Friday Family Day, Internet Issues

Posted on by Lea Ann Reynolds
We found out that Friday is called Family day, similar to our Sunday afternoon gatherings with the family after our Church service. The families gather, children have the afternoon off school and many businesses don’t open until the afternoon. Many people that normally are walking along the boardwalk by the beach were not around.

Taking a break on the beach.

Mostly children were on the beaches. Its is very quiet with the exception of the Muslim prayers. The midday prayer is different, its longer and more than one person is performing the prayer over the speaker system. 


Futball game

Afterward the family heads home for a bowl of couscous.  To start the process, before the midday prayer service, while the men traditionally head for the hammam (bath house for cleansing) the women are home preparing the couscous. They don’t use the instant couscous like us westerners. This takes many hours to prepare.

The couscous starts with 7 vegetables – eggplant, zucchini, carrots, parsnips, pumpkin, tomato and cabbage. It takes about two hours for the vegetables, couscous and other herbs and spices to cook. Sometimes during the process, the couscous is taken out of the pot and rolled a few times, oil and water may be added and then put back in the pot.

A local Moroccan band headed to their next gig!

They eat the couscous with their hands by rolling it into balls.  Right hand to be exact. The left hand is said to be unclean. They drink mint tea with the meal. We were also warned that some restaurants may only serve couscous on Sundays because it is such a strong tradition. No problem. We eat most of our meals at home. 


Always someone on the beach selling goods

We had a snafu with our Internet. Apparently 200 dirham ($20 USD) doesn’t go very far when downloading movies or surfing the web. We were told by our homeowner when we arrived that the amount would be all we would need for a couple of weeks. It only lasted 4 days max. Today we bought 50 dirham more.

Local Moroccan boys wanted me to take their picture. I was set for sunsets so its not he best picture but I was excited to get to take it!

They would only allow us to purchase that amount for some reason. The shop owners here speak very little English so its hard to get a reason why and Chuck needs to know why. He didn’t get his answer. We were hoping the problem was with the Internet and not the fact we used it up so quickly.

This was looking to the far left of the sun just before the color changes

After we reloaded the sim card and got back home, it was working again. So, we will limit our downloads and streaming to a more manageable amount. We also found the hotel next door to us has open wifi so we downloaded a few 30 minute shows while attached to their wifi. 



Each day we walk, we find these kids sitting by our apartment building. At first we thought they were just hanging out during lunch or after school when actually they were using the hotels free wifi. We decided to check it and success! We will do this once or twice a day to save a little money.

A woman walking her baby just before sunset. The umbrella was a cute touch.

We have a VPN so that’s our added security when connecting to open wifi’s such as this. 


Our day ended with people watching on the beach and the gorgeous sunset was magical! God can really put on a show!



May God bless you always!

Chuck & Lea Ann

Leave a comment