Hello, everyone,
For those who might be interested, I have begun a new blog, Wanderlike. It will probably start off a little slowly, but you can read the first post here if you want.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
07 May 2013
02 August 2012
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.
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.
03 May 2012
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.
- 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.
23 February 2012
A plea
Okay, everyone, for 18 months I have regaled you with tales of adventure, embarrassment, beauty, despair and triumph, and I haven't asked for anything in return (okay, there was that one time, but that was pretty much it).
But today I'm sending out a real plea. One reason I haven't been blogging a lot this semester is that my graduate program has become much more challenging this semester. (Several of my classmates have part-time or full-time jobs and children and are completing this program, while I have only a very part-time job, no children, and a maid and feel overwhelmed sometimes. What does that say about me?)
Anyway, for my Phonology course, I need to find a speech-language pathologist who will discuss with me a client with a phonological disorder. My professor has given me permission to do this long distance, so I'm looking for an SLP and client who will let me talk to and observe them via Skype.
Given how busy the average SLP is, I'm not sure how likely this is to happen. But if you have a friend or family member who is an SLP, perhaps someone who was done a great kindness by someone else and is looking to "pay it forward," let me know.
And in any case, wish me luck.
But today I'm sending out a real plea. One reason I haven't been blogging a lot this semester is that my graduate program has become much more challenging this semester. (Several of my classmates have part-time or full-time jobs and children and are completing this program, while I have only a very part-time job, no children, and a maid and feel overwhelmed sometimes. What does that say about me?)
Anyway, for my Phonology course, I need to find a speech-language pathologist who will discuss with me a client with a phonological disorder. My professor has given me permission to do this long distance, so I'm looking for an SLP and client who will let me talk to and observe them via Skype.
Given how busy the average SLP is, I'm not sure how likely this is to happen. But if you have a friend or family member who is an SLP, perhaps someone who was done a great kindness by someone else and is looking to "pay it forward," let me know.
And in any case, wish me luck.
13 October 2011
I don't ALWAYS have to be relevant, do I?
Since T and I are living on an income here that might qualify us for food stamps in the United States, I have had the great pleasure of applying for student loans to help pay for my graduate program.
Here's a quote from the master promissory note:
One less thing to worry about. Phew.
Here's a quote from the master promissory note:
To request a loan discharge based on one of the conditions described above (except for discharges due to death or bankruptcy), you must complete an application that you may obtain from your servicer.I'm relieved that someone wrote this into the policy, because if they hadn't, I would probably find myself worrying about this if I died. How will I get my loan discharged? I would wonder.
One less thing to worry about. Phew.
05 September 2011
From Nebraska
I haven't yet written about what T and I "did" for five weeks in Nebraska. That's mostly because we didn't do much that would be "blog worthy" or of general interest. But in case you're still wondering...
We "borrowed" our Senegal parrot, Mango, from the Nebraska Parrot Rescue. She remembered us immediately, and we had a great time with her.
We "borrowed" our Senegal parrot, Mango, from the Nebraska Parrot Rescue. She remembered us immediately, and we had a great time with her.
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| This little dude, on the other hand, didn't seem to remember us at all. Sigh. |
17 July 2011
Casbahs to cornfields
We begin our journey to Nebraska at 1:30am tonight when Ahmed the grand taxi driver will pick us up. He'll drive us straight to the Casablanca airport, and then it's on to Lisbon, Newark, Chicago, and finally Nebraska.
If I have observations or insights while there, I'll post on my blog. If not, check in with me at the end of August.
If I have observations or insights while there, I'll post on my blog. If not, check in with me at the end of August.
29 March 2011
New Look
In good, old-fashioned procrastinatory-student fashion, yesterday, instead of studying for an anatomy and physiology exam, I spent some time sprucing up my blog. I really liked the multi-colored tagine background, but I wanted something more personal, so I replaced it with a picture of a Moroccan rug that T and I bought in Azrou. In the left-hand column, I added a "label cloud" and a survey/poll. Check it out.
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