Splat!

Dropped my entire dinner on the floor this evening, breaking a plate into the bargain. Yes, I scraped it back onto the two bits of plate and ate it. I wasn't going to let that Thai green Curry go to waste.
The canine Hoover went into position and the plate went into the bin thereby reducing both the cleaning and washing up!
True there were some crunchy bits that tasted Thai but which I couldn't say with absolute conviction weren't splinters of ceramic...
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'Haute cuisine for brain foodies'

Here are probably my top 6 most used apps after the usual text/phone/email/music/camera options;




The most notable exception would be Kindle which is open
most days.
I like the following for travel;




Of course I particularly like the tube map app so you can check your route without looking like a tourist!
Other honourable mentions go to;




Ideal for sport nerds and pretenders alike. I fall into the latter group as I want to know the scores but will never have any interest in how much the mid-fielders are worth, where they were bought from...oh I'm bored already.
Another favourite is;




Not only is Ted a fantastic brother-in-law but a great source of haute cuisine for brain foodies. Search for 5 min inspirational talks, 10 min funnies or half hour talks on science, culture, technology or any other discipline that takes your fancy.
SO. What are your favourite apps and why?
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Out walking the hound, enjoying some other local wildlife.








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Smoothie as

1 x thick slice fresh pineapple
1/2 punnet blueberries
1/2 small tin mandarins
1 banana
1 slice melon
Generous sprinkle of cinnamon





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The folks

Time for a bit of shameless bragging about my parents. Essentially they rock and I pity the rest of you for not having folks as cool as mine.
If I think I'm being cutting edge (though this is usually only a bi-annual event), my Dad starts a conversation with; 'So tell me what you know about so-and-so who was the first person to be involved in your field of interest'. Well yes, let me just order that clearly seminal work on a key player I've never even heard of before... OR 'I've just been reading about the response to Postmodernism's idea that (insert further long words here)' Well yes, uncanny, me too. Sort of. Not.




I love to be kept on my toes like this. I also love being taken out for brunch and we managed to squeeze in a Full English after a trip round the farmer's market; my parents asking how a stall holder was getting on reading a 'significant book' given out the previous month and me getting told off for putting my hand in a sack of coffee beans! 'Sorry about that, she's just back from Africa'!!!




It was called Safari -what was I supposed to do??
Found this old but functional radio in the garage and couldn't help but snap it. Another cool little detail from their house; accidentally retro!




Had an exciting speaking engagement arranged for me - children's talk at chapel :) So much more potential than just speaking to adults!
Had a flashback to eating with Arabs each time we sat down for a meal; 'Eat! Eat! You've hardly had anything! اوكلي! ماكلتي خير




Enjoyed the rest of my time reading Müller, sleeping and trying to chase blackbirds out of the soft fruit cages!!




So yeah, in true playground idiom, my folks are cooler than your folks!!




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Sunning & Indolence.

A week after leaving Africa-ca-ca-ca (Shooting Stars allusion), I had a week's holiday in Puerto de Mogan, Gran Canaria. 'Twas a place of much sunning and indolence.





I stayed in a fab little hostel up a steep winding alley way of white painted houses, pots of colourful plants and whistling birds in outdoor cages.




HOSTEL VOLVER ^

I was most struck by the incredibly clear water and number and variety of tropical fish that could be seen just standing on the port side. The beach was man-made so fairly tame but they served the purpose (see post title)




Enjoyed making friends with the staff and other lodgers in the hostel. Went to a fabulous local water park one day with flumes steep enough to give you nose bleeds. Yeah man! Also watched the Euro matches that didn't involve penalty shoot-outs!


Came home and booked my next trip away. Watch this space!

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Baking

Saw mini carrot cake cupcakes in M&S and thought I could do just as good a job at home. Did.


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For Sale...

Someone recommended that I list my sale items on my blog. So here’s a list of everything I have sorted and put on Facebook up til now. There will be more as time goes by. (5 team points to anyone who can name that film allusion!)

Portmeirion. Botanic Garden, Variations items:

Coffee pot. £18. (retails at £56)

Deep, lidded casserole dish. £15

Oval serving dish. £10

Medium salad bowl. £15

Deep lasagne dish £17

4 bowls. £5 each or £15 for the lot

3 ramekin dishes. £4 each or £10 for the lot

Salt and pepper pots. £10

3 espresso cups and saucers. £5 each

Planter. £8

Small cake plate. Just for fun, free to the first person who can tell me which dialect of Arabic I’ve been learning.

Small vase. Has small chip so make me an offer

Large slo-cooker in perfect condition. £20

Very pretty divided dip/snack server in ‘loaves and fishes’ design from Israel/Palestine. £12

Selection of wall plates from Israel/Palestine and Turkey in traditional designs. Make me an offer individually or for all (pictures currently only available on FB)

Spaghetti jar. £10

Biscuit barrel. £10

4 x deep pasta bowls in cream with olive detail and big, matching serving dish. £20

Bergen 8. Eight person tent. Only used once. £150 (retails at £300)

Various puzzles at £1 each

Great, sturdy chicken coop. Well made and houses a maximum of 4 birds. 2 laying areas inside with perches. Pulley interior door and large door to rear for access and cleaning. £75

 Chocolate fountain. Good quality and condition. £25

Set of cute tapas dishes in white porcelain in the letters T A P A S. £7

Miniature, carpet boule/petanque set. £5

Anthony Worrall-Thompson hand-held blender. £8

Home, James...

So I’ve been back three weeks so an update is overdue. The first thing that struck me about being home was HAYFEVER and a CHEST INFECTION!

It’s good to be home, though, and I’ve loved catching up with friends and family again, not to mention the hound!  There’s no way to really sum up what four months (nearly) in the desert is like but I’ve got a much better idea now of the things I will find difficult living there long-term. It’s good to go with a realistic view. At the same time it was a bit of a ‘honeymoon period’ but then whoever didn’t go on honeymoon because they had to face day to day life when they got home?!

So my days now are spent looking for summer work (6 applications in at the moment), trying to sell all my worldly belongings, walking the dog, hanging out with friends and reading.

Since getting back I’ve read ‘From Foreign to Familiar’ (2/5. Some good bits but pretty much candy floss), ‘Irresistible Revolution’ (3/5, well worth a read, challenging but a single-issue book) & a biography of Hudson Taylor (5/5, inspiring, challenging, thought-provoking) Have started a fictional book while I wait for something else to arrive in the post and I pretty much want to slap the protagonist at the moment!

Other significant news:

·      I’ve learnt how to make custard tart

Who are you?

WORD IN ARABIC                     MEANING IN ENGLISH

Elaine                                             Until                                

Joanne                                            Spliff

Min                                                of, from                                        

Natasha                                          I eat dinner

Phil                                                Elephant

Brief history

Sorry for not having updated the blog in several weeks. Here is a quick round up in pictures;

This is Meknes, a beautiful city in the north that we visited briefly during our grand tour that also included Fes, Rabat, Tangiers, Tarifa, and Gibraltar! 

I really enjoyed this city particularly the old medina that is a maze of dark, winding pathways past towers of spices, boxes of chickens, antiques of questionable origin, roof terrace cafes and iron damask ornaments.

  

Had to see off some particularly brazen pick-pockets in Gibraltar who wouldn't take no for an answer!!

After two weeks away from Laayoune, I was delighted to get 'home' We celebrated with a big bowl of salted popcorn. It was 'up and at em' the next morning as I launched straight back into classes. Had a few days of feeling frustrated with the lack of progress I'd been making in my language learning which kind of seeped into a frustration of what on earth is happening to me when I get back to England...I have no job, firm plans, money etc Was able to create a reassuring flow chart to restore my equilibrium, albeit of all the issues I needed answers for, then sent it to a few friends for them to 'chew over'. Almost immediately plans started to come together and although there are still many unanswered questions, I feel much calmer.

At the beginning of May I decided to quit the English teaching I was doing and double my own language lessons. I also asked if my classes could pick up pace. I'm very glad I made that decision as I've launched into grammar more systematically now. I have noticed that I am understanding much more of people's conversations lately and although the amount of conversation that I can generate is still limited, I feel like I'm making progress. 

There do, however, continue to be conversations like this between the teacher and me;

Teacher pointing to a picture of a fig: What's this?

Me reading the word next to the picture in my book: A fig

Teacher: No

Me: Yes it is

Teacher: No, not fig

Me: Well that's the word it has down here

Teacher: Show me

Me showing him the arabic word: See, 'fig'

Teacher: This isn't fig

Me: OK...

Teacher pointing to a picture of a fig: So, what is this picture?

Me: I don't know

Teacher: It's peach

Me: But you've got the word 'grenades' down next to the peach picture, 

(then muttering) not that grenades are a fruit.

Teacher: No, that's granite

Me: Granite? Oh yes, pomegranite

Teacher holds up picture of raspberries for which he hasn't given me the word in Arabic: What is this?

Me: Well they are raspberries but they aren't on my list

long pause

Me: I don't know

Teacher in Arabic: Strawberries

The last week has mostly been about watching the temperature soar to the mid 40's and finding inventive ways to keep cool. We are currently preparing some coldwater bottles in the freezer!

I am preparing for my very dear friend, Elaine, to come out and visit me in a couple of weeks time and after that it will be time for me to leave. I have 4 remaining weeks before I return and my head is spinning with all the new things I have seen, heard, learnt and smelled!!! I have as many questions now as when I first came but some of them at least are different questions! 

I will try and blog again before I leave.

Thanks for reading.

Why take it easy when you can rush?

Jo and I went away for a few days chill time and we had everything timed to perfection.

We got to the airport and browsed the one shop that is there in Laayoune airport. I bought a necklace and a couple of silver rings - that a week later are now clearly not silver - then ambled out to discover that everyone had boarded and we were the last ones through the gates.

Later at the train station in Rabat, we arrived with an hour and a half to spare so stopped for some lunch in the cafe overlooking the train tracks. On the way out of the cafe, I noticed that we had three minutes to run for the train and it was already on the platform as we threw ourselves on board.

Later at the port, we got stuck for two hours with bad weather. We could see our ferry a few hundred yards out but it was unable to dock because of high winds. After playing cards and buying unappetising biscuits from a vending machine, people began to queue. Jo pushed her way to the front while I did the English thing and said it would be fine to wait. Jo then beckoned me forward, fast, to get on the sh;uttle bus to the boat because the queue was for the later ferry. We were last on the bus.

Later at the bus station, with an hour and 50 minutes wait, we sat and had coffee and played Rummikub in the cafe while we waited. Engrossed in what we were doing, we got to our bus after everyone else was ready to go. Last on again!

Puppy Love & Hard Work

Life has been quiet and uneventful. Hang on, no, that was someone else.

Life has been crazy, full of busyness and adventure. A lengthy gap between blog posts means that you're only going to get the highlights, apologies.

So I got a dog.

Jo and I were in the flat and heard this awful whining sound that could only be a dog. Jo thought it might be trapped somewhere so I went down with something out of the fridge to see if I could help it. At the far end of our street, a tiny puppy was sitting and crying. Seriously, what would you do? Of course she came back home with me and spent a week totally disrupting our lives with her need to be fed every two hours, day and night, complete lack of house training and the need to keep her presence a secret from the neighbours. I named her Elle and despite the exhaustion and effort it took to keep her, we both found her utterly delightful to have around.

As we are due to travel in a few days, it was essential that we found her somewhere permanent to live and it was, I truly believe, a miracle that we found out, via a chain of unusual links, of a guy that wanted a puppy. She is now happily in her new home being doted on by other dog-crazy individuals.

I had my friend from Boujdour up with us for several days and we got to do some fun stuff together. Meals out, visits to various places in Laayoune and visits to friends houses.

Language learning continues to be a lot of fun for me. I was beginning to get a little frustrated that I had a lot of vocabulary and could fairly confidently negotiate the alphabet and read most things, I still wasn't able to start conversations. Try as I might, saying 'turban', 'courgette' or 'table' was not proving to be great openers.

Things have improved since then and I've had the chance to spend time with some native speakers who have welcomed me into their home, given me the obligatory three glasses of overly sugared tea and helped me learn new vocabulary. Today I put some words together that I was sure didn't constitute a sentence but I was understood and corrected. It's like being a small child learning to talk. Now if i could just get the hang of drinking without spilling it down me...

Earlier this week, I spent an afternoon in a primary school learning some classical arabic. The words weren't important as I was trying to get a grip on some of the different accents, of which I know nine. After 2 hours I was shattered and had to leave but the kids just kept going. They were coming up to the teacher and reading some pretty advanced French while I was working. At one point this little girl came up to show the teacher what she had been writing and it was the same work as me. She just read it out without batting an eyelid, leaving me feeling very envious!

We took a trip out during the week to an oasis about half an hour out of town. I'd been here on a previous visit but it was lovely to go back and spend some time relaxing there. That's the climbing up palm trees kind relaxing as you can see.

There are lots of bird around and it is a fun place with a tiny, not very clean, outdoor pool, areas to sit and eat and even tents that you can stay in overnight.

Jo spent a lot of time last weekend with a very poor family who have not been able to afford one of the children's medicine for epilepsy. He had a fit, fell, banged his head and was vomiting for hours afterwards. Thankfully all is well again now. The medication is about £10 a month. The mother is on her own and has to leave the two younger kids with the 7 year old to look after when she goes to work. There are a lot of comfortably well off people here but where there is poverty, it is pretty shocking because there is no NHS or social security. This family is being financially supported by various people but they continue to live in a garage that has been converted into a place to live. (I don't know why this month was particularly tight for her)

I have run some lessons while I have been here. One in Dakhla and two at the centre where Jo works. The last one was a fun session with about 10-12 of the mothers where we made paper boats and floated them, had a dressing up game, team games and picture identification games - all with a message about communication and interaction.

The significance of this week has not gone uncelebrated.

Well it's half past midnight and it's time for me to put out the surprise chocolate I bought for Jo for tomorrow morning (Sunday) before turning in for the night!

How can I put this..?

...I'm having more fun that you'd think considering I'm in a desert, miles from home and hanging out with lots of people I don't understand.

Last weekend Jo and I went to Dakhla. Wow. It's beautiful. Flat sand stretching for miles, perfect dunes to run over, warm sea, friends with a boat, an eat-all-you-can fish buffet, dozens of people kite-surfing. Dakhla is a peninsular about 6 hours south of Laayoune, where I'm staying and it does that confusing thing of having ridiculously arid places that drop straight into the sea. Forgive the photos and please believe me when I say I'm not ACtually just having a holiday!!

We were far enough away from anyone local to wear short sleeves without anyone being scandalised by seeing my upper arms and I even got into the sea for a few minutes at one point. In more public or popular places the women wear pyjamas or jogging bottoms and long-sleeved t-shirts to go into the sea.

On Sunday afternoon we went off-roading to 'Dunas Blancas' and listened to our friends stories of cars that had sunk in the sand, never to be recovered because of the tunnels the fiddler crabs make that fill with water when the tide comes in.

The sand was surprisingly cool under foot

considering the heat of the day. A strong wind helps prevent you from over-heating.

There were a group of pink flamingoes in the water, oystercatchers, sanderling and some other birds that I thought may have been curlew but couldn't identify without binoculars.

I threw caution to the wind and flung myself in the sea which was warm.

One evening we stopped by at a 'hanout' which is what I called a box shop when I first came arrived. They come in different sizes but they are basically a small room with a counter with products behind and you have to ask for what you want and you are served everything by the shopkeeper. This hanout that we visited was about the size of a shed, the counter was gone because it was evening and a group of women were sat on rugs inside drinking tea in the traditional southern style. We joined them and left when there were so many people sitting cross-legged in there that a world record was about to be set.

At the dunes I was challenged to take the leap of faith, a rite of passage made up by one of our friends that involves running up to the peak of a dune (as pictured) and jumping as far as you can, blind, over the other side. I made a modest effort while pulling off a convincing impression of the much-loved, knee-length trouser wearing sleuth, Tintin!

It was a great week-end and a perfect break from 'normal' life, though I use that term advisedly!

I think this weekend we are actually going to be staying in Laayoune. We are invited to a wedding of a brother of a friend of an acquaintance of a person of a .... I'm not sure who! I will be able to provide you with more pictures of me looking silly as a result!

Bleatings from Boujdour!

So I'm back from a weekend in Boujdour, a bus ride three hours south of Laayoune where I am staying. An aller-retour costs just over £8 which is pretty good for 6 hours through the desert. The view through the window goes a bit like this; sand, grit, sand, rocks, dirt, litter, sand, low-growing shrubs hanging on for dear life, sand, rocks, dirt, dunes, sea, rocks, half-built building, police check, sand, petrol station, sand....you get the picture. In fact, it was a quite weird sensation last weekend when travelling north and I found myself shouting; 'Look! A tree!'

So anyway, back to Boujdour...I have a family that live there who I've stayed with before and it was so good to see them again. There were lots of hugs and tears when I arrived and being on the conservative side of emotional (!), I was really touched with how pleased they were to see me. The weekend was mostly eating vast amounts of bad-for-you food, followed by long siestas. My friend and I had an afternoon at the beach, Morocco style. That's to say, we walked on the sand and took some photos. Long sleeves and high necklines cause plenty looks and comments. I think swimwear would cause major meltdown! We shopped in the souk, sat around in the square and went to a book fair where I managed to get a copy of 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' for the equivalent of £1.80. The mother made us couscous even though it wasn't Friday (!) and I was spared any glimmer of cow's ears.

One evening she made peanut butter from scratch which was really fun to watch. She has a large, stone, conical type of pestle and mortar with a well in the middle where you ladle in peanuts that have been in boiling oil. The whole thing is then turned so that the nuts are crushed, boiling oil and sugar is added and slowly the paste comes out of the bottom and drips down from the base into a plastic tub. It took her all evening and I was staggered at how she kept going. My arms would have been cramped up hours before she stopped!

I learnt more words to add to my Hassaniya vocabulary and helped a neighbours daughter with some English homework. I got to visit the neighbours roof and check out their baby goat and sheep. They had woken me in the middle of the night and it sounded as if they were in the same room as me!

I'm working a lot on Arabic letters and how they change depending on where they are in a word and realising how difficult it must be to learn English actually. We have so many silent letters and sounds that change depending on what letters they follow and sounds that change when combined with other letters. In class it's easy to think that I am doing really well because the teacher is, naturally, getting me to practice the things he has taught me. However, take that smug feeling out of the classroom and listen to people talking and you recognise a word every few minutes. I'm still feeling the excitement of learning though and I'm making the most of it because I'm sure there will be times in the future when I want to throw my exercise book across the room!

Highs of the week: Putting together Arabic letters in a word to make the right sounds, the Boujdour trip, having my English student describe me as a 'full battery' when I teach!

Low of the week: Seeing on FB that my niece has learnt to ride a bike and I wasn't there to see it and cheer her on.

Burning rubber and spitting sand

Last weekend, Jo and I went to Agadir for a few nights. It was good to catch up with some of her friends, get our hair done, have the car fixed and the computer mended. The drive is 10-12 hours each way, depending on how many stops you have. For example, you might stop a couple of times on the way there but on the way back have a near death experience with a truck and feel the need to drive very cautiously, slowly and stop to recharge more!! Ah, it's me making light of a near catastrophe - some things never change! We're fine but it was genuinely a close call with a huge vehicle pulling out directly in front of us and the whole screeching brakes and burning rubber scenario.

You've got to love the whole driving experience here though. It is normal to be driving along and have pedestrians walking in the road instead of pavement, have cars coming down the road on the wrong side towards you, mopeds and bikes zipping up the inside of you and cars forming up to five lanes in a road marked for 2 or 3 lanes. Pedestrians genuinely step out in front of cars assuming they have the right of way and the actual road rules about having the right of way is nothing like England so if you are coming out of a minor road onto a major road but you are on the right of oncoming traffic you can just pull straight out. Of course they keep you on your toes by sometimes pulling out and sometimes not.

We've both been rather under the weather with a cold and sore throat but while I am almost back to full health, Johanne is feeling really lousy with a chest infection now :(

Have been enjoying the bird life here. Also emailing my parents to gloat has been good! I've seen crested larks, egrets, flamingoes, bulbuls and a hoopoe! Tow of these are what my folks call 'lifers' as I've not seen them before.

This week I have started teaching English as a foreign language! After the courses and training I finally have a girl who wants to come for three hours a week. This is great news as it means I am a lot busier and am enjoying lesson prep and teaching again. It pays just under £7 a week but I'm enjoying it for practice sake rather than to make anything.

Today is crazy weather! The wind is up and sand is causing a kind of mist that blurs the edges of everything, whips into your face and eyes. Walking home from my language class, I could feel the grit of sand between my teeth and I was glad to have my sunglasses on. The sky which is normally blue is a dull sandy/grey and the shutters all over the apartment block are rattling.

Language continues to go well. I am learning lots of good vocabulary and I am trying to learn some of the script. This is going to be a slow process. I've heard, and it makes sense, that students who learn to read and write the Arabic script can make much better progress in the long run so although it is slow now, I think it's the way forward. Of course being able to identify the letters in a word doesn't mean you know what it means or that it's even in the same dialect as the one you're learning! Did I mention the letters form different shapes if they are at the beginning, middle or end of a word?!

I have plans for this weekend to go down to Boujdour with my local friend to surprise her mum. I will stay overnight and try and practice as much of my language as I can although they both speak French so it might be difficult to break out of that.

Food, drink. Did I mention food?

Have gotten to meet a good few people here. Friends of friends who quickly become friends. We do lots of going out in the evening to visit people and enjoy hospitality. The routine for local people here seems to be to have you round about 5 and serve you 'atey' (tea) and bread. The tea has a whole complicated ceremony with actions that don't have an english translation - as I've discovered when I was set homework around tea vocabulary! They wash the tea leaves first then brew in a pot for quite a while so you can talk and talk. The tea is poured into a 'kes' (glass) from a great height to cool the liquid down. That kes is then often poured from one glass into another to cool it down more before it is put back in the pot! Ah, and of course there is the sugar. I am getting Jo to get mine poured pre-sugar because I don't want an early onset of diabetes. They seriously put in BRICKS of the stuff. It sets your teeth on edge just watching! The bread is phenomenal. They have batbot bread which is a flat round bread that is good on its own or with butter and anther flat, oily bread that I can't remember the name of right now. So good. So fattening. Men here like their women large. Seriously.

Had an interesting conversation with a guy about learning Arabic who said that those who work at figuring out the script do much better long term. I guess this makes perfect sense so I'm trying to get the hang of some of the writing. It's only 28 or so characters and little kids are taught the alphabet so how difficult can it be?? I'm overlooking the fact that each letter can be written three different ways depending on whether it is at the start, middle or end of a word. I'll be fluent before long, I'm quite sure!

Have been sampling a quite staggering amount of home and shop baked desserts. There have been three birthdays this week, a general meeting up of friends twice and probably other things my guilt is blocking out! Honourable mentions go out specifically to a friends cinnamon buns that were PHENOMENAL and my tarte aux poires which did not fail to impress!

Had an evening strolling along the beach with friends. The grown ups walked and talked. I jumped across the dried, seaweed-covered rocks looking at rock pools and shells with the 11 year old!

Language lessons are going a bomb. I can very slowly and 'with great concentration sometimes manage...' (NOT going to finish that Arrested Development quote T&G!!) ... give directions, name places round town, greet people, count to 11 (?), say the alphabet and give a little information about myself. I'm really enjoying it and the words that even a few days ago I thought I would never learn are beginning to stick.

All for now!

Pictures

(L)A typical meal with local friends; bread, oil, salt, tea.

(R)A snap from the souk

(L) Always love rustic doorways

(R) A typical street scene with a 'box shop' as I'm calling them, next door to a home with the washing hanging out on the street

Tuesday

Jo drove me to my class again this morning but this time I drew a map as we went so I could retrace my steps afterwards. I was expecting to go over what we had looked at yesterday so had been frantically repeating Kem andak minam? Shnoo li zain andak? - How old are you? What do you like? We didn't look at them so I guess I have some extra time to try and lodge them in the ole brain.

Today's class provided me with two opportunities today to speak that I wouldn't have managed otherwise. I went to Las Dunas again by myself and this time I ordered my coffee in Hassaniya! Ridiculously chuffed at such a simple act. Later in the day I needed to spell my name to someone and I managed three of the four letters that make up 'Joy' in Arabic.

I ran into someone on the street today that I knew. It was a great little moment to see someone in a foreign town that I recognised, could speak to and embrace. A little thing you'd accept as a nice but normal occurence back home felt like an encouragement and reminder that I'm not on my own here.

I found my way to and around the market, drawing my map as I went. Bought the ingredients for tabbouleh and haggled a pair of shades down from 30 dh to an impressive£1.86 equivalent! If you've not been to a North African market before, imagine it like this; stalls piled high with fruit and vegetables like in England. Now shove them all together so you can just get by each one, add shoppers who stare at you, throw in flies and suspect smells, add litter, dirt, piles of sand and market stall holders calling out to you to try and get your attention because you're white and therefore fabulously rich (or so they think), intersperse vegetables with dirty, brick rooms full of chickens, stalls with whole goats hung upside down, most of the meat stripped off but with the heads still hanging intact with fur. Now if you can, pluck up the courage to pick something up from a stall. You're given a bowl to put in what you want and told how amazing the rather tired looking tomatoes are and how much do you want, a kilo? Grab some herbs and wince thinking you're going to be ripped off because you're white. End up paying pennies for everything you've bought. Leave surprised that some of the women smiled back at you and even spoke to you. Feel relieved the guy who followed you saying; 'Bonjour. Hello. Hola...' finally understood 'DEGAGE' (shove off in French) and left you alone.

Slept for a couple of hours then had a quiet evening watching Jo's 'Gilmore Girls', which isn't my thing but is an easy distraction, then several episodes of Arrested Development.

Monday

Johanne dropped me off at the language school today where I had mistakenly been signed up for Derija lessons rather than Hassaniya but it was quickly sorted out. I had the same teacher as when I was here two years ago and had taken a one hour lesson. We covered how to ask and answer questions about our name, place we are from, languages we speak, things we like, if we are married, what we do for a job and how old we are. Zain andi safar - I like to travel! After ten minutes, the board was covered with Arabic script that I tried to copy for a while but I couldn't keep up, so resorted to writing what I could hear.

I walked to Las Dunas cafe and haltingly ordered coffee, I think in French..? Jo joined me soon after and we ended up having a drink and a pastry each. I generously paid the £1.76 Dhiram equivalent! The weather was absolutely perfect; sunshine, very warm (even though someone Johanne knows stopped her on the way home to ask how she was coping with the cold!) and a gentle breeze.

I spent a good while trying to remember the phrases from this morning's class; Inta men mneyn? Shuny kha dimtek? - Where are you from? What is your job?

Spent a good 20 minutes tracing a map of Laayoune from Google Maps (roads, no street names or landmarks) and went out to orientate myself. It was going brilliantly until I got to the main road that wasn't there! I soon realised I was totally lost. Men were staring at me all the time even though I was wearing a high cut, long-sleeved top. I didn't want to make it obvious I had a map in my hand and there was nowhere to stop and gather my thoughts so I resorted to turning on data roaming, found to my horror that it was already on and located myself in the right direction.

Some time after 5 we went out visiting with one of the cakes left over from the previous night that we couldn't possibly manage. It was a really special time and I felt genuinely blessed to be so thoroughly accepted and welcomed into someone else's home. Heartfelt words were shared. They invited us to stay for dinner and we said yes. It was 9:30 at the time but we didn't finish eating until close to midnight at which point Jo and I were dead on our feet!