, and they definitely lack some understanding on how to care for them. Anyway, the family named her Balia, but she made too much noise so they let her go the next day. I figured I'd see her around though feared for her safety since I'd seen someone kick her before. Well sure enough, next time I walked Billy, she was crossing the street to see us and got hit by a moped. It was pretty horrible. She ran off but I worried she may have internal bleeding or broken ribs. The guys on the moped were not the typical neighborhood jerks and seemed genuinely sorry and tried to help me find her. I discovered her later near a busy intersection and miraculously, she seemed fine. But I was not about to let her go again so I brought her back home and took her to the vet the next day to get vaccinated (to help convince the family that she should stay, as they were concerned for Billy.) The vet was a cool lady, much better than mine in the U.S. and far cheaper. But the story continues...turns out Balia "belongs to" the night guard down the street and he wants her back. I am actually supposed to be meeting with him tonight; it's almost sure he will take her back though we will have to insist that he keep her in some kind of enclosure during the day, and we will keep an eye on her. That concludes the dog story, which has occupied a good deal of my time of late.

Otherwise, I've been delighted to discover the fresh O.J. and fish sandwiches here as good as in Turkey; less delighted by the beach which is rather small and dirty, though there are many more outside the city; impressed with the degree of organization at the school - the lessons are pretty much pre-planned for all levels so less work for us, it seems, though I won't really know until I get my class assignments which doesn't happen until...the night before school starts! That could be a long night.

I have to go stock up on food now because everything will be closed this weekend for the holiday. Eid said!