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 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)

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.

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.

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.

On things being guarded

One of the things that struck me soon after moving to Morocco was the fact that there are guards everywhere. The University is guarded at all times by at least one security officer who stands attentively outside the large gate through which one must pass to enter the University. (Sometimes the gate is halfway closed, requiring even closer scrutiny from the security guard. I clearly remember it being closed for a couple of days after the bombing in Marrakesh last spring.) How they know who is "authorized" to enter campus and who is not remains a mystery to me, but I have been stopped a couple of times and asked to give my name and reason for being on campus ("Jennifer Sheridan, my husband is faculty.") We have joked with friends about how the security officers seem to be satisfied if we simply tell them our names, as if they either have memorized a list of authorized names, or they really just want to know if we know our names.

Now the University library is guarded, too, with security officers who search the bags and purses of all individuals entering--to make sure they aren't sneaking in contraband water bottles or snacks.

We have driven on the tollway at times when, the best we could figure out, the King was about to pass through. There were guards stationed every few hundred meters along the road, just standing there, waiting for the King's motorcade to go by.

How would you like it if this little box were your workplace?

The perimeters of cities are guarded. The building downtown in which we live has a guard. The bank has a guard (who also serves as a chaos-preventer). The new Morocco Mall in Casablanca is heavily guarded. Grocery stores have guards.The King's palace in Ifrane is, of course, guarded.

And, most interesting to me, many private homes are guarded. Our building is at the end of a quiet street lined with large, expensive, and mostly empty homes. Outside of several of them are these little huts, really just big enough for one or two men to stand in. While the houses sit empty, guards huddle outside in the huts at all hours, in all weather, chatting with each other, listening to music, and drinking mint tea. This job is one of the most difficult for me to understand. First of all, why can't they just hang out inside the houses? (As if I don't know the answer.) And what are they guarding the homes from?

My admittedly uneducated impression is that many of the guards in Morocco serve the purpose of keeping the poor separated from the rich. Some of the guarding, such as lining the streets when the King passes through, seems largely for show. (What are they guarding the roads from? Is there a danger of some guy with a knife jumping out of the bushes and attacking the King's motorcade?) The guards are certainly not concerned about me; by definition, because of my skin color, I am not a threat. (It's strange to be subjected to less scrutiny because I am a foreigner, since in my own country, foreigners tend to be the subject of more scrutiny.)

Ultimately, I feel very safe in Morocco, but not because of all the guarding. It's something I'm still not used to, and it still makes me feel uncomfortable at times. But, as T has just pointed out to me, "It's a job." So maybe I need to let go of the class separation I sense behind it and just accept it.

Rough start

Last Monday was a "little" eid, and T had the day off from teaching. Weeks before, we had decided that we wanted to go to Melilla or Ceuta for the long weekend. We asked our friends Sarah and Terry if they wanted to rent a car and go with us. We decided we would go to Ceuta since none of us had spent much time there before.

For a full week, I could think of almost nothing else. I was desperate to get out of Morocco at the same time that I had a very fuzzy sense of why or of what I wanted to do in Ceuta.

And so, as is too often the case when we want something very badly, it seemed that the forces of the universe were conspiring against our planned European getaway.

First, Sarah and Terry spent the entire week leading up to our trip making phone calls to a car rental agency, and each time, the exchange went something like this:

Terry: "We want to rent a car for Friday."
Car rental representative: "Okay, we'll call you back in 10 minutes."
(Sarah and Terry wait a few hours, then call the agency back.)

Terry: "We want to rent a car for Friday."
Car rental representative: "Okay, we'll call you back in 10 minutes."

This went on over and over again until Thursday night (the night before we were scheduled to leave) when our friends enlisted the help of a Moroccan friend, who finally lined up a car for us – at twice the price it should've been. At about 7:00 that night, then, we were desperately calling other car rental agencies to try to get ourselves a better deal.

We found a car at a better price, but the company required a 20,000 dirham deposit (that's "only" about $2500, an obscene amount of money here in Morocco that none of us would be able to get our hands on with such short notice).

About an hour later, we got in touch with a car rental company in Azrou (about 20 km away) that was willing to rent us a Kia Picanto for a good price. They even said they would deliver it to us here in Ifrane for a reasonable delivery fee.

It was a little stressful not knowing less than 24 hours before we were leaving how we would get to Ceuta, but I thought things were okay.

Can and Can't

What you can't (or, at least, often don't) get at the University health center:

     -A urine test
     -Blood drawn
     -Blood tests
     -Any other kind of test, really
     -Long-handled cotton swabs (apparently, they don't exist in Morocco) 
     -Routine blood pressure, temperature, or weight checks
     -Thorough physical examination
     -Questions about any allergies you might have
     -Explanations of medications being prescribed to you
     -Explanations of anything in fluent English
    

What you can get at the University health center:

     -A box of surgical gloves, for free
     -Several tongue depressors, also for free
     -A laryngeal mirror, again at no cost! (or is a dental mirror? I'm not sure on the difference)
     -A signature and stamp on a form indicating that you are healthy, after a very cursory physical examination
     -A signature and stamp on a form indicating that you have tested negative for tuberculosis without taking any test (don't worry, I didn't do this)
     -A signature and stamp on anything, really
     -A variety of medications for treating all kinds of stomach and intestinal discomfort and distress
     -Explanations of many things in fluent French
    

On being pampered

My birthday was last week, and T gave me the extravagant and excessive gift of a visit to the spa at the Michlifen Hotel (you can get some sense of the extravagance of the hotel and spa by visiting the Web site).

This hotel has always been a bit of an enigma to me. Like some medieval European castle, the Michlifen Hotel is situated on top of a hill so it can easily condescend to the village of Ifrane – and its inhabitants – below. The rooms are unbelievably expensive. Just out of curiosity, I looked at Booking.com to see the costs of the rooms that are available right now. They range in price from the equivalent of US $315 to $1207 per night. For perspective, I'm pretty sure the cost of one night in a standard room is close to the cost of our rent per month. I have friends who looked at some of the rooms there, and they said that, while the beds looked comfortable, the rooms were quite small and not particularly remarkable in any way.

The view and unusual plushness of the hotel sometimes cause bored University employees to go there for a tea or hot chocolate. In exchange for a heated room in which to have drinks, a nice view, and clean bathrooms with soft toilet paper, soap, and working hand dryers, we pay almost four times for a hot beverage what we would pay at a typical café. Alcoholic beverages are even more expensive, with the average cost of a cocktail being the equivalent of almost US $22. One can also splurge on a nice French meal at the restaurant there if one wishes.

There is no other place in Ifrane remotely like the Michlifen Hotel. When you walk into this hotel, you are no longer in Morocco. I suppose that is part of its appeal. But the greatest mystery about the Michlifen is…how many people is it really appealing to? The spa seems to be representative of the hotel at large. I have gone there twice (once for a pedicure with my friend LW, and then last week for my special birthday treatment), and both times I had the sense that I had the place – and its many employees – all to myself. I am not the only one puzzled by the existence of this excessively plush hotel in a small Moroccan town.

At the same time, though, the Michlifen Hotel represents a puzzling Moroccan business model that strikes me (in my admitted ignorance of business) as being entirely based on optimism. While this hotel sat virtually empty, on the other end of town, someone built an enormous Best Western complex. The University is housing students there (because of a lack of ability to plan, which I will not get into here), but otherwise, I imagine that the hundreds of rooms and chalets sit empty, as do the dozens of spaces built for hanuts, or small shops (something I can't imagine any Moroccan town needing more of).

The Michlifen Hotel also highlights the difficult-to-characterize nature of being an expat in Morocco. T and I are living quite comfortably on a salary that would probably qualify us for welfare in the United States (if anyone is getting welfare there these days). We can't go on European vacations or drink 40 dirham tea or go to the spa on a regular basis, but if we want to do these things once in a while as a treat, we can. We can hire a maid. We can stay in nice riads when we travel in Morocco.

Am I entirely comfortable with that? Absolutely not. The fact that I can spoil myself once in a while just serves as a reminder that most Moroccans are living on far, far less than I am. And living in a developing country means there are some things nobody has access to, regardless of how much money they have. Adequate medical care (especially access to alternative and complementary medicine) is one example (although to be fair, I should add the disclaimer that not everyone here would agree with me that the medical care is inadequate).

Did I enjoy my two hours at the Michlifen Hotel spa? Indeed, ultimately, I did. I knew it would be a once in a lifetime experience, like many of my experiences here in Morocco, and I tried to make the most of it.

The most popular souvenir

Earlier this week, we had our first snow of the season. I predicted the snow would be melted by the following day, and I was essentially correct. A day after the snow fell, warm sunshine melted much of it, leaving unattractive clumps of dirty ice or snow in a few places.

One of my friends told me that snowfall in Ifrane is reported on the national news. So I also predicted that, this weekend, Ifrane would be packed with Moroccan tourists coming to see the unusual sight of snow. And yesterday, when T and I were going for a walk along the road to Fez, we saw many cars coming into town. We also saw a number of cars heading out of town, toward Fez. Every third car or so leaving town had one or two large clumps of snow carefully placed on its hood. I imagined a caravan of slow-moving cars from Ifrane to Fez, the drivers smiling, happily displaying evidence that they had visited the beautiful, cold town of Ifrane, and hoping the snow will somehow remain on their hoods until they arrive home so they can show the exotic substance to their family members, friends, and neighbors.

The thought made me smile.

Fondue, glass pickles, fire bowls, and other German things

During my senior year of high school, I was friends with a German exchange student, AC. After that year, I always thought it would be neat to visit him in Germany. This was a casual wish, though, with Germany on a long list of other places I "wanted" to visit, including Australia, India, and Hawaii. I don't think I ever really thought it would be possible for me to visit him, and I never had a strong sense of why I wanted to go to Germany or what I would even do there.

That was until I moved to Morocco. Now Frankfurt is just a 3 1/2 hour plane ride away (plus a couple of hours in a car). So at the end of December, T and I finally visited my friend AC in Rosbach, Germany. We spent close to a week with him and his wife IC and their two young children MC (boy) and MC (girl).

MC is just about ready to go to bed.

One of the great things about staying with a German family is that we got to learn some details of German culture we may not have been aware of otherwise. For example, because they took us to a New Year's Eve party with several of their friends, I now know that fondue is a fairly common New Year's Eve meal. It also seems that virtually everyone in the entire country sets off fireworks at midnight– a lot of fireworks. And while I thought staying at a New Year's Eve party until 3:00 AM was quite late, when we said good-bye at that time, we were the first ones to leave the party – probably because AC and IC's little girl had refused to be cared for by her grandparents and ended up accompanying us and thus needed to get home at a "reasonable" time. (Don't worry, she slept for a good portion of the party.)

SingStar fun

Another wonderful thing about visiting Germany (for English-speaking people, anyway) is that many Germans, especially those in the younger generations, are very comfortable with English and can easily switch back and forth between it and German. Virtually everyone at the New Year's Eve party knew English. At first, though, people seemed reluctant to speak to us, perhaps because we were strangers and because everyone (I think) is more comfortable speaking in his or her native language. As the night went on, though, more people were kind enough to talk to us. They were surprised to learn that we were not visiting from America, so the topic of how one ends up living in Morocco helped keep up the conversation.

It also helped when my friend AC broke out the PlayStation game SingStar. By the end of the night, even I had come out of my shell, and I was belting out Abba songs with IC as my teammate. Champagne seemed to loosen peoples tongues, and almost everyone was making comments about the game using English for our benefit.

Junk food

In one of my English classes on Monday, I wanted my two students to read a short (and, admittedly, pretty stupid and boring) passage from the textbook about the world's oldest woman who, at 109 years old, ate only junk food. I asked the students if they knew what junk food was, and they had totally blank looks on their faces. I started at the beginning, explaining the word "junk," and then gave examples of junk food, pointing out that many foods in this category are fast food and/or are high in sugar or fat. They still looked perplexed. I thought more examples would help, but each time I asked them about a food and asked if it went in the "junk food" or "not junk food" category, they got it wrong.

"Is fruit junk food?" They stared at me. "No, in the United States, we say it's not junk food. It's healthy food." I said. I did the same for hamburgers and pointed out that Americans consider just about anything from McDonald's to be junk food.

"Okay, what about fish?"

"That's junk food," one student said. Only if it's fried, I explained.

"Chocolate?"

"Not junk food," they agreed.

And then it hit me. What a ridiculous concept! (Yeah, I can be a little slow.) Food is what sustains and strengthens our bodies. The concept that some food is essentially garbage is bizarre and probably isn't culturally relevant in a country where many people are just happy to have full bellies. I remembered Michael Pollan's discussion in The Omnivore's Dilemma about Americans' weird relationship to food.

When I came home and told T about this, he reminded me that our Canadian friend Sarah, a kindergarten teacher at the K-12 school associated with the University, struggled for weeks to get the parents of her students to send "healthy" snacks to school. She spoke, with horror, of watching one child eat a snack consisting of chocolate pudding scooped out of the cup with Kit Kats. After my confused ESL lesson on "junk food," I wondered whether Sarah had been making false assumptions, like I had, that food can be objectively divided into transcultural categories of "good" and "bad," "healthy" and "unhealthy."

And I'm curious to know if any of you have had similar experiences when engaged in multicultural discussions about food.

Things they didn't tell me

In making our decision to move overseas, in our usual fashion, T and I (i.e. T) did a lot of research. He researched the places where we might live, and he found books on the various aspects, from financial to psychological, to making an international move. We even got to talk to someone who worked at this University for five years. We didn't feel completely prepared when we moved here, but we certainly felt more prepared than some.

However, there are still things I wish someone had told me. Or maybe someone did tell these things to me, but I wish they had been emphasized more.

At the top of my list of things they didn't tell me is the absolute truth that some people, after moving to a new country, will get sick, and they will never really get better, at least not as long as they stay in that country. I don't know why this happens. I have many friends, for example, who came to Morocco and started drinking the tap water and eating street food right away and never had a day of travelers' diarrhea. More common, I think, is an adjustment period of the body that ranges from a week to a few months, during which time the individual is more susceptible to all kinds of bacteria and viruses, but after which that person is basically okay.

Then there are those unlucky few who are constantly coming down with a wide range of diagnosable and undiagnosable ailments that affect a wide range of parts and systems of the body. I seem to be one of these unlucky few. This is something I have tried to avoid blogging about because it is essentially "negative," but the truth is it has also become a large part of my experience living in a foreign country for the first time.

Even minor health problems can be complicated in a foreign country, as I'm sure you can imagine. If one has moved from a developed country to an undeveloped or developing one, the quality of medical care will seem subpar. In fact, while I was very reluctant to go to doctors while living in the United States, I have made a fairly firm decision not to visit a doctor (or especially a hospital) here unless I am already in danger of dying – in case they kill me, of course. For people like me who like "be their own doctors," there is the issue of not knowing what sorts of medications and treatments are available. I have lived in Morocco for 16 months and I'm still learning what is and is not available. There is the additional complication of not always knowing what the real problem is that one is trying to treat.

The biggest problem of all, of course, is communication. Think about the last time you went to visit a doctor. Did the doctor understand you? Did you understand everything the doctor said? I think there's a high chance that you will answer at least one of these questions with "no." But if you had to communicate with the doctor in a language with which one of you was uncomfortable…well, imagine the opportunities for miscommunications and misunderstandings.

I don't know what the solution is for those of us in this small and unfortunate minority. I know I'm not the only person going through this, but at the same time it's not that comforting to know there are other people who, like me, haven't seemed to figure out how to be well in a foreign country.

On living in a negotiation culture

About three weeks ago, our friends/neighbors--we'll call them "Ryan" and "Tara"--decided they would get a pet cat. At the time, pets were not, in the strictest sense, allowed in the downtown apartments. But Ryan and Tara opted for the "better to ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission now" philosophy. Ryan emailed the head of housing to say that they were getting a cat, they would take full responsibility for her and for cleaning of the apartment, etc.

Yesterday, those of us living in the downtown apartments received the following email. Before you read it, keep in mind these points: 1) Up until the day this email was sent out, the University policy was that no pets were allowed in downtown apartments, and 2) Ryan and Tara live in one of only four two bedroom apartments in the downtown building.

Residents living in Downtown Residence can keep cats as companion animals; yet they need to abide by AUI housing rules and regulations regarding this issue:
- Residents who want to have indoor cats need to be residing in a two bed room apartment. They are allowed to have 2 cats in maximum. No other pets are allowed in the Residence,
-Cats should be vaccinated in order to provide the safest protection for the pet and for the environment. The residents should provide a proof of medical history of vaccinations of the pet,
-A cat should not leave the apartment, please ensure that the cat is secured within the apartment,
-A cat should wear a collar, this will facilitate the identification of her owner in case of loss or accident.

Best Regards

Supervisor of Downtown Residence 

These are reasonable rules and regulations, but when I read this email, I laughed; I had a feeling that something quite Moroccan had happened. I don't want to overemphasize cultural differences, but in general, culturally speaking, we Americans expect and value equal treatment and equal application of policies, rules, and regulations. Consideration of individual circumstances may be seen as favoritism and as unfair. Moroccan culture, on the other hand, is a negotiation culture. There is more of a sense that each individual case should be considered separately, in light of individual circumstance, personal connections, and the quality of the argument made on one's behalf (by one's self or by a representative). 

The above downtown residence pet policy was clearly created retroactively just for Ryan and Tara, and I found it to be a clever and delightful (and face-saving) solution to the (potential) problem Ryan and Tara created by getting a cat without permission.

On watching TV

During our nearly 10 years of marriage, T and I have very rarely had "TV." (By this I mean that we have always had a television, but we have rarely had reception of any television channels. This is because we are too cheap to pay for TV, so we have only had it when it has been provided to us for free). Our time in Morocco is one of those rare times. And I have to say that it can be quite interesting watching television in a foreign country.

Our TV channels come in a variety of languages – standard Arabic, Darija, French, and English. A somewhat surprising amount of the television programming is American. Even the programming that is 100% French (languagewise) seems to consist largely of American TV programs dubbed in French. (I really don't understand French, but I enjoyed watching a portion of a dubbed Simpsons episode. I was very impressed by how similar the French voice actors sounded to the American voice actors. If you ever get an opportunity to watch the Simpsons in French, I highly recommend that you do so.)

The commercials are interesting, too, whether or not they are in English. When we first moved here, we frequently saw intriguing and emotionally powerful antiterrorism videos similar to this one:



But I have to say – with the caveat that this conclusion is based entirely on casual and unscientific observation – that a large percentage of commercials are for soaps and other cleaning products: hand soap, body soap, clothing soap, shampoo, etc. Paranoia-inducing commercials for Dettol seem especially prevalent.

I also enjoy the commercials for nonalcoholic beverages that are explicitly advertised like beer.



We now have fewer English language TV channels than we did when we moved into this apartment; for some reason, we keep losing channels. At any given time, though, there will be one or two English language (usually American) movies on TV. I am often amused by the choice of movies, which can range from well-known films like Black Hawk Down to weird movies you've probably never heard of like May to movies with totally culturally inappropriate content like Girl 6.

I'm especially surprised to see these channels showing movies like that last one because virtually all sexual content, including kisses, is edited out of everything shown on these Arabic-subtitled TV channels. (T and I knew we had gotten used to these new television decency standards when, one day, we found ourselves staring slack-jawed at a vigorous kissing and groping scene that, for some reason, had not been edited out of a movie on the Action channel. We were shocked the way you might be shocked if the 10 o'clock news suddenly got interrupted by full frontal nudity.)

Watching TV in a foreign country is so much more interesting than it was to watch it in my own country. Every commercial and every program feels like a cultural clue (or, sometimes, a cultural puzzle). It's also interesting to see what television programming gets exported from the United States and to reflect on how that affects the image people in the Arab world have of Americans.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch the latest installment of Arabs Got Talent.

All the same

Are small towns all over the world the same? Here are some similarities I have noticed between Ifrane and small towns in the U.S. with which I am familiar. (Powellites, this is for you!)

-When you fly into the airport (which is in a nearby [or not so nearby] big city), it's probable that you will either be on the plane with someone you know, or you will run across someone you know somewhere along the way. (In the U.S., whichever one of you has a car will offer a ride to the other; in Morocco, you will share a taxi home.)*

-You cannot go out anywhere in your town without seeing at least a few people you know. If you are a teacher, you will see your students, and sometimes they will explain to you why they missed class on Friday; they will ask about the assignment due on Monday; etc.

-When you go to the nearby “big city” to shop (at Wal-Mart, Target, or Marjane), you will, in all likelihood, see some of your coworkers there doing the same thing.

-People you have never met know who you are.

-You don't need the Yellow Pages because any time you need goods or services, you just ask everybody you know who they would recommend.

-When you go to your town's coffee shop, you don't actually have to place an order because they already know what you usually get.

-You evaluate the restaurants in your small town with the highest rating being "[name of small town] good." For example, if someone asks you, "Does this restaurant have good food?" you will respond, "It's Ifrane good."

-You will drive for three or four hours just to get to a place where you can go shopping, eat at a truly good restaurant, go to the dentist, go to the doctor, have a surgical procedure done, etc.

-Any time you try to walk someplace, people driving by will constantly stop to ask if you need a ride.

*Last August, when T and I were flying to Morocco for the first time, on the plane from New York we sat across the aisle from a nice couple and their baby. They asked where we were going, and we told them that T had a job at Al Akhawayn University. The woman said something like, "Oh, my husband's father teaches there." We probably responded with something like, "Oh, that's nice." Fast forward several months. I am in Rabat with my friend LW. She is stopping by the house of her friend Steve to visit his son and son's wife because they are also her friends. Son's Wife opens the door and looks strangely familiar to me. She is much quicker than I am and realizes that she and her husband and baby sat across from us on the plane several months earlier. She even has a picture she took of her baby on the plane in which you can see T and me in the background. This was a weird reminder that the world isn't nearly as big as we sometimes think it is.