Today we started the day by checking out of our riad and leaving the medina! It's interesting because when you're in the medina, it's like you're in another world and you get to experience Marrakesh how it traditionally is. However, the second your leave the medina walls, you're in a normal, modernish city. There are Starbucks, McDonalds, cars, congested streets, and people going to and from work. As a tourist, I don't really see why you would want to spend much time outside of the medina as it is a city but not a particularly interesting one. Anyways, today we made a pit stop before going to the airport. We took a Moroccan cooking class at the Amal Women's Training Center. This place is really cool! It is a training center to help disenfranchised women (like single mothers) train for jobs in the hospitality/hotel industry by teaching them how to cook, be a waitress, clean, etc. so they can get a job in a local riad. The women practice cooking and they sell the food to local schools for their lunch and there's even a restaurant in the city that allow the women to practice what they're learning. We didn't get a chance to go to the restaurant but by taking a cooking class here, the profits offset the costs to run the place. It was originally started by a Swiss non-profit who loaned the Amal Center money to get them up and running. Fortunately, the loan was paid back in full and now they're a self-sustaining center.
The cooking class wasn't supposed to start until later but since we had a flight to catch, I was a little concerned about time. Luckily, the instructor was super nice and willing to accommodate us and basically gave the two of us a private class before everyone else got there. We didn't get many pictures of the process as soon we had raw chicken hands! It was super fun though and we made a chicken tagine. We cooked it over the hot coals and made sure to check on it and blow air on it as needed since the tagine is kind of like a finicky crock pot! While we waited for it to cook, I practiced my Moroccan tea pouring skills and we relaxed in their garden.
According to the Moroccans, the higher the pour, the better the tea. Something about the bubbles. :)
After that, we headed to the airport to go back to Paris! The vacation continues!
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