July 5, 2006

My brother and his wife, Ron and Laurie, along with their five daughters, foster daughter, and a girl helping them for a month - welcomed us to Rabat on July 5, 2006. How fantastic to see them all!

It was with a rather sinking feeling that we watched the conveyer belt stop... with not one piece of our luggage retrieved! I remember thinking that if I had known we would end up with no luggage, I could have saved all that shopping and packing! Thankfully, it all came in the next day.

Being only a day after July 4 and Ron's birthday, he needed his American fix...so our first meal in Morocco was at Pizza Hut!

The first thing we noticed about Rabat was how modern everything is - including the very fancy mall we visited. We were surprised to see quite a few women wearing tight pants and halter tops - too bad I left mine at home :). There is tremendous variety in what the women wear here - outfits I just mentioned (though no shorts), more conservative western clothing, capris, flowing skits, long tops, matching loose pants and flowing shirts resembling traditional Pakistani/Indian clothing, jalabas (full-covering tunics) with or without tightly-wrapped head scarves, and a few head-to-toe veils showing only the eyes.