For the Beauty of the Earth

Home sweet home

Sorry the blogging didn't work very well. The computer we had did not have very good access to the Internet and pictures were difficult to upload so I will put it all together when we get home. We are in JFK waiting 7 hours for our flight home.

Needless to say our trip was facinating and quite the adventure and education.

I'll work on tthe blog this weekend. Glad to be on American. soil again. :-)

Cave of Hercules

So somewhere along the way I picked up a cold I have been miserable the last day and a half but I am starting to come out of it but mixed with the heat, ugh! Yesterday we hung out close to home in the morning and then in the afternoon we went to see Soufaine's parent's new house that they are building. It is very beautiful. Houses in Morocco are done much differently than in America; the garage is on the bottom and the living area is on top of the garage. Like america they do not use their garage for a car :) but usually put in some kind of investment like a sandwich shop, a cyber cafe, or a small grocery store.
In the evening we piled some 8 people in the car (would remind you of a mary poppins carpet bag) and took a nice drive around the coast and through the heavily forrested hills above Tangier. We went to the Cave of Hercules, right across from gibrator. It is said to be the place where Herculese parted the continents of africa and europe, and the gates through which you must pass to find Atlantis. the caves were beautiful, but had been turned into one huge gift shop. you had to pay an entrance fee in order to buy souviners!
Because of the heat, there are cafes everywhere! the joke about Tangier is that it is a city made up of cafes, between one cafe and another cafe...is a CAFE!!! this one at the caves of Herculese there was a cafe right on the rocks that fallinto the ocean. The spray kept you cool and the waitor brought us grilled sardines right from the fishermen's nets who were casting off the rocks we sat on.
Friday is the holy day, and they serve a big lunch of couscous. it was a HUGE dish and served beautifully, I was too sick to eat!!! but every one enjoyed it..being the national dish of morocco i am sure it was tasty. after returning home from the cave and having stopped at many view points to look at spain across the straight we relaxed around the living room table and dinner was served at 12 pm!!!! family came down from upstairs and it was a boisterous affair!

Rockin the Kasbah

Today we went to the Kasbah which is the old fortress of Tanger We went to a museum inside the Kasbah which displayed alot of very old artifacts some dating back to 400 years before Christ There were biblical artifacts such as personal lamps (such as in the story of the ten virgins) water cisturns and other things It was amazing to see all of these things I have found that much of the Morocco culture is recognizable with things within the Latter Day Saints church It all is based on Biblical culture and as I learn much about the Muslim culture I understand its roots Very fasinating (the keyboard is different here so I am having trouble with puncuation but the poor spelling is operator error ) Soufaines family are very kind They treat us like King and Queen They will not let us help in the kitchen with cooking or cleaning They keep very different hours here We dont eat dinner until eleven at night go to bed at one and sleep until ten or eleven It is very hot in the day and so we h

Tuesday it must be Madrid

We got to Madrid early thus morning and watched the city wake up and come alive. We are not sure how long we have been up now but by my best calculations we are coming up on 24 hours without any more than a cat nap on the plane, on the lawn next to the Prada museum ( until they turned on the sprinklers) and every bench we find between sights. The Prada museum was very interesting. Some of the paintings dated back to the mid 1500's and there were some sculptures from 100 A.C. Madrid is a very pretty city, which is rich in wonderful archetiture.


Len got interviewed on the street for a local tv station about his thoughts about the way the Spanish people use hand gestures. There are beautiful fountain everywhere. Also I feel right at home with many, many scotters everywhere.


We leave for Morocco at 10:00 tonight and arrive there tomorrow at 1:00 am. Hopefully there will be a bed waiting for us in Tangier.

Day one: New York

We went through security in Portland which proved to be the first adventure ( at least for Len). He went through and was called back because he "beeped". He searched his pockets again and turned up nothing so they pulled him aside and padded him down. Lost in one of Len's many cargo pants pockets was a spare set of reading glasses. That pair made three pairs; "I wanted toake sure you had a pair also,", Len explained. :-)

In NY Kennedy airport now so the trip has begun. We take off for Madrid in an hour and a half.

History of our trip

Tomorrow we leave for Morocco, Africa. Our daughter Sarah has always had a love of the middle east and when she was 21 or so she spent about 9 months living in Cassablanca. She came back to the states and began school studying Arabic (which she had begun to get a grasp of while in Morocco). She studied at PSU for a year and a half and then was given a scholarship to study in Tetouan Morocco. In January 2009 Sarah left for Morocco and within a month had met Soufaine and within a very short time after that was engaged to be married. Sarah invited us over for the wedding and we began to plan our trip. Several weeks before the appointed time for us to travel to Morocco, Sarah called while I was at work and announced that Soufaine and her had married. So......the trip now is to go meet our new in laws. :-) We leave at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow morning for an adventure of a life time!!!