Joining a Tour

I'd been travelling solo for 11 days when I arrived in Casablanca and joined a group tour which visits the highlights of Morocco. There was a part of me that was very tired of sorting everything out on my own and largely eating meals alone. I'd found myself nearly counting the days until I'd have a built in family. Initially I was very happy. Suddenly I had 15 new dinner mates and no longer had to sort out hotels, activities or meals! My honeymoon lasted about a day and a half and then I started wanting to be free to wander. I found myself feeling uncomfortably different and counting the days until it would end. The worst was finding my very independent self fed through the Moroccan tourist culture with a multiple course traditional dinner, live music and belly dancers. The following day we were taken on an arts tour where we were taken to a series of shops where our guide would receive a commission on our purchases. The shops had overpriced goods--it made me so uncomfortable to see so many of my travel mates blowing wads of diram on things they might have purchased in a local market for a third of the price. And then I felt like a stingy-scrooge for barely buying a thing.