Wish I could stop the time...

Dear friends, here I am again. Please, excuse my absence and not keeping you updated about my life here. It's been almost a month since I came here. Time goes by really fast. Too fast. I'm scared that, even before I notice, it will be July and time to go back to Finland. Ohh, I should stop thinking like this! Why am I always worried about the future? One of the things I came to learn here is to live day by day, not worrying about the future and just enjoying every moment. After all, we are not always the ones who decide where this life will take us.

To describe my feelings, I can simply say that I feel GOOD here in Morocco. When I wake up in the morning, I know that there is always something that the new day will teach me. New ways of doing things, new ways of seeing different aspects of life. Most of all, learning that the way we are used to doing things in our culture, is not the one and only way. For me, every day here is a new lesson about life.

Last weekend I travelled to Fes with Laura and we stayed with a Moroccan family. Fes is a very old traditional town five hours from Tanger, close to the Atlas mountains. I liked this town very much as it gave me a feeling of ancient Morocco, the feeling that I can't get here in Tanger as this quite a modern place. Especially the Medina (the old town) of Fes had fascinating atmosphere in it. We also visited a place where they paint the goat skins with different colours to make slippers and bags out of them. The smell in this place was something not very pleasant as we know what the sheep smell like! Heh. It was a great experience to stay with a local family since it's always the best way to learn about local customs, which for me is the most importang thing about travelling. Not seeing the sights and monuments, but really feeling the life profoundly as it appears to the members of the culture in question. I got to prepare Couscous (which is traditionally eaten on Fridays as it's the holy day for musulmans) with the mother of the family. It took a few hours to prepare it but was really worth it, soooo good! As I know now the way to prepare it, I will invite you all to eat this traditional moroccan dish when I get back to Finland! ;)

From Fes, we did a day trip to Safrou, which is a small berber village where the Atlas mountains begin. It was really something to remember. We climbed onto a hill where the views were magnificent, as you can see from the picture. People live there on the mountains in the their small houses far from the facilities of modern life. And yet, they seem happier than us. We met a boy who was having his dinner on the rocks and when he saw us, he came to offer us a part of the food he was eating. These people don't have a lot and yet they give to others from the little things they have. That certainly should be a lesson to remember for all of us.