Last night, all the housemates (and Sarah) went to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant called Pinchos in Agdel because Defne is going back home to Turkey today. She has been here for 6 months and was trying to learn Arabic, but felt like she wasn't accomplishing anything and decided to move on and do something else. I'm amazed at how free-spirited and spontaneous everyone I've met here is. A lot of them seem to be controlled by their passions, which would be an amazing way to live. They have already seen and experienced more things than I can hope to in my entire life. The more time I spend here and the more people I talk to, stories I hear, the more I just want to travel around the world and live in different places. There is so much to be seen and not enough time... it's really overwhelming. I have heard more amazing stories and had more interesting discussions about culture and religion in the past week than I have in my entire life. It just makes me realize how much is really out there.

After dinner, we got ice cream and then came back to the house and talked for hours about the cultural differences of dating. Nadia says in Singapour, you would never date someone who you couldn't see yourself marrying because it is a waste of time. Olga says that, it's important to date a lot because it's experience and you learn more about yourself and what you are looking for by dating. However, I feel like it's so hard to find a really good guy, and it seems to be something about the american male mentality. I can't even find someone worth dating... I can't even imagine looking for someone worth marrying right now!

Olga told us about how, here in Morocco, it's so important for women to be virgins until marriage, that a lot of girls here lie and pretend to be even if they are not. Her friend's father is a gynocologist here and he told her a story of a young girl who broke her hymen while playing sports, which is very easy to do. She came to the hospital bleeding and ashamed, and didn't want to say anything. She had tried to sew it back together by herself because she was engaged to be married and her fiancé said that if her found out on the night of their marriage that she wasn't a virgin, he would kill her. That's definitely an extreme case, but it says something about the culture. Abortion is also apparently huge here, even though it's completely illegal.

Today, we're taking the train to Marrakesh and then going on a 3 day tour with Sahara Expeditions to the desert!