(I just posted a bunch of pictures of Seville, Fes, Rabat, and Marrakesh, and a blog about Fes--don't miss 'em.)

Along our voyage I have gotten stranger and stranger. We started off relatively familiar, but even in Italy Scott commented on how the waiters walk right up to unsuspecting tourists, offering menus and suggesting we take a seat--a practice totally familiar to me, but unbelievable to most Americans. Then in Spain I tackled a new language and learned to push my way to the front of a tapas bar. But Latin languages and European customes are nothing compared to crawling my way through reading Arabic words or sweating my way through crowded medinas while wearing a djellaba, peering at the compass every few meters and avoiding the "encouragement" of carpet salesmen, fruit vendors, and tour guides.

I am now in a land where they call a hole in the ground a toilet, and where you can get fresh squeezed orange juice from any street stall but there is not a lemonade in sight. While I am in Morocco I am constantly humbled by eight year olds who speak French fluently, and by the hospitality and solidarity of everyone we meet.

I should have known as we crossed the border from Spanish-owned Morocco into this country that we had entered another world. As we were funnelled past the housewives buying duty free goods, Scott and I looked around and realized we had no idea what we were doing. We were tossed around between a few official looking people asking for our passports, and finally thrown out into the glaring sun in front of a couple dozen taxis all wanting our fair.

We've learned a lot since that frightening moment two weeks ago, but we're still frazzled, and we're still very strange.