Harbor Lights Festival

My parents are visiting us from Nebraska, and for their first weekend here, they got to attend the second annual Harbor Lights Festival. The premise of the festival is beautifully simple: boat owners decorate their boats with Christmas lights and other decorations, and members of the community walk around the harbor and then vote for their favorite decorated vessel. Hot drinks, sweet treats, and carols were provided in the nearby convention center. And since the sun sets before 4:30 right now, the lights could be enjoyed as early as 5:00pm, allowing us to take Rainbow to the festival before her bedtime.

It was a great way to kick off Christmas week.

 

This was my favorite...two people riding around the harbor with their kayak, and themselves, decorated with Christmas lights.

It was a calm and relatively warm and dry evening. The lights reflecting in the water of the harbor were lovely.

 

 

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.

What I did on Easter

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

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.

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.

Merry Christmas

Wishing you joy in three different languages

Last night, our friends Thomas and Fazia came over to our apartment for hot apple cider. They told us that the tradition of a Christmas tree and presents is becoming popular with Moroccans, which is interesting because 99% of Moroccans are Muslim.

This morning, I had an email from a Jewish friend wishing me a Merry Christmas, and I wrote back wishing her one as well.

Both were reminders of the versatility of Christmas. Although its meaning has changed for me over the years, it has always remained my favorite holiday.

Whatever your beliefs, wherever you are, whomever you're with, I wish you a Merry Christmas.

Season of relax

My favorite season? Season of relax. And what better way is there to celebrate it than with Milka special edition "Season of Relax" chocolate?

Another holiday season away from home

A few days ago, my uncle Jim sent me a link to this song by Tim Minchin. He's a comedian, but I found my eyes misting a little as I listened to the song about the role of family in making Christmas time special (for theists and atheists alike).

This morning, I was shocked upon realizing that it was time to flip my calendar to December.

Christmas is going to be here before I know it, and this year will mark my third Christmas without family and my second Christmas in a foreign country.

Out of a somewhat unhealthy desire to dwell on my growing melancholy, I went back through my photographs to look at pictures of previous family Christmases. Our last Christmas with my family was in 2008. (It also turned out to be our last Christmas at the house in which my sister and I grew up.) Our last Christmas with T's family was in 2007. Even then, it wasn't a gathering of the whole family – T's brother wasn't there.

I love Christmas. It is, hands down, my favorite holiday. And yet this year, I find myself dreading its approach. I know I should set up our little Christmas tree and try to devise some decorations for it. I know I should try to plan some kind of Christmas brunch or dinner for the small number of friends and acquaintances who will be in Ifrane that day. But I'm unmotivated to do those things because the truth is that I just want to be with family on Christmas this year.

Because I know that's not possible, I find my thoughts jumping all the way to Christmas 2012. Where will I be then? I try to comfort myself with the thought that surely next year we will find a way to be with some family members for Christmas. Realistically, though, I have no idea if that will happen. I will still be a student at that time and won't be contributing much to our household income. I have to go to Kentucky for a month this coming summer as part of my schoolwork, so it's not likely that I'll be able to justify another return to the United States a few months later. We also have family members in New Zealand, but…have you ever looked to see how far away New Zealand is??

My best coping strategy would probably be to move forward in planning a Moroccan Christmas, to make plans to Skype with family members on that day, and to try to develop a sense of solidarity with other people all over the world who spend holidays away from their families for a variety of reasons.

Happy holidays, everyone. Try to enjoy the place where you are and the people you're with.

Vegetarian Thanksgiving international potluck

 I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old, and since then, holiday meals have generally consisted of a set of rather bland side dishes--vegetarian stuffing and gravy, green bean casserole, black olives, etc. (I don't even get to eat the mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie anymore, thanks to food allergies).

The food was eaten so quickly that I hardly had a chance to get a picture.

American, Canadian, Brazilian, Portuguese...maybe we can all get along!

But that wasn't the case this year! On Saturday, T and I hosted a vegetarian Thanksgiving international potluck dinner for a small group of vegetarians (and veg-sympathizers). This year's Thanksgiving dinner featured red lentil pumpkin soup, roasted root vegetables, spicy Indian chickpeas and vegetable korma (with precious basmati rice), curried lasagna, fruit cobbler and chocolate chip pumpkin bread.

Right now, I think I have what is traditionally called "the holiday blues," exacerbated by being so far from home and by a fairly high degree of uncertainty about my future. Because of this, yesterday's dinner was a much-needed opportunity for me to reflect on what I have to be thankful for. One thing I keep coming back to is the high quality of people I've had the great fortune to meet. I've written about this before, but it's worth reflecting on again. Every place I have lived, I've met remarkably intelligent, kind, generous, and interesting people. It's easy for me to dwell on how much I miss those I've left or who have left me, but I also need to be thankful for the wonderful people I have met here.

Melilla, Spain

Monday was Eid al Adha, or Eid Kbir, a big Muslim celebration which I wrote a little about last year (here and here). T had a few days off from teaching, and we decided weeks ago that we wanted to go somewhere that wasn't Morocco when the Eid break came. When I told my friend Michael this, he wrote (whether sarcastically or not, I don't know) that he was surprised I didn't want to stay and experience the Eid. The truth is, when called upon, I can drum up a great deal of respect, or at the very least tolerance, for a wide variety of cultural practices. But that doesn't mean I am interested in participating in or observing them. For goodness' sake, there are aspects of my own culture that I'm not interested in – like keeping track of celebrity marriages, divorces, and international adoptions, or watching American Idol. So if you're interested in reading more about Eid al Adha, you'll have to look somewhere else, like here.

Because I went to Spain.

On taking the train at night during Ramadan

On Wednesday at 8am (Central Standard Time), T and I left the small town in Nebraska where we had spent most of our time the past five weeks and began our two day journey back to Ifrane, Morocco.

At 6:45pm (Greenwich Mean Time) on Thursday, we were sitting on the train from Casablanca to Meknes and were on (what we hoped would be only) the second to last leg of our travel (we would still need to get a taxi from Meknes to Ifrane).

There were, for once, very few passengers on the train. It's not much fun to travel during Ramadan, the holy month during which healthy adults are forbidden religiously, culturally, and legally from eating, drinking, or smoking from sun up to sun down. The few passengers in our train car looked tired, and most of them sat quietly, watching the sun go down. Many of them had their bottles of water, their dates, and their bagged breakfasts (for this would be their first meal of the day) sitting in front of them, ready to be eaten the minute the sun slipped below the horizon.

Soon everyone began to eat quietly, including T and me. We hadn't been engaging in a strict fast, but had been experiencing the de facto fast that often comes along with traveling. After a few minutes, a man came along with a cart and handed out small packages of dates to everyone--even to T and me. It was touching and marked the first moment for many days when I didn't feel apprehensive and even a bit depressed about returning to Morocco.

...And a Happy New Year

T and I will be heading out tomorrow for an 11 day vacation in northern Morocco, Gibraltar, and some parts of Spain. That means this is my last opportunity to publicly reflect on 2010 before the year is over.

And I think I'll decline that opportunity.

Instead, I will just wish you all a Happy New Year. May 2011 be filled with good things for all of you.

Christmas in Morocco

Imagine a plate of traditional American treats – frosted sugar cookies, molasses cookies, puppy chow– but the plate is the base of a tagine or a hand-painted plate from Fez. That was Christmas in Morocco. We all took our Christmas traditions and adapted them to our new place.

Our first adaptation was the Christmas tree. The daughters of our friends LW and JW were very insistent that T and I have a Christmas tree, and they found a small plastic one for us in the church. LW gave me some gold bells she had bought at the dollar store in Rabat (where, inexplicably, all of the merchandise is marked with prices in dollars). Then the girls made us some Christmas tree ornaments out of construction paper and staples. I was quite happy with the result.

We also made some adjustments to our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. When I was growing up, my mom would usually make a simple but satisfying dinner of clam chowder (which I never ate), potato soup, and homemade bread. For various dietary reasons, potato soup wasn't going to work for us, so I went with Moroccan bessara instead. We bought some khobz at the nearby bakery and finished the meal off with shlada limun, a simple salad of oranges, cinnamon, and orange flower water.

In case you're wondering what that weird stuff on top of our soup is…it's traditional to top bessara with olive oil, cumin and (if you like) cayenne and/or black pepper.

Midnight mass was another tradition in my family. Oddly enough, there are three nuns (members of the French order Little Sisters of Jesus) in Azrou. They had a Christmas mass – in French, of course – at 8:30 on Christmas Eve. T and I went to the mass with the Ws and one other person. We were the only people there besides the three nuns and two priests. It was not like any mass I had ever been to before.

Late on Christmas morning, we had brunch with the W family. That was probably the most unadulterated American part of our Christmas celebration. LW had made Russian tea (in my mind, a classic Midwestern winter drink) and a very American-looking breakfast casserole. And to top things off, we saw our first Moroccan snow as we were walking to the W's house for brunch. The snow didn't stick around or anything, but snow falling on Christmas morning is always special.

On Christmas evening, we got together with other Christmas celebrators for dinner. We had turkey, tamales, lasagna, hummus – it was truly an international Christmas dinner.

So there you have it. My first Christmas outside of the United States. Same, but different.

Things I miss at Christmas time

-Watching A Christmas Story all day on Christmas day

-Canned pumpkin

-Christmas light displays on houses (and even gaudy Christmas lawn ornaments)

-Seeing Christmas trees in everyone's windows at night

-Nativity scenes

-Stockings

-Snow (but just a tiny bit)

-My plastic Christmas tree and my ornaments

-Homemade fudge

-Soy nog

-Wassail

-My mom's rum rolls

-Watching family members open their gifts

-Being with family