From Jake:

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I am starting to get some sassy comments about not writing up here enough. Well, I have no excuse, so today I will give you a little, then the next some more, and see where things go from there. Can't give you too much at once, now can I?


So a couple of weeks ago Jess and I traveled just a few hours away to Meknes, one of the old Imperial Cities, just to check things out and get away for a bit. This is a view of the concubine pool that a king had built to keep his ol' ladies occupied. I guess when you have 1,000 wives, you can't keep em all busy at the same time, so he had this pool built and gave them little boats to paddle around in. Don't worry, I am taking notes from history...


We also had time to visit the tomb of one of the famous dead people in Morocco. This is as close as we could go to the actual burial site since we are not Muslims. Those who are not followers of Islam are not allowed to enter most cemeteries and burial sites. The more I think about it and see it, burial sites for the dead, whether toms, mausoleums, headstones, whatever they may be, just seem like a stupid idea. I have a great Wendell Berry poem about a mad farmer in a cemetery that I will post tomorrow. Don't worry, there is a connection.


Jess and I nearly getting swindled by the nicest swindlers one could ever hope to meet. They were carpet salesmen that had selling tactics like I had never seen. They almost had us... tricksters.



Jess and I, though we love them dearly, decided to retire the wooden wedding bands to special occasions and things. We were just having to be a little too careful with them all the time. Soooo, instead we found this guy with an awesome mustache who hand pounds metals in a damascene style into vases and all kinds of jewelry. Well, we got new rings from him. You can see them a little in this photo, and we will put up another better photo later. (Side note: it is common here for men to hold hands and to kiss in greeting one another. I know this guys mustache is rad because he kissed me with it. Wow, never had a moustache-kiss before. Kinda' freaked me out a bit...)