The Hammam

Ok so I know many of you guys now know that I don't bathe daily here. (gasp!) ewww I know, but when hot water does not come out of taps, its snowing outside and central heating is nonexistent, it really is quite painful to bucket bathe. Its a great thing then that Morocco has an awesome alternative. This alternative is called the hammam. Its one of the things that I love most about this country and actually makes me feel a hundred times cleaner then a bath or shower in the states. Im going to try to explain how it works. Its rather difficult so bear with me.
First of all you have to have a couple hours of free time to really take advantage of it well. Most hammams are similar, so you walk into a large changing room where everyone undresses except for their underwear (of course girls and boys have separate hammams!). There is usually an attendant behind a counter who watches our possessions (which are stored in cubby holes) and whom we pay (roughly about a dollar). We then take our 2 large buckets and all our bathing stuff (soap, etc) into the hot rooms. There are usually 3 rooms than get increasingly hotter the further you travel in. My experience has been that the only hot water taps are in the hottest room, so I always go there first. I fill my buckets with half scalding hot water and then go to the cold water taps in the other rooms to add cold water to them. Everyone chooses a spot to sit in according to hot they can handle the hammam. Most people stay in the super hot room for about 30 minutes and then move to the medium one for the remainder of their session. These rooms are like saunas. They are steamy and hot and most make one sweat instantly.
Once I've got my water I set it in front of my mat and begin applying a goopy brown soap called "sabon beldi." After a few minutes I rinse that off and start scrubbing with my hammam scrubby(ill put up a photo later). Because of the steam and hot water the pores are nice and open and the skin is nice and soft. After a while the scrubing shows some results. My skin literally starts coming off! I know it sounds gross but really its just exfoliating and super healthy for the skin. I usually have someone scrub my back too. Its awesome. Anyways I do this for about and hour and a half, so my skin gets quite red and it sometimes looks like I have rug burns haha. But its totally worth it.
After getting good and clean I go back out to the changing room, dry off and put some nice clean clothes on. The hammam is really the best part of winter haha. Sometimes I can hardly breathe from how hot it gets in there!