SUCESS! somehow I stumbled across an internet cafe that has american keyboards. no idea how. guess it's the simple things in life...
So I am in essouira now and the weather is AWESOME. We are talking sun, of course, but with the wind it's almost a little chilly (I did say almost...but still). I was a little disappointed that my hotel was so far from the center of town (at first) but as it turns out i am about a 20 minute walk away, and it's all along the beach. so I did that this afternoon and it was pretty much perfect. I really like this town.
The rest of yesterday was pretty interesting too-after the guy at that internet cafe DID ask me down (and I turned him down because that was the right thing to do. atleast in my mind, that was the right thing to do...when a really cute guy with no shirt-becasue of the weather, i guess-asks you out and you haven't really spoken to him at ALL and his french is broken at best and you're travelling alone and his intentions are...questionable...and you're leaving town the next day you turn him down. right. right??!!! oh I need some sort of confirmation here...) Then I went to the pottery souq and found myself swept into an extended conversation in arabic with one of the store owners, with the guy who cleans the streets coming over to listen in...I'm kind of my own walking, talking form of entertainment. bought too much pottery (afraid it's all going to break...but it's so pretty!) and did more of the requisiste wandering...stared at the sunburned German tourgroups and checked out the rest of the market. found a great place for dinner that fries a bunch of random fresh fish, throws it on a plate, adds salad and a sauce and voila...$5 dinner. have been to places like that in Casa too...just fun. I never really know what I'm eating, of course, but it's all good.
Took the bus to essouira this morning and it was a lot less sketchy than I thought it would be. infact, it was clean and sort of airconditioned and just..reasonable. I spent the whole time staring out the window at...well, empty field and rolling sandy hills, but it was a very cool landscape. In my mind.
Since then, I have just been exploring essouira. the place kind of smells like patchouli-especially in the market. mostly I was just checking it out-there are a lot of artists here (as there were in safi, but this place is WAY more tourist-y) so I was just kind of...gaping...at everything. I found a really nice guy who makes small metal sculptures from old bike gears and other random scraps of metal that are REALLY neat, so I'm thinking that's going to be my essaouira souvenir...of course everywhere you go there are piles of wooden boxes and barettes and figurines, etc...you can find them all over morocco, but apparently they come from here!
I have been excercising ye ol'arabic muscle here a lot more (as opposed to the french I stick with in casa) and it's always fun to watch people's reactions. I used it in a store and the little boy helping his father(?) behind the counter giggled at me as he corrected my pronunciation...he was so proud to instruct me. it was really cute!

gotta go. been using this internet WAY too long and there are people waiting...oh to be connected to the world.