The End

It's August 1 as I'm writing this post. It's an interesting date, marking the end of one month and the beginning of another, but also a few endings and beginnings for me.

Today marked the end of my "boot camp" experience. I felt surprisingly sad as I walked out of the clinic building this afternoon. Most of my classmates will be leaving town tomorrow (I'll leave Friday), and while for weeks I couldn't wait for it to be over, now I feel like the end has come too soon.

The flipside is that this marks the beginning of the second half of my graduate career in speech-language pathology. I have completed a milestone that I was waiting nearly two years for. I am much more able to imagine myself as a speech-language pathologist someday. Maybe someday relatively soon. And that feels pretty good.

This week also marks the official end of my Moroccan adventure. This week, T accepted a job at a community college in Maryland. Next Wednesday, I will pick him up at the airport in Omaha, and soon after that--if all goes as we plan--we will be driving out to Maryland to start the next chapter in our lives. So there's another beginning.

And with the end of my time in Morocco comes the end of Cornfields to Casbahs. I think I need to take a break from blogging during this time of transition in my life. If I find, after moving to Maryland, that my life is eventful enough to support continued blogging, I'll start a new blog, and I'll post a link to it on this blog for you, my seven faithful readers.

In the meantime, thanks for reading. Thanks for your support and for (occasionally) sharing your lives with me.

All the best, friends.

An hour on the trails at Lost River Cave

The crowd I've been hanging with

On risk-taking

I have been thinking a lot lately about risks. This is related to the very uncertain situation in which I find myself. In a nutshell, it is this: I am in the United States without a plane ticket to Morocco, and my husband is in Morocco without a plane ticket to the United States. He could buy a one-way ticket and bring all of our stuff with him to the U.S., but if he doesn't get a job offer, he'll have to buy two more one-way tickets, and we'll have to move all of our stuff back to Morocco. He could buy a two-way ticket and come here without our stuff, but then if he gets a job offer, he'll have to go back to Morocco, get our stuff, and then come back here and then move to our new (but still hypothetical) home.

Anything we do at this point involves risk, and we are not big risk-takers. The last big risk we took (and I'm still amazed we were ever able to make the decision to do this) was over two years ago when I quit my job without either of us having a job lined up. Soon after, T was offered the position in Morocco, and things turned out okay. But we were different then, and the economy was different then. I want to think that he could buy a one-way ticket and pack up our belongings and come here--now. That's what I want because I miss him terribly and because I'm ready to move on from Morocco. The universe doesn't owe us anything, though, and there's no reason to assume that one or both of us could find gainful employment here. If we stay in Morocco, we have an income, but I will stop making progress toward my new career. If we come here, we might not have an income, and T would stop making progress in his career.

It makes me think a lot about this poem. Choosing a path is always a risk, but we must choose nevertheless.

Pictures without words

...Because I don't have time, and because my voice-to-text program seems to have quit working.

Dad at Arrow Rock State Historic Site, Missouri

Japanese Garden at Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis

Part of the Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Birds inside the "Climatron" at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Pineapples in the Climatron

More birds...I like birds...

Corpse flower

Greenhouse from the 1800s (somewhat remodeled, I'm assuming)

Hummingbird at Harmonie State Park, Indiana

Turtle at at Harmonie State Park, Indiana

Recent finds at the Bowling Green Farmers' Market

With several classmates after our tour of Mammoth Cave

Mammoth Cave photos are courtesy of my classmate Eve...

 

Ranger Rick...seriously!

On celebrating the Fourth of July in America

There are a lot of things I've wanted to write about over the last week and a half, but time is really getting away from me. So I guess I'll just start with the present: the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the United States of America.

The day isn't over yet, but my celebration of it is. And today I had the most traditional celebration that I can remember for years. It involved hot dogs and hamburgers and chips and potato salad and pie as well as people wearing red, white, and blue.

I celebrated the day with several members of my "cohort" here in Kentucky. It was quite different from my slightly ironic Fourth of July celebration last year, when I went out for hamburgers in Ifrane with a group of fellow Americans (although I didn't have a hamburger, of course).

We were all expatriates there. Here, I don't know what I am. I am trying to move back to the United States, but it's more because I want to find out whether or not I still want to live here than because I know I want to live here.

I'm lucky to have a friendly and inclusive group of classmates, but the truth is that I often feel left out, or out of place with them. I am experiencing more disorientation and culture shock than I thought could be possible after only two years of living overseas.

I am experiencing this at every level. Grocery shopping takes me forever. I'm shocked by the lack of pedestrians or bicyclists in this town (and I don't think it's just because the temperature has been in the 100s [Fahrenheit] over the last few days). I'm irritated by the number of rules related to safety (today the pool in my hotel is closed because the pH is off). I'm saddened by the ridiculous political divisions. I'm angered by the unnecessary costs of healthcare. I'm disgusted by all the unhealthy food. I'm bored by conversations about smelly armpits and leg hair. I don't know what this Magic Mike movie is, and I don't know when "frozen yogurt" became "fro yo.” I don't know when everyone in the country got a smart phone and a GPS and stopped being able to read maps.

I’m left now with a lot of open-ended questions and very little time to reflect on them (which is another disorienting aspect of being here). So: situation normal.

Happy Independence Day, everyone. May you be free to discover and celebrate your own definition of freedom.

On car breakdowns, father/daughter relationships, and being in Kentucky

There are a lot of things I didn't do that I should have done while I was in Nebraska. One thing I did, though, was spent time with my parents and with some of my friends. I only had one full day with my mom, and we spent that day doing things we don't normally do – like getting pedicures and shopping at the mall.

I didn't get nearly enough time with my mom, but I had a lot of time with my dad. In fact, weeks ago, we planned a camping road trip to get me from Nebraska to Bowling Green, Kentucky. (I'm here for five weeks doing a clinical internship as part of my Master's work in speech-language pathology.)

This was the plan: we would take my dad's truck and his new camper, and we would luxuriously spread out the approximately 16 hours of driving over a period of four days, arriving in Bowling Green on Saturday night or on Sunday morning, with plenty of time to get me settled before Monday morning (today).

As I've written before, though, planning is best thought of as a hobby than anything else. It isn't to be taken too seriously. Just about two hours out on our adventure, not far from Hamburg, Iowa, the engine of my dad's truck suddenly and quite seriously overheated. We got the truck and camper to the auto repair shop in Hamburg (the business name is "Risky Business"). Not long after that, it was clear that the truck wasn't gonna go anywhere unless it was pulled by a tow truck.

I have a tendency – or, at least, I used to have a tendency – to freak out in situations like that. Maybe it was the element of surprise (as my dad said, the truck was the one thing he wasn't worried about), maybe it was the stabilizing presence of my father, or maybe it was just the result of enough years of experience with things not going as planned, but I felt pretty calm at the same time that I genuinely had no idea how I was going to get to Kentucky.

We had the camper set up in Hamburg, but we decided that wouldn't be a very exciting camping location, and staying there wasn't going to get us any closer to Kentucky, so we had somebody tow the truck and take us back to my parents' house. It was sort of like starting over on a video game but with a pretty severe penalty (specifically, we now had no vehicle to get us to Kentucky and no obvious way to go camping).

I offered to try to buy a last-minute plane ticket, but my father, who had worked hard all week in preparation for his vacation, persevered with his dream. He promptly rented a van, and we loaded up all the supplies we could think of for car/tent camping.

I might write later about the actual camping, but the places we went to and the sights that we saw were really secondary to the experience for me. The truly unique part of the trip was having all of that time with my father. I felt that a camping trip of a father and his 33-year-old daughter was something unusual.

I'm writing about this on my blog because one of the things I feel I have gained during my time overseas is a deeper appreciation for and connection to my family, especially my parents. We talk about almost everything in my family, and while at times this can feel like an invasion of privacy, ultimately I am thankful for the closeness and openness we have with each other.

I'm also amazed by my father's dedication to the three women in his life. I realized after we got to Bowling Green that he has always been there when my sister and I have gone off to school (and in case you're wondering, between the two of us, we have now moved to a total of five different schools in five different states).

My dad was pretty exhausted by the time we got here on Saturday, so he stuck around on Saturday and Sunday nights and of course continue to help me by driving me around town to get groceries and other supplies. He was still here when I left this morning for my first day of "boot camp," and when I came back to my room late this afternoon, it felt suddenly very quiet and very empty.

It was at four o'clock this afternoon that it finally hit me: I'm in Bowling Green, Kentucky for the next five weeks. It's a place I've never been to before, and I'm here to learn something entirely new and difficult. I don't have a car and am dependent on people I just met for transportation. My husband is on another continent, and I don't know exactly when or where I'll see him next.

It's one of those experiences I'm sure you've had before, where a big, "future" event (at least, for a long, long time, you thought of it as "future") crashes suddenly and jarringly into the present. This happened on my wedding day (in a good way) and on the day I left for Morocco (in a, well, somewhat anxiety-provoking way).

So here I am--by myself for an extended period of time for the first time in my adult life. Wish me luck.

The other one

This is the bird I have left. I'm still now sure how I feel about that...

On convenience

Posted from the cornfields...

I have been thinking of multiple alternative monikers for the United States during my week here, and one of those is "land of convenience." I was thinking of this as I ate my dinner this evening: a sweet potato (a.k.a. yam) with cheddar cheese. It didn't even take me five minutes to prepare this dinner.

First of all, the sweet potato was easy and convenient to obtain. I got it at a large grocery store in Omaha, but even the two little grocery stores here in David City sell them. I suppose it's possible that yams are sold in Morocco, but I've never seen them, and I'm guessing they would only be sold in Rabat and Casa, both several hours away from Ifrane. The cheddar cheese nearest to Ifrane is at the Label Vie in Meknes (an hour away), and it is so rarely purchased that one must check it over for mold before buying any. Some people in rural America may have to drive to the nearest city to get "specialty" groceries like chickpea flour, tempeh, or chard, but generally, in the U.S. these days, one can find just about any grocery item one wants.

And virtually every community in the U.S. has grocery stores and "super" stores (like Super Wal-Mart) that provide "one stop shopping," something that is definitely not the norm in Morocco. To buy everything you need in one shopping trip seems almost impossible in Morocco, but to do it, you would need to go to several different vendors at the marché, to Label Vie, to Marjane, to the bakery, etc.

Another aspect of the convenience of my meal was that I barely had to wash the sweet potato because it was so clean. In Morocco, when we buy foods that were grown in the ground, they look like they were grown in the ground! Those of us who buy and eat fresh food spend a surprisingly large amount of time just cleaning it, something that isn't necessary in the U.S.

I haven't had a microwave oven since moving to Morocco, so if I somehow found a sweet potato there and wanted to eat it, I'd have to plan at least an hour ahead so I could bake it. Here, I cooked my sweet potato in three minutes.

On making couscous with Hafida

Posted from the cornfields...

Hafida and me

Last Thursday, the day before I left Ifrane, Hafida showed me how to make couscous. I was initially stressed by the thought of adding "cook a big meal" to my to-do list for the day before leaving the country, but it turned out that, by the time we were ready to start cooking, my bags were packed and I had very little to do anyway.

Those of you who have cooked with this semolina product before may be wondering, "What's there to show you? You just add some boiling water to the couscous and let it soak up the water and then do whatever you want to do with it." That's what I thought before moving to Morocco. I quickly learned that I had been doing it wrong all along.

When Moroccans talk about "making couscous," they are talking about a complete dish that consists of seasoned, stewed vegetables (traditionally onions, turnips, carrots, pumpkin, zucchini, and cabbage, plus chickpeas) and (usually) meat served atop couscous that has been thrice steamed above the stew using a couscoussier. This method makes the couscous light and fluffy as well as flavorful, since it absorbs additional flavor from the stew.

Moroccan society, compared to society in the United States, is still very traditional, so virtually all Moroccan families have couscous as the large midday meal on Fridays. Couscous is prepared in a very particular way, too, and I was lucky that Hafida was willing (although not entirely happy) to 1) make a vegetarian version and 2) leave out the tomatoes so a friend of mine with a tomato allergy could join us for the meal.

We didn't talk a lot as we cooked, but I still enjoyed the time with Hafida, and I enjoyed learning from her. I thought about how she must have begun cooking couscous with her mother when she was a very little girl, and that if she had a daughter (she has only one child, a son), she would teach her daughter in the same way. I thought about my relationship with my own mother, and about the things I wish I had taken the opportunity to learn from her when I was a young girl. Living in Morocco has helped me to become more aware of both the reasons why I appreciate the flexible norms of my own culture and of the things that can be lost as a result of that flexibility.

Just as we were finished preparing the couscous, our friends Lynn and Karen stopped by. We convinced Hafida to stay and eat the meal with us. She helped me serve the couscous Moroccan style, on one large platter from which everyone could eat. It was a great way to spend my final afternoon in Ifrane.

T was there, too; he took the photo.

Soon after I got to Nebraska, I tried to prepare couscous for my parents. I tried not to make too many changes, but I left out the pumpkin and chickpeas and tried using vegetarian "chicken." Mom and Dad said it was fine, but I thought it wasn't remotely as good as the couscous I had made with Hafida. I think this is due only in part to my lack of experience preparing the dish. What contributed to the deliciousness of the couscous I made with Hafida was the newness of the experience as well as the companionship. My theory is that couscous cooked alone is not as tasty as couscous cooked with a family member or friend.

But at least I got to eat my couscous with family.

Mom, Dad, and Pierre, ready to try my couscous (served in the tagine I brought with me from Morocco)

Al Hoceima

This coming Friday will mark the beginning of what will be the longest separation T and I will have experienced during our 10 years of marriage thus far. And in celebration of those 10 years as well as in preparation for my upcoming departure from Morocco, we recently spent four days near the city of Al Hoceima, on the Mediterranean coast.


I made the following video as a keepsake of our weekend. You are welcome to watch it; just keep in mind that it is a little, you know, sappy or whatever.

A lesson

Sometimes I think of my nearly two years here as nothing but one big lesson.

The lesson is this: Make plans, but recognize that planning is just something to keep you busy, a hobby of sorts. Don't take your plans seriously. (As my housekeeper Hafida would say, "My God has a plan for you." Perhaps this is true, but if so, "her" God isn't letting me in on that plan at all.) Don't get attached (to plans, to friends, to the past or future, or to anything else). The idea that one can have control is an illusion, and attachment to that illusion brings nothing but unhappiness. (Funny that I should come to a Muslim country to learn a seemingly Buddhist lesson.)

This lesson has been driven home in a variety of ways, some of them quite painful, over the last couple of weeks, as if Morocco is afraid I might not "get it" before I head out on June 9--regardless of whether or not I'm coming back.

This morning, for example, T and I are sitting on our couch when we thought we'd be (scratch that--planned to be) halfway to Al Hoceima for a four-day vacation in honor of our June 1 tenth wedding anniversary (and because we have just a few more days together before I leave for at least two months).

Planning this trip has been fairly typical; for example, even yesterday, we were still trying to confirm our car rental. We asked the guy to bring the car to us this morning at 8:30, hoping that meant we'd have it by 10. He called at 8:30 to say the car hadn't yet been returned to him, and we haven't heard from him since. Our residence manager and security officer are trying to help get us a car, but I have accepted that it just might not happen. We'll probably get one by tomorrow, so we might just have to cut our trip short by one day. But it's likely this isn't the last thing that will happen to remind us of The Lesson.

Creepy dolls at the souk

More on the Moroccan desert

What ideas did you have about Morocco before you started reading my blog? If you imagined deserts, sand, camels, and nomads and their tents, you weren't alone.

As I hope my blog has illustrated for you, though, Morocco is a geographically diverse country. I didn't see any camels until I had been here for a few months, and my recent trip to the desert was the first time I saw a landscape that I thought might be described as "stereotypically" Moroccan or North African.

The transition to a desert landscape really begins south of Midelt. The mountains are always close by, but the land slowly becomes dustier, and the vegetation becomes more sparse and scrubby.

There was an unexpected number of hotels along our route from Midelt to Merzouga. Some of them were shockingly (and, we all agreed, too optimistically) grand. As we drove by these hotels, we saw that the vast majority had virtually empty parking lots.

We had originally made reservations at such a hotel (although not nearly as new as the one pictured to the left) in Erfoud. It was such a depressingly outdated and empty place, though, that we quickly ditched it for a smaller and grubbier – yet less deserted and more comfortable  – hotel.

The way people look changes, too, as one approaches the desert. Skin gets darker, and by the time we got to Erfoud, we hardly saw the faces of any women, most of whom were covered from head to toe with abaya-like black garments, some with brightly colored embroidered patterns on them. The Rough Guide to Morocco says that Erfoud gives one "a first, powerful sense of proximity to the desert, with frequent sandblasts ripping through the streets." We arrived in this normally dusty town during a time of unusually strong winds, and the coating of grit that quickly accumulated on my body, along with a  constant sense of impending danger to my eyes, made me immediately understand the benefit of full body coverage.

Ways of looking at things

There are two ways to tell the story of our weekend trip to the desert (Erg Chebbi sand dunes) near Merzouga with our friends Brian and Sara.


View Larger Map

The first goes something like this:

It was a rough week leading up to the trip, and I wasn't feeling very enthusiastic about much of anything. People told us it was going to be horribly hot in the desert, and I wasn't looking forward to the eight (or more) hours in the black, non-air conditioned interior of Brian and Sara's Dacia. The trip got off to a bad start on Friday when we drove at least 20 kilometers in the wrong direction. When we got to Erfoud, where we had planned to spend our first night before heading for the desert, the hotel we had reserved was unacceptable, and we had to wander around town to find another hotel. After checking in to our new hotel, when we hoped to get showered and freshened up, the power went out.

The next day (Saturday), our guide was over two hours late in coming to get us for lunch, and we then discovered that we had to drive back toward Ifrane several kilometers. After lunch, we headed for the desert, which was hardly visible because of the strong windstorm blowing through the area. We were supposed to go spend Saturday night in the desert, but we cancelled that because of the winds.

Only camels could tolerate being out in that wind!

Instead, we went to the hotel where we had planned to spend Sunday night--Auberge du Sud. We had a delicious dinner there. Unfortunately, though, the next morning, two members of our group had mild food poisoning (either from lunch or dinner on Saturday, we weren't sure). We tried to cancel our trip to the desert, but the hotel manager had already arranged one for us and had no rooms available for that night.

On loss

If you're the kind of person who gets annoyed when my blog deviates from its theme, don't read this entry. If you're the kind of person who gets annoyed by people who treat their pets like people, don't read this entry. If you're at work and you cry extremely easily, don't read this entry.

Okay, you've been warned.

In a nutshell...

...a tiny, oversimplified nutshell.

One month

Yesterday, I officially finished my semester. I hope last night marked the last time ever that I will need to get up at 2:00am to attend a class.

Today I am mopping the apartment floors for what I hope will be the last time.

I'm reorganizing items on the shelves with note cards labelled "sell/give away," "need to sort," and "keep."

I'm going to go through my clothes and try to get rid of at least half of them.

Because one month from today, I'm flying back to the United States, and while right now I don't know exactly how it might be possible, I don't plan to come back to Morocco. (Must...resist...urge...to...quote....John Denver...)

One month.

Local wonders

In 2002, my mom and dad gave me a book. Inside the front cover, my dad wrote:

If you can 'bloom where you are planted,' then even Butler County Nebraska can be a wonder.

May you always love yourself, appreciate what you have, and grow where you are planted.

This was the year that I got married, moved farther away from home than I had ever lived (to New Orleans), and began graduate school in English. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the year that would begin the wanderings that eventually brought me to Ifrane, Morocco. At the time, although I was an adult, my feelings towards the place where I had grown up could be described as "ambivalent" at best. I grew up in a rural part of Nebraska known by locals as "the Bohemian Alps," and Butler County – location of the tiny village that I lived in from the time I was five until I left for college – was largely settled by Czech immigrants. My own lack of Czech heritage was just one of many ways in which I never quite fit into the community. I thought Butler County and the surrounding "Alps" lacked texture – whether of the cultural or geographical kind. When I left for New Orleans, I was sad in the general way in which one is sad when one moves away from friends and family, but I didn't have much of a sense of connection to place.

Therefore, when, in 2002, my parents gave me a book called Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by local Ted Kooser (U.S. poet laureate at the time, as I remember my father proudly telling me), I politely accepted the book and then proceeded to drag it around the world with me for the next 10 years. But I didn't once open the cover.

Whether it was out of a sense of duty or because of a vague feeling that it was symbolic or poetic or meaningful somehow, I dragged the book all the way to Morocco with me. And it was only recently – just a few weeks ago – that I finally picked up the book and read it.

It wasn't what I thought it would be. It's essentially a published collection of short, reflective journal entries Ted Kooser wrote, but they are inspired by and centered around his land, his neighbors, and the culture of Seward County (Butler County's slightly more German next-door neighbor).

Maybe the book was just waiting for the right time to be read. I almost expected to recognize some of the people he wrote about (the community is that small), and while that didn't happen, I did find myself smiling at some of the things he wrote. For example:

People [in Seward County] don't lock the doors to their houses, and the only reason they lock their cars is, in August, to keep neighbors from putting zucchini in the backseat.

Reading the book didn't really change how I felt about Butler County. As an adult, I am much more tolerant and understanding of my parents' love for the place at the same time that I have trouble thinking of it as anything other than a childhood shoe my feet have long been too big to fit into. I admire the ability that Kooser and my parents have, to settle in like trees where they were planted, to slowly extend roots and branches, not afraid of being dug up or blown away by wind, not desiring a change of scenery.

I feel much more like a dandelion seed, and for me "growing where I am planted" means something very different from what it means for my parents. There is no deliberate and permanent planting, but rather I am frequently lifted, blown from one place to another. If I land, I will prepare to put down roots, but I also recognize that the wind may carry me up again before I can do so.

This is how I have come to understand my father's note in the front of the book he gave me. He is a tree, and I'm a dandelion seed. Someday, though, the wind will put me down in a place, and I will be there long enough to put down a small root. It won't be as long or deep or permanent as the roots my parents have put down, but I will try to grow where I am planted, and wherever that place might be, I will try to look at it and its people with an appreciative eye and a full heart.

Just another blog post about how I often don't understand what's going on

My part-time teaching job ended in April, and earlier this week my boss sent me an e-mail saying that she had used MoneyGram (money transfer) to send my pay for April and that I just needed to go to the office, located downtown, to get it.

I think I audibly groaned. While the prospect of dealing with this didn't send me into a panic as it may have a year or year and a half ago, I knew it wasn't going to be as easy as she made it sound. And yet it didn't end up being as hard as I had imagined it could be.

One reason I get apprehensive about these things is that, especially in "office" situations (e.g. the bank, a doctor's office, or the post office), I just don't understand what's going on. There are always lots of people sitting and waiting for something, and a few people standing around waiting for something, and a few people sitting behind the desk or counter, but whereas I would know what to do if I saw this in the United States, I still don't understand the system here in Morocco; I just know that it's different. This is not a "queuing" culture, so I know that even if something looks like a line, my best move isn't always to go stand in it.

Here's where I lucked out, because one of the staff members of the building where I live happened to be in the post office (which is where I went because it was the first place I noticed with a "MoneyGram" sign outside), and he told the woman whose job it is to coordinate the customers what it was that I needed. So I sat and waited for 15 to 20 minutes, which is not so long of a wait in Morocco but long enough to make me wish my boss had just deposited the money in my bank account.

In some way mysterious to me, the woman then decided it was my turn to go up to the counter, and I showed the woman behind the counter the number my boss had given me. It was obvious that this number did not look right, and she conveyed to me that I was in the wrong location and that I needed to go someplace called "Wafa Cash" that was somewhere near Banque Populaire.

I wandered around town a little bit and noticed several other MoneyGram signs but no place that said "Wafa Cash." I called my boss, but she didn't know specifically where I needed to go to get the money, so then I had to text the other teacher she had hired to find out if he knew where I needed to go.

At this point, I think I had spent close to 45 minutes trying to get my money. Luckily, I got good instructions from the other teacher and found the right MoneyGram office. (It had a variety of signs outside, including one that said "MoneyGram" and "EuroSol," but of course there was nothing that said "Wafa Cash." That sort of thing, however, is common in small towns and is not particular to Morocco.) There was no line of people inside the small office, but I still had to wait a good five or 10 minutes while the man behind the counter typed on his computer, filled out forms, and photocopied my national identity card.

In the end, it only took me about an hour to get my pay from April. It could've been a lot worse.

You need to put something on your feet

Yesterday I stepped out to the lobby of our building (which is right outside my apartment door) to exchange my green laundry tokens (purchased on campus) for the silver laundry tokens which are necessary for doing laundry in our building but which can only be obtained a few at a time. I stayed out there to chat for a while with Aziz, one of our favorite downtown staff members.

As we were talking, Driss, a young and very nice security guard who is (justifiably) quite proud of his English, walked by a couple of times. The second time, he looked down at my feet, which were covered only with some fuzzy cream, brown, and pink-striped socks. He said, in a nonthreatening but very sincere and very serious tone, "You need to go put something on your feet. You need to go right now. It's not good for your health to have just socks and have your feet on this floor."

I came back to my apartment, duly chastised. Driss would be disturbed to know that I did not put something more on my feet. But if I get sick, I will know it was no one's fault but mine for letting my feet get so cold.

Things I forgot to say in my previous post

I was in such a rush last night to get pictures of our trip to the Cascades d'Ouzoud up on my blog that only later did I realize I hadn't written about half of the things I had intended to. So here are some of those things, in no particular order:


- Even in places in Morocco where the landscape looks familiar (T and I have, on multiple occasions, been reminded of Wyoming and Montana), there are frequent reminders that I am in a foreign country. No matter how remote a road seems to be, there will always be pedestrians, hitchhikers, and people on donkeys traveling along that road. I often wonder where they're coming from and where they're going.

In remote locations, one is also likely to encounter people trying to sell things. When we got onto the mountain roads not far from Ouzoud, we started seeing people along the road holding up little bundles of fresh herbs and making a variety of mysterious gestures which we assume meant something like, "Please buy these herbs! I really need money. Don't you feel sorry for me?" And we did; we felt sorry for them.

Many of these people – many more than I would have guessed – were children, often very, very young children. As we drove, we discussed the pros and cons of stopping to buy some of the herb. (I think it was some kind of mountain thyme, but I'm not sure.) I imagine they couldn't have been selling the little bundles for more than one or two dirhams each, and I wonder what could possibly have been the maximum amount of money someone might bring home at the end of a long day of standing by the roadside. Seeing these people was a reminder both of how difficult the job situation is here (it's unimaginably worse than in the U.S., I guarantee) and of how hard people try to come up with ways of having even a tiny income.


- I should have taken the opportunity yesterday to spend a little more time explaining exactly what a riad is. Basically, a riad is a large, multilevel house with a central area that is open to the sky. Most of the riads I have stayed at (many have been converted into somewhat upscale bed and breakfasts) have had some form of covering on the rooftop terrace to provide some protection from the elements to the central patio/garden, but this is not always the case.

In the United States, indoor and outdoor spaces are usually carefully separated from each other; "indoor" and "outdoor" are mutually exclusive categories. This is not true in Morocco, and riads illustrate well the lack of a clear distinction between the two. As I mentioned in my previous post, the riad we stayed at has a full-sized orange tree growing in the middle of it. Above the orange tree, at the level of the rooftop terrace (another characteristic of a riad), a clear plastic tarp has been stretched to provide some protection from the rain (although there are a few inches on all sides that are not protected by the tarp, which means that one can get rained on while standing in certain places on the ground floor). At the center of the tarp is a large plastic tube that goes down to the base of the orange tree, so that when it rains the water follows the tube and waters the orange tree!

This lack of separation between indoor and outdoor means that, when the weather is nice, a riad is a lovely place for hanging out and relaxing. But when the weather is cold, the riad is also cold; many owners go to great lengths (and, I'm sure, expenses) to try to bring their riads up to Western standards of comfort regarding winter temperatures.

Cascades d'Ouzoud

In a typical move, the University announced just last week that it would be canceling classes on Monday, April 30 since Tuesday, May 1 was (and had always been scheduled to be) Labor Day. (This is the sort of thing that I don't think I will ever get used to.) There was a mad scramble to schedule last minute vacations over the four-day weekend, and T and I, never at our best when required to make a decision quickly, were relieved when a friend offered to plan a trip to Beni-Mellal. Unfortunately, that trip centered around skydiving, and when the skydiving wasn't an option, everyone but us backed out.

In the process, though, T and I eventually (after several failed attempts at planning a desert vacation for the weekend) realized that the town of Beni-Mellal is not far from the Cascades d'Ouzoud, which the Rough Guide to Morocco calls "the most spectacular in Morocco." Feeling in desperate need of some time in nature, we booked two nights at a beautiful riad just yards away from the waterfalls, and T arranged to rent a car.


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The Bin el Ouidane reservoir, along the drive

The gorgeous blue river behind me comes from the reservoir.

 We headed out for Ouzoud on Sunday morning. We didn't get as early of a start as we had intended because another last minute decision that had recently been made in Morocco was to enter daylight saving time that day!

After a beautiful and fairly relaxing drive, we arrived in the tiny village of Ouzoud. It was raining hard there the day that we arrived, but Monday was a beautiful day. We spent part of that day exploring the area and another part sitting on the rooftop terrace reading our books.

We got the usual questions about whether or not we wanted to hire a guide, and men at every restaurant that we walked by showed us their lovely tagines and bragged about their great prices, but overall everything was fairly low-key, and people were quite friendly. It seemed like everyone spoke English, so for once, communication wasn't really a problem.

It was a wonderful place to spend a couple of days, and I think you'll agree as you look at the photographs.

On getting used to things

On Monday, I talked to my low intermediate English students about a few of the uses of "used to." One of the phrases we talked about was "getting used to." The conversation got me thinking about my more than a year and a half in Morocco, and about all of the things I have become used to as well as the things I'm still working on getting used to.

For example, I've gotten used to shopping in Morocco, although it has only been in the past few months that I have felt myself become comfortable with this. Up until then, I was expending large amounts of energy listing the things I needed, trying to figure out where I could find them, thinking about going shopping, planning shopping trips, going shopping, and searching for the items I needed.

I've gotten used to being surrounded by people who look and talk differently than I do. This has become so normal and comfortable for me that I suspect I will feel a little strange when I return to Nebraska this summer and find myself surrounded by white people in shorts and tank tops. It will, at first, feel like a novelty to be able to understand virtually everything the people around me are saying.

I've gotten used to most of the sights, sounds, and smells of Morocco. I've become used to the way meat is sold in marchés, as whole animal carcasses hanging in front of the vendor's stalls. I've become used to seeing pedestrians, bicyclists, donkeys, and cars sharing the roads with each other. I've become used to seeing herds of goats and sheep almost everywhere, including in town.

I'm used to not having a car. I'm used to taking taxis and trains. I'm used to walking much of the time to get where I need to go. I'm used to paying in cash. I'm used to living in an apartment. I'm used to seeing hungry cats and dogs on the streets and (usually) recognizing there's not much I can do about it. I'm used to handing out all of my extra change to beggars. I'm used to having a maid.

I'm used to Turkish toilets. I'm used to bathrooms never having toilet paper and often not having soap. I'm used to peeing almost anywhere, including outdoors, sometimes just a few yards from a herd of goats and sheep.

But I'm still getting used to some aspects of the culture, like the gap between "says" and "is." I think I could live here for the rest of my life and never be entirely used to that. I'm not used to the fact that I can't just go out for a walk anywhere I want to. I'm still not used to having to get up in the middle of the night to attend my classes because they are scheduled in the evenings – central standard time.

I'm still not 100% used to the uncertainty brought on by the decision to move here that T and I made nearly two years ago. I'm still not entirely used to the vast distance I have put between myself and my friends and family. And, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think I'm completely used to the ways in which I have changed since moving here. The "new me" is more tolerant of bugs and germs, more tolerant of uncertainty and of things not going according to plan, but the new me is also more dependent on others and less sure of herself (I didn't even think that could be possible).

I'm guessing, based on all of the reflection I just did, that I learned a little more from my lesson than my students did.

Season of happiness

I'm a fan of "happiness" season– mostly because it's more grammatical than "relax" season. I am, however, a little confused about how it lines up with the more traditional seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter. The scarf suggests that this is more of a cold-weather chocolate, but the bright green color on the scarf suggests spring. (It also suggests that the packaging designers couldn't be bothered to come up with a new layout for each of their limited edition flavors.)

Any guesses about what season will come next?

No wonder

All this time, I thought I was taking relaxing baths with de-stressing lavender oil. And then yesterday I noticed my lavender oil actually has distressing properties. No wonder I've been so stressed out!

Six Moroccan cities

In response to popular demand (i.e. votes from two or three people), for your viewing enjoyment, I have put together a slideshow of photographs of six well-known Moroccan cities that I have visited.

As always, please to enjoy.

The cruelest month

I think April forgot to take her medications. One day it is warm and sunny outside, and we are all sitting in the sun drinking tea, and the next day it is raining or sleeting and cold enough to kill a kitten.

This morning, I woke up to a good one or two inches of real snow on the ground. It wasn't a surprise, since yesterday evening it became very, very cold, and there was a howling wind blowing snow around when I went to bed. But it still seems unfair to be living in Africa and to wake up to snow in mid-April.

Compassion and stupidity are not mutually exclusive

When I was in high school, I was driving home one winter night and suddenly came upon a dog standing in the middle of the paved country road. I instinctively put on my brakes. My yellow Chevy Celebrity slid on the black ice that covered the road and then slammed into a ditch. My little sister, who has a knack for being a passenger when people get into accidents, was very shaken up, as was I. Neither of us was hurt, but the car was essentially totaled. (And the dog, I might add, was unharmed.)

After that little accident, my dad tried to nudge me toward having learned a lesson. He wanted me to say that, should I find myself in a similar situation again, I would just hit the animal. People's lives are more important than animal's lives. But I really dislike lying, and I knew that I would do the exact same thing again, regardless of the consequences. That was many years ago, and I still think I would do the same thing now.

I have a soft spot for animals. Living in a country like Morocco can be difficult for people like me because animal welfare isn't as much of a priority here as it is in a place like the United States (although I have to say that, in the U.S., we are a little hypocritical with our love of animals).

I have remarked several times that it's a very good thing I'm so allergic to cats and dogs. My allergy prevents me from having the option of rescuing any of them. I know myself well enough to know that if I could take in a stray cat or dog, I would take in many more than I could practically handle.

That's what I said, anyway. Until last night.

What I did on Easter

Zaouia d'Ifrane, revisited, this time with T and our friends Brian and Sara.

One-way ticket

Last night, T helped me buy a one-way ticket to Nebraska for early June. The nature of the ticket (i.e. one way) is indicative of the uncertainty in my life right now, and it feels strange to know that 1) I'll be flying without T (we hope he'll join me somewhere and sometime in the U.S. later in the summer; we just don't know exactly when/where), and 2) I don't know if/when I'll be coming back to Morocco. You would think that, after so many uncertain springs in my life, I would be used to this feeling by now, but I'm not. Not at all. I suppose that, for some people, this sense of openness may be exhilarating, but that's just not my personality type.

Maybe I should focus a little more on what I do know about my future. I know that I will spend a couple of weeks in Nebraska with my parents. I know that I will take a road trip with my dad to Bowling Green, Kentucky, near the end of June, and that I will stay there for my clinical internship until early August. I know that, after that, I will need to get myself down to Dallas, Texas for my sister's wedding. But what's beyond that? I don't know.

For my sister, August 11 is a day of joy and anticipation, the day when her new life starts. I am very, uncomplicatedly happy for her. But at the same time, I see that date looming in my own future like a sharp cliff. I don't know what's beyond it. And again, even though this feeling might be familiar, it's quite uncomfortable and disconcerting.

Future, here I come! As soon as I can figure out where you're hiding…

On cooking in a foreign land

Ask someone living in a foreign country what he or she misses about home, and the most common answer you're likely to get is, "the food." A certain computer-animated rat excepted, we humans are (as far as I know) unique in our relationship to food. It doesn't just nourish us; it is an integral component of cultural, and personal, identity.

If you move to a foreign country, then, food is not going to be the least of the things you must adjust to.

Done it all

Yesterday, T and I took the new tram in Rabat. I think this means that we have now used every mode of public transportation available in the country of Morocco (with the exception of intra-country flight, which seems like a fairly rare way of getting around within Morocco, and in any case we have used flight to go to and from the country). We have used petits taxis, grands taxis, the bus, the train, and the tram. Many times, these modes of transportation must be used in combinations that can be exhausting. (Yesterday, for example, we used everything but bus to get to, around, and back home from Rabat.)

If you are from or have lived in a big city like New York or Tokyo or Hong Kong, you're probably wondering why this is worth noting on my blog. You have to understand that I grew up in rural Nebraska and didn't even ride a city bus, subway or taxi until after I was out of college. Until these last couple of years in Morocco, public transportation remained a novelty – and a bit of a mystery – to me.

Many people have told us we might be happier if we had a car here. It's true that, as "nature lovers" more than "city people," T and I sometimes find it challenging to get to the places that would be most interesting to us because they are off the beaten path. Nevertheless, I am glad, for many reasons, that we have chosen not to try to get a car while here. Not only has it been cheaper, but it has been a wonderful learning experience (for me, especially) to figure out how to get around the country without a personal vehicle. (And in the times when we have really needed a car, we have been lucky enough to have wonderful friends who have lent us theirs.)

How I came to be walking down the streets of Meknes with a woman holding a plastic jar with pieces of my stomach in it

This blog entry contains some personal medical information. Although I am providing this information for the purpose of illustrating what I think are interesting cultural differences, if this sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, you can skip reading it. Rest assured that, despite the provocative title, nothing dangerous happened to me today, and my health is relatively stable.



I have hinted in previous posts that my health has not been at its best since coming to Morocco. I haven't written much about it because…well…I didn't think it was really that interesting.

But in some ways, I guess it is, and maybe writing about it is relevant to the purpose of this blog. Definitions of and attitudes toward health and sickness are culturally bound. (An example with which many Americans might be familiar is the changing stance of the American Psychological Association on homosexuality.) The procedures used for identifying and treating illness – from how one makes a doctor's appointment to options for laboratory work – also change from culture to culture. The theoretical frameworks from which doctors approach diagnosis and treatment may be different, and the social roles of doctors and "patients" are also culturally defined.

I am someone who has always found medical systems difficult to understand and navigate, even with parents who are nurses, even in my own culture, even communicating with people who speak the same native language I do. As I wrote about previously, all of those things that cause difficulty for me in the U.S. cause more difficulty here.

Souk boutique

Ifrane's souk is the place to go for the best prices on the greatest variety of fruits and vegetables. I don't go there every week, but I try to go at least once a month to stock up on produce.

Weird shirt with cranes on it + bad ass denim jacket = app. $4

A lot of people I know go there to get clothes, too. For at least the first year that I lived in Morocco, I was utterly overwhelmed by the prospect of trying to buy clothing at the souk. Imagine the piles of clothes at the biggest garage sale you've ever attended, and then multiply that by, say, 10. Spending hours digging through huge piles of (sometimes smelly) largely uncategorized clothing items never appealed to me. But lately, my friends Sarah and Sara have helped me to enjoy this simple and cheap weekend entertainment. On a nice, sunny day, it can be fun to stand across from a friend, going from one end of a table to the other, excavating and discussing an interesting array of clothing. Some of the clothing items are very worn, others are bizarre, but every once in a while, we find something nice or interesting enough to take home. The clothes are cheap enough that you don't have to worry about trying them on before purchasing them. If something doesn't fit, you can pass it on to someone else, use it for a craft project, or even just use it for rags.

Like I said, cheap and simple. That's my kind of fun.

What the birds know

At lower altitudes, blooming cherry trees and bright green fields are obvious signs that spring has arrived. In Ifrane, temperatures haven't noticeably changed since February, and the ground and trees remain an expectant brown.

a patient stork

But the birds know that spring has come. In the last week or so, their songs have changed to something more boisterous. The storks--some of whom chose to remain in Ifrane for the comparatively long, cold winter, standing stoically on windy rooftops--are busy repairing and expanding their nests. They spend a remarkable amount of time selecting the right sticks, presenting them to their mates, and positioning them just so in their nests.

The egrets have returned, and in the evenings they huddle, carefully spaced apart from each other, in the leafless trees by the little lake in the center of town. The lesser kestrels have arrived after a winter away, too, and their unexpectedly doll-like peeping calls can be heard throughout town. Starlings flit about in groups, singing in a way that I can't help but think of as playful.

And even though I know it's anthropomorphizing, I also read hopefulness into all of it. This, the birds remind me, is the time of opening, of awakening, of tender growth and fast change. On a cool morning when the bright sun shines warm on my face, and I see the patient storks putting their lives back together slowly, one thin stick at a time, my heart feels full with possibility. Like their nests, my home, my life, is repeatedly undone. But what can I do? That is the nature of life. I can only, after a winter of undoing, awaken in the spring, pick up a stick, and place it carefully. Then do it again. And again. Admire the work, but don't get attached. Keep building. This must be what the storks do. This is what I will try to do. This is what we all must do.