Ramadan

Ramadan has been...interesting so far. It's really strange to walk into a town and to see most of the businesses, which are largely cafes and restaurants, closed. For a culture that puts a lot of emphasis on food and socializing in cafes, Ramadan must be pretty rough. I'm not even fasting and it's been hard. The hours that the cafeteria is open have been reduced, and so I keep missing meals, and even the cafe is closed during the day. An additional problem is that you can't go to F'tor without buying tickets a day in advance, so if you miss lunch, there isn't anything to eat until 9 pm. I can't imagine not drinking anything all day, though. I have no idea how the Moroccan students do it.


Incidentally, I found a recipe for harcha, the semolina cake things that look like english muffins. http://www.ochef.com/r150.htm
They're really popular in the Atlas mountain region, especially, and are usually served with butter.

To survive Ramadan, WPI people have been going out to eat a lot. People have been going to the restaurant in the park, which apparently has "Real Pizza", or pizza that tastes more like the pizza we're used to.I particularly like The Cedres Cafe, next to the Bank Populaire. It has a big TV that is always on the Al-Jazera sports channel, so there's always tons of old Moroccan men watching a drinking coffee. The server, and I mean THE server, as we've been there a bunch of times and it's always the same guy, doesn't speak English at all, so we try to ask questions in rudimentary French. It gets kind of confusing, but we always leave him a big tip for the annoyance. They have these olives that are covered in some sort of red, slightly spicy marinade. At first I thought it was something called Khlii, but then I looked it up and Khlii is actually sun-dried beef. Did I mention it's incredibly cheap? I think that might be the best part. Last time I went, Carly, Austin and I had dinner and two drinks each for less that $12 with tip.

This food-filled entry brought to you by the fact that I haven't eaten anything in 18 hours, and dinner is 4 hours away.