The crowd I've been hanging with

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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 finishing my second first semester of graduate school

A few minutes ago, I hit the "submit" button on an exam on Blackboard, and that marked the end of my first semester of graduate school in speech-language pathology

But, of course, this was my second first semester of graduate school. The first first semester was in 2002. I was 23 years old, and I was a newlywed. T and I took all of our belongings out of our studio apartment (where we had lived together for only three months) and put them into the back of my dad's pickup truck. We packed ourselves, my sister, and my friend Marcy into our 1992 Dodge Shadow and drove down to New Orleans, with my parents and the pickup truck not far behind. We didn't even have a place to live in New Orleans, and I think we were too young to be particularly nervous about it.

I was pursuing a Master's degree in English, and T was getting a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. I don't recall either of us having any particular career goal in mind at that time. We were excited about the opportunity to live in a new place. We were excited about the challenge, and about the idea of having an "M" after our names (as in, JABS, M.A.).

To help pay for school, we had teaching assistantships, and so we became teachers.

Eight years later, after selling a large number of our belongings, we put most of what remained into a small storage unit in Omaha, Nebraska, and packed the rest into four large suitcases to bring with us to Ifrane, Morocco. I spent a year doing undergraduate preparatory coursework in a completely new field. And now I am (incha'allah) one quarter of the way through with graduate coursework in that field. In most ways, it is an entirely different experience. This time, I'm not going to school out of a vague love of learning and of literature. I'm going to school to prepare for a job. If you know what kind of person I am, you might understand how strange this is.

In fact, I almost feel like I'm a different person this time around. Yes, the school experience itself is entirely different because it's online. But I'm not the same kind of student, either. While I have to some degree embraced the procrastinatory nature of being a student, I haven't done so nearly to the same degree as I did nine years ago. I have handed in almost every assignment and exam at least one or two days before the due date. I don't stay up late writing papers. I'm not nearly as afraid, this time around, to admit when I don't know or don't understand something.

The one way in which I really haven't changed as a student is that the familiar fear of failure is still present. But again, I think I'm more open about it this time around. And I see that my classmates have the same fear. For most of us, this is a second or third (or more) crack at figuring out what we want to be when we grow up. Many of my classmates have spouses who are working extra hard so they can take time off to go to school, and money is tight for them. They have children who put heavy demands on their time and attention. They have aging parents to worry about. So much more is at stake this time that it makes sense for the fear to be more intense.

I hope this means, though, that in a year and a half the success will be that much sweeter.

On being a teacher again

This morning – despite the fact that, for the past year and a half, I have asserted that I did not want to – I returned to teaching.

Well, sort of. I just started a part-time job teaching English to Ifrane government administrators two mornings a week. I knew soon after this semester began that I was going to need to get a job to give me something to do besides schoolwork, but I wasn't dedicated enough to the idea to aggressively seek a job. This job came to me and was so close to perfect – except for being a teaching job – that I felt I had to take it.

After the first day, I can already tell it will be interesting, and I think I will learn a lot from doing it. Because much of my experience here has been mediated by an American-style university, this teaching job is in some ways my first experience with a Moroccan institution. I have to go to the Ifrane province building to teach, and I walk past several guards on my way. The guards salute one of my students; he's that important.

It didn't take long for me to remember what I loved about teaching and what I hated about it. I enjoy the challenge of trying to decide what to teach and how to teach it. I enjoy interacting with other people in a structured way. I enjoy helping people learn. But one thing I hate about teaching is that, at the same time that it helps me recognize some of my strengths, it also makes me painfully aware of some of my weaknesses. It's hard for me to think of another situation (except, perhaps, lying on a doctor's examination table) in which I feel more vulnerable.

Sometimes I feel incompetent as a student, but to be honest, that isn't often.  Being on the student side of the classroom (whether real or virtual) feels pretty natural to me. I feel like I know how to be a student. But being on the teacher side – even though I did it for years – feels strange. I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing, or how I should be doing it.

I guess I'd better get used to that feeling.

A murder of crows, a clowder of cats...and a league of Arabs?

In the push to the end of the semester, I think I will have less time to post to my blog, so in the meantime I'll tell you what's distracting me from my homework at the moment:

Why does "Arab League" sound okay while "League of Arabs" sounds, well, kind of racist? (At the same time, "people of color" sounds okay but "colored people" is just, well, offensive, and it actually makes me cringe.)

A little math

Insomnia last night
+ Having to retake a midterm exam today designed by a crazy person
= One adult learner who's about to lose it!

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:

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.

Skypefest 2011

If you've ever lived far away from home, particularly in another country, you probably know how touching and important it can be to get the occasional unexpected letter, email, phone call, or Skype call from a friend or family member. For me, this past week has been marked by such unexpected communications, and it has helped me start my Monday morning feeling connected and grounded.

That's a good thing, because I think next week is midterm week, which means lots of grading for T and studying for me. I guess I'd better get to work...

And now for something completely different

In what ways does the above picture illustrate the caption below it? Discuss.

(As far as I can tell, all communication disorders textbooks are required to contain at least two dozen photographs of clinicians sitting at tables with other people, usually children. All of the pictures are exactly the same, but they all have different captions beneath them, as if the existence of each individual photograph in the textbook somehow elucidates some specific concept covered in the text. And it is required that at least two different ethnic groups be represented in each photograph.)

(I'm in the home stretch with my coursework and will resume regular programming soon. I have many things I want to blog about, including the joys of living in a tourist town and the "nosiness" of Moroccans.* Stay tuned!)



*Don't get offended by this. I'll explain it in a future post.

Frustration mitigation

Since we moved into our downtown apartment, I have wasted hours of my time dealing with spotty Internet service. I recognize that I am in a third world country. I recognize that it's pretty cool that I have Internet at all. This does not change the fact that I need to use the Internet to do my coursework, and that I waste time dragging my school materials back and forth between here and campus on the days when our Internet unexpectedly goes out.

No more, I say! Today, I initiated my Frustration Mitigation Plan.

First, I anticipated communication problems, so I enlisted my friend JW (LW's tech savvy husband) to go with me to the Maroc Telecom office to buy a nifty USB modem. We only had to wait outside their office for about five minutes for them to open after lunch, so I was already feeling good about how things were going. We were the first people inside and didn't have to wait in line. JW, along with a random customer who spoke very good English,* discussed my options with me, and when I made a decision, he went with me to talk to the salesman.

JW started in Darija. The man answered him in English. (I called his wife later and said I was so glad that I made JW go with me to the office so he could translate what I needed into English. She pointed out that if I had not made him go with me, no one in the office would have spoken English because, you know, that's how things go.)

The process was so easy that I sent JW home and completed the transaction myself. And now I am writing this blog post (wasting more time dealing with Internet stuff) with my new, fast, reliable Internet service.

And I am also reflecting on the fact that expecting complications, which has always been a bit of a natural tendency for me, has become an ingrained habit living here. The nice thing about expecting the worst is that when things actually go smoothly, it makes me ridiculously happy.

*I'm going to write an entire blog post on this phenomenon just as soon as I have time.

On the fact that I might actually know what I'm doing with my life

I haven't written very specifically about my plans for my future. Some of you know that I have spent this year taking undergraduate courses in speech-language pathology. When it came time in the fall to apply to online Master's programs, I discovered that there was only one program in the United States that would even consider accepting me while I lived overseas. I applied to that one program and proceeded to become increasingly nervous as each day passed.

This morning, I had an e-mail from someone in that program.

Still here

I'm still here, everyone. Besides a recent day trip to Fez with friends (which I still may write about later), I just haven't done anything "blog worthy" lately.

What I have done is gotten myself beneath a nearly unmanageable pile of schoolwork by taking five difficult online classes. What I have done is turned down hikes, book discussions, and coffee breaks to study for exams. What I have done is gotten my first "C" on an assignment because, despite turning down all opportunities for distractions, despite the fact that I don't have a job, despite the fact that I hire someone to do my laundry and dishes and cooking, I didn't have the time that I needed to put into it.

And what do I keep thinking? I wish I had worked less hard when I was in college the first time around, when the stakes weren't as high as they are now. When I was in college 10 years ago (okay, more than 10 years ago), I also turned down social events to do school work. But I didn't need to. I didn't need to get A's in every class. I didn't need to read every chapter of every textbook that was assigned.

That's a strange confession to make: I worked too hard in college.

Now, I have to get A's and B's in all of my classes if I want to have any chance of pursuing my desired career. There's no class like Introduction to Theatre on my schedule (sorry, theater professors) to provide some relief from the "heavy" classes. And while I know I'm not "old," my brain and body aren't as flexible now as they were back then, and I do have to work harder.

So what was my point? Oh, yes. I'm still here. In Morocco. At least, that's where I was the last time I checked.

Miscellany

T and I returned home from The Great Vacation on Saturday night. I could write pages and pages on this blog about the trip. I could write about all the different forms of transportation we took – petit taxis, grand taxis, trains in Morocco and Spain, buses in both countries, a ferry, and a plane. I could write about the miles and miles that we walked in each town we visited because we were too cheap to take transportation when we absolutely didn't have to. I could write about all my parrot encounters, from the friendly Quaker parrots and Indian Ringnecks at the wildlife park in Gibraltar (most of the parrots there were taken from people who were trying to illegally smuggle them somewhere) to the little cockatiel at our hotel in Ronda to the wild Indian Ringneck flocks in Sevilla. I could write about all the great food we had – Chinese, Indian, tapas, and meals at two vegetarian restaurants.

But I don't really have time to write about all that. I started school again on Monday, and this semester I'm taking five difficult courses online.

It remains to be seen whether I will survive that.

So I will just leave you with two videos from our trip. The first is a short video of our Spanish New Year's Eve at El Reducto in Tetouan. The second is a short recording I made at the top of the rock of Gibraltar. Enjoy!

On being a student again

While T teaches, I am auditing beginning French and taking four online undergraduate courses in a pre-speech language pathology program. Before starting my classes, I was apprehensive, for many reasons. I had a lot of questions. What will it be like to move from the social role of teacher to student? What if the classes are too hard? What if they are too easy? What if I decide I hate the field and have to scrap my plan? What will it be like to start school at the same time that I move to a new home in a new country? Will it be too much?

Now I'm developing answers to some of those questions. I thought that, as a former college instructor, I would be very critical of my own instructors. I am, but I am also much more sympathetic to them than I would have been at, say, 18 years of age, because I now have a much better understanding of how difficult their jobs are.

The classes are both too hard and too easy, in certain ways. Because I'm not sitting in a classroom (and maybe because I'm over 30 years old), retention of material is more difficult. Much of the material in three of the classes is review, making it easy but a bit boring. Anatomy and physiology is  kicking my butt. That class is teaching me that I cannot re-adopt my perfectionistic student habits. I cannot, for example, learn all of the material for the exam I'm taking tomorrow morning. I have been studying for a week. My brain will not memorize everything. I have to be okay with that.

I maintain that it is harder to be a student at 30 than at 18, despite all of the benefits that maturity bestows upon the older student. I see this most in French class, where a University professor who is about my age sits next to me, and we roll our eyes at each other as we try to make even the simplest of utterances in French, while the 20 year old American students in the class are clearly picking up on things more quickly than we are.

One final problem with being a student again is that these classes are not taking up enough of my time. Why is that a problem? Because I haven't yet figured out how to fill the time not taken up by classes. Even laundry, which seems like a ridiculously laborious task now, doesn't actually fill very many hours in a given week. Filling my time is a part of my unemployment and an aspect of culture shock which I anticipated. But that doesn't mean I've yet figured out how to do it.

When I start to feel frustrated by the challenges of my new role as student, I just look at my French instructor, or my husband for that matter, and remind myself that their position is the alternative. I really am content with being on the student side of the desk. For now, anyway. And I am thankful for the distraction it provides for at least a few hours each week.

Tomorrow we head for the beach with some new acquaintances (potential friends?). Photos to follow next week!