A downside

One of the upsides to international living is that one gets to meet many people who are from and/or have lived in different places all over the world. A downside is that those people, some of whom become one's friends, often leave to go back to those other places.

There is an inherent transience to this lifestyle that I was warned about but that I didn't dedicate much time to thinking about – there were just so many other "more important" things for me to consider before and after moving here. I became more aware of it after we moved here and found it difficult to make friends with the more established members of the University community. The fact is, many people who have been here for several years don't bother to get to know the new people because we are all just coming in and out of a revolving door. Why invest emotional energy and time into establishing a relationship with someone who's just going to leave after a few months?

The flip side to that viewpoint is that, because so many of us are new to this place, relationships can be established somewhat easier and more quickly than in other settings. It's almost like college all over again, and I love that sense of being in a community in which it's okay to rely on each other, to borrow popcorn or rice, and to drop by each others homes unannounced.

Nevertheless, I have to learn to cope with my friends leaving. As I gave LW a big hug yesterday (she and her family are returning to Connecticut today), I realized that I'm used to being the one who leaves! I have always thought it's easier to be the "leaver" than to be the one who is left behind, and now I know that's true. LW and her family have become such an integral part of my life here that their sudden absence is almost tangible. (Now I have to do yoga by myself in the mornings. Who will I get coffee with? Who will we watch Modern Family episodes with? Whose garden will we hang out in now? Who will help me decide what to cook with all the random vegetables in my refrigerator?) And the Ws have reminded me that, as long as I stay with this mobile lifestyle, I will keep having to say good-bye over and over again.

The stork

At 7:30 this morning, while I was sitting sleepily on the edge of my bed (yeah, yeah, I'm sleeping in a little more these days), our cell phone rang. It was my friend LW calling, and as soon as I answered she said, "We have an emergency, a real emergency, and we need your help." My mind started racing. Had something happened to one of her little girls? Did the emergency have something to do with the fact that this is the family's last day in Morocco before moving back to Connecticut? If they were having a real emergency, what was I possibly going to do to help them?

LW quickly explained that this was not a "bad emergency." You see, the W's cat, Sammy, is quite the birder. She has brought several birds home to the family and one time even caught a starling from a window of their second-floor apartment. This morning, as one of the girls was getting ready to head down the stairs that lead from their apartment to the outside, she saw a stork standing in the stairwell. Sammy was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, guarding the stork and keeping it from leaving. How Sammy ever got control of a bird the size of a 10-year-old child is beyond me, and I have no idea what she planned to do with the stork once she had it stuck in the stairwell. Nevertheless, I'm sure she was quite proud of herself for this greatest of conquests. Perhaps she was even confused why her family didn't seem appreciative of her great gift to them.

After LW told me what was going on, as quickly as I could, I ran to their apartment (less than a block away from my apartment) and hissed Sammy away from the door. The Ws came out of their apartment and shooed the oddly reluctant stork outside. Apparently storks are not big into panicking, since the stork decided to stroll around their yard for quite a while before finally wandering out and sauntering around downtown Ifrane. It's possible there's something wrong with the stork, but we did everything we could to save it from Sammy the Bird Killer.

And it was quite a start to my day.

Birds of the world, beware this dangerous beast.

The King's Speech

On one of our two days in London last weekend, on our way to someplace else we walked past this:

Let me give you a closer look:

I thought this was rather fortuitous given the popularity of the recent film about Lionel Logue, given that I certainly had no idea where his former office was located nor would I have thought to look for it, and given my current career interest.