Gouda's Cheesewheel

Morocco Feb 28

Greetings

Went to Kinetra this weekend to meet my Moroccan maternal grandmother. She's blind and we speak little of the same language, but we managed to communicate in terms of touch and food (she'd hand me some nuts and dates and tell me "mange"--eat!) Lots of kids, I assume some variety of cousins or another. Only saw the residential part of Kinetra--I'm told there is a center that has a boulevard like Rabat does, and that we'll see that next time. One of the main highlights according to my mother is that everything is cheaper there. She pointed this out as we walked through the souk (marketplace). Lots of rain lately. It comes in spurts--not the long showers we get in Colorado. During lunch today it seriously poured for about 2 minutes then stopped abruptly. I don't know if this is typical or Africa, or our specific climate, or what. Don't have much to say today. We had real tagine (served in a ceramic cooking dish with a cone-shaped lid) for the first time yesterday. We had it again today because it was so good. Usually our tagines are made in a pressure cooker, I guess because it's faster. My mother touts the fact that the food stays hotter in the traditional cookware. This has the adverse effect of burning my fingers in the sauce (we eat with our hands, or rather, with a piece of bread used to scoop the food). The taste is well worth the pain, though. I realized that I haven't received much news from any of you lately. Let me know what's going on, even if it's as simple as "school sucks" or "I learned to juggle."

Much love,
Greta

posted by Greta @ 11:48 PM