Laundry day!

It's official: Tuesday is laundry day.

My plan is to wash only two loads, every other week. From now on, in the S household, an item shall only be placed in the dirty laundry bag if it is giving off a strong bad odor, if it has a large and obvious stain, or if it has had serious exposure to germs. The rule stands until such time that someone else is paid to do the S household's laundry. In case you're wondering why, I'll explain the steps I had to go through to do one load of laundry.

1. Get Tate's ID card from him.

2. Go to the Business Office between the hours of 9am and 2:30pm, Monday through Friday--during which they may or may not be open--and put some money on Tate's account.

3. Go to the bookstore to buy laundry tickets (7 dirhams each--that's almost a dollar).

4. Go back to the apartment, sort the laundry, and load it into the duffle bag.

5. Walk down three flights of stairs with said duffle bag. It's heavy. I'm a wimp.

6. Walk to Building 36, about a quarter of a mile away, including some up and down stairs.

7. Once the laundry attendant is finished with her phone conversation, give her my ticket so she can put a token from her pocket in the washing machine and start it.

8. Walk back to the apartment because I forgot to bring something to do while waiting for my laundry, and anyway, there's no place to sit and wait.

9. Walk back down the stairs and over to Building 36 to move laundry into a dryer.

10. Laundry isn't done yet, so wander around outside for a few minutes.

11. Move laundry into dryer.

12. Walk back to the apartment.

13. Walk back to Building 36 and give the woman another ticket because the laundry is still wet.

14. Walk back to the apartment.

15. Walk back to Building 36, load up the duffle bag, and walk up and down some stairs to my apartment building.

16. Walk back up three flights of stairs.

17. Lay out the clothes that still aren't dry.

Hmm. Maybe there are some improvements to be made to this procedure.

(I have, for nearly my entire life, absolutely detested doing laundry. The only exception occurred during the three years in my house in Powell [which, by the way, is still for sale]. Oh, Frigidaire high efficiency washer and dryer right on the back porch! How I miss you!)

The U

Today I was supposed to do laundry. I have been putting it off for a few reasons. First, the hours of the two laundry facilities on campus have changed more than once even in the 10 days we've been here, so it hasn't been clear to me when I could do laundry. Second, the facility is, oh, I don't know, maybe a quarter of a mile away. I have no problem walking that far, but I've been procrastinating walking that far with a giant bag of laundry (especially since I've been paranoid that I'd get there and the facility would be closed because the hours keep changing). Finally, I know that some small thing will go wrong--I won't know how to use the machines, or I'll ruin one of T's work shirts. Something. I'm not being a pessimist here, and I'm okay with something going wrong, but I've still wanted to put it off.

So instead of doing laundry, I wandered around campus. The original purpose of my wanderings was to try to find a 4 kilometer nature trail that supposedly goes around campus. That purpose was not fulfilled. But I did get some pictures of campus. I focused on buildings that I haven't seen pictures of online, like the auditorium, which I think is a very interesting mix of Moroccan and European architecture:

People who actually know anything about architecture are invited to leave intelligent-sounding comments describing the architecture of this building.

All of the buildings on campus look like this one, with the red tile roofs and yellow walls. Actually, almost all buildings in Ifrane have a similar look. This is not typical Moroccan architecture.

Because all buildings on campus look the same, differentiated only by a small sign somewhere on the building indicating its number, it is very easy to get lost on campus.



Appearances are clearly important on this campus, so I was pleased to see a little "funkiness" in the form of artwork on a few of the buildings.

T is in building 10, on the second floor. He was busy working hard in his office while I wandered aimlessly around campus.

All of the computers on campus have French keyboards, which are just similar enough to QWERTY as to be rather confusing. The French keyboards can be reset as QWERTY keyboards, though. As long as T can type without looking at the keys, I guess he's okay.

 I thought I'd also post some pictures of the views from our apartment windows, to give you a better sense of the scenery.

View of student and faculty residence halls from our guest bedroom window.

View of another residence hall (which pretty much looks exactly like our building) from one of our living room windows. In the distance, we can see the auditorium.

This is the rest of the view from our living room window. In the distance is Michliffen Hotel, Ifrane's newest luxury hotel, which allegedly costs $7000 Moroccan dirhams a night--that's over $800 U.S.

School starts tomorrow for both T and me--he'll be a teacher, and I'll be a student. Tomorrow, real daily life in Ifrane will begin for us. This evening, as I hear the crows (which sound more like musical squeak toys than cawing American crows) calling to each other on the building rooftops, as the sun slowly moves toward the horizon, infuriatingly indifferent to the hungry and thirsty Muslim mouths waiting for its disappearance, I feel a strong sense of waiting, of suspension. Tomorrow I will begin to know what it will really be like for us to live here, when we will have to balance work (or school), and shopping, and laundry, and cooking, and all the daily things we had to do in the U.S., but that were done differently. Tomorrow!

First trip to Fez, or How I Came to be Eating Lunch in the Ladies' Restroom in Marjane

And it was a pretty lame lunch, too--half a Clif bar. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Because we are living in a small resort town where it can be difficult to find household items, the University takes all new faculty members on one free trip to two stores, Metro and Marjane, in Fes (about an hour away from Ifrane). We went today. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I was told that Metro was "like Costco" and that Marjane was a supermarket and was "like Target." I had no idea what that would mean, though. "Like," as we know from William Lutz, is a "weasel word." "Like magic," for example, means "not actually magic." So I didn't get my hopes up. I tried not to guess what either store would be like.

Besides, before I could evaluate the stores, I had to get to there alive. Have I said anything yet about Moroccan driving? Surely, it must play a significant role in keeping the Moroccan life span fairly low. Americans know nothing about tailgating. A Moroccan driver will drive with literally no space (and I use "literally" literally here) between the front of his car and the back of the car in front of him. Moroccan drivers will pass in the most insane conditions, such as on a two-way curving mountain road with no shoulder and with at least four lanes of traffic going along it already (you have to remember that besides cars going in both directions, all roads also have people on foot, donkey, bicycle, and motorbike). *

Moroccan drivers are also much more liberal in their use of car horns than Americans are. Horns are used for the same purpose I have seen them used in the U.S., basically to say, "Hey! You did something stupid and I almost hit you!" But the horns are also used to say, "Hello, everyone walking, biking, or driving more slowly than I want to be driving. I am coming up behind you and you had best move out of my way because I am not moving or slowing down. I don't care if there's nowhere for you to go in order to get out of my way. Just do it!" 

Needless to say, since I am now at home writing this blog entry, we did make it to Fes and back. And it's a trip I would like to do again, but I'd like to be able to stop along the way--because we drove by some amazing scenery. (Much of the landscape is very similar to that along the drive from Powell to Clark, Wyoming.)  All along the road are men sitting next to piles of rocks, with large jars of honey (or sugar water posing as honey) for sale. There are also produce vendors selling melons and apples and vegetables on the road side. We passed by Berbers tending their sheep herds alongside the road, and Berber tents with handmade rugs hanging outside for sale. There were also small stands selling pottery along the way.

Once in Fes, we drove straight to Metro, and from there to Marjane. Some of you asked me to take pictures of the stores, but I didn't need to. If you want to see Metro, go to Costco. If you want to see Marjane, go to a Super Wal-Mart--the biggest one you can find. Wal-Mart was the one American institution that I was categorically relieved to get away from, and then I found it again in Morocco. But this was the Wal-Mart of nightmares, packed full of weary Ramadan shoppers, the organization of the store completely unfamiliar, the contents of packages mysterious. I nearly broke down. Maybe I did break down, a little. But we came home somewhat victorious. I got a low-end blender/food processor, a clothes iron, soy sauce. I found SOY MILK and nearly bought Marjane's entire supply. I had intended to come home with a few other things (like a room fan, tahini) but can return after Ramadan ends.

So how did I come to be eating lunch in the Marjane restroom? Well, that came shortly after the miniature breakdown. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon, I had just been rather snappy with my husband, and I told myself to take a timeout in one of the (luckily rather private) bathroom stalls and have a little food.

What did I learn today? I learned not to go to Marjane during Ramadan. I also learned, again, that people (i.e. me) do crazy things while experiencing culture shock. For example, I came home with 24 jars of tomato paste. Don't ask me why. I will not be able to provide a logical answer.



*Sorry, Mom S. I'm sure this is completely freaking you out. But it's the truth!