I knew we'd get it eventually

Love you  mamma!

Home Leave

Well, it wasn't officially home leave, but what's the difference between hobbling together a string of cross-country budget flights and some annual leave days?

Actually, a boat load.

But I'll tell you why I'm sitting in the Milwaukee airport at 11 PM when we started our first leg at 8 AM later.

For now: the joys of going home!  Max and I spent a week at home in Utah with our families and had a wonderful time.  We are, however, exhausted and decided that next time we will take a little mini vacation during our vacation to regroup :)

I have to say, one of the many highlights was watching my rock star little brother kick serious butt in his high school soccer game.  There are few things in life that give me more pride than my little brothers and my wee heart ranneth over.  I don't know how many games of his I'll get to see as he is going to play college soccer in Hawaii (even farther away from Morocco than Utah...lame) and this was a great game to be the last for a while.

Oh, that's right, the airport.  In my frugalness I patched together some vouchers and free plane tickets we had accumulated and the journey out to Utah went well (if very long) but the ride home has been a disaster. Our first flight was delayed by an hour because the co-pilot was a no show and after two layovers, Denver and Milwaukee respectively, a giant storm grounded all of the planes coming in or out of DC.  Curse you weather.  But we just heard over the loudspeaker that the flight has left the DC gate and should arrive in about two hours.  A 3.5 hour delay might seem awful after 12 hours of flying....but I've decided to take this opportunity to get our bodies on Morocco time.  I think we're going to set our watches forward in New York the next three days and see if we can't stave off some jet lag.

And I overheard a stirring defense of '-------redacted--------redacted-----who is actually a good dictator' on the airplane.  Max was sure I was going to flip around and tear into the yokel.

But I did not.

I am a diplomat.

(more on that later!)

Busy Busy

Even though 99% of our stuff has already been packed up (including all of Max's socks and t-shirts...woops) I am still busy busy as we prepare to leave DC on Saturday.  There's the last minute tailoring and dry cleaning, insurance getting, paper work filling out and friends seeing.

And did I mention that I'm finishing my thesis this semester?  If you "eaked"after reading that, then you and I did the same thing just then.  The good news is, I'm almost finished!  I will submit all of my work to my supervisor by April 13th (hopefully before) and If all goes well I'll graduate on May 28th with a Masters in Library and Information Science.  Max has assured me that he will not feel threatened by my higher level of education and my theoretical ability to earn more than him.

I think I can crank out the last bit before we leave on Saturday.

I have definitely earned at least a day at the hamman in morocco and perhaps even a fun European weekend of my choosing.  Any suggestions?
 

What else have I been doing in my "free time"?
 Carving lino-cuts and making prints.

Everybody needs a release, right?

This is my first go at it, but I hope to make
many more.  

How Did It Come To This?

In two ways really.  One: how did it come to me buying out the entire selection of refried beans, chillies, and enchilada sauce in two grocery stores - one of which was the equivalent of a Mexican Costco?

And Two: How did it come to be moving day already!

I sit on my bed, my last island of "stuff not to pack" as clearly marked by a yellow sticky, and write this as three very nice men pack my 60+ cans of refried beans and 13 bottles of chili powder. What can I say, we are from Utah and we eat Mexican food. Moroccans, as I understand, do not.

I don't quite feel nostalgic for America yet as we still have one week in DC and another in Utah, but I am feeling a bit nervous that I have let my second set of keys and my parking pass be packed up on accident... But if that's the worse thing to happen, I think I can manage.

Actually, that's not entirely true about nostalgia. We saw Rango last week and as a girl who comes from some serious farmer/pioneer heritage it made me start idealizing "The West" and my memories of spending time with my Grandparent's on what used to be the farm on which my mother grew up.  It's funny because among my relatives who still live there my siblings and I are often referred to as "city kids", which has really made me laugh as I contemplate cocktail parties where I have nothing to say and dinner parties where I use the wrong fork.  I always feel like a country bumpkin when I travel, but as my travel mentor Rick Steves says - that's not a bad thing. We bumpkins are good at stumbling onto lovely things and asking questions others might be embarrassed to ask. Our understood and accepted lack of culture makes us eager and thoughtful travelers.

But back to "The West".  When we were in Jordan I started getting an idea of things that were "Jordanian" or what was "Arab" and I wondered what things were seen as "American". There are obvious things like Hollywood and Americata (what my Italian mom Rita says Italians call bang, bang, fast paced American movies) and for the most part, the type of values we hope to project into the world: ingenuity, hard work, creativity, the ability to make it from nothing - American Dream type stuff.  I also came to realize that "The West" is pretty central to people's idea of America.  I found it was pretty common for Western things and even Mexican things to represent the whole of America in billboards, TV ads and restaurants- like when I when to "Reel Mexican Fud" in Dhahiyat Al-Rasheed, Amman for what I hoped would be an enchilada and was served a hamburger with fries.  One's pretty much the same as the other, right?  I certainly didn't see any deep dish pizza chains or philly cheesesteak joints.  America didn't even have a "West" for a long time, but something about the gun-slingin', lone-ridin' cowboy must have really captured the world's imagination.

It seems my nostalgia follows suit.  When I start longing for home, I don't think of my regular old apartment in DC or driving my car home from college through the snow, I think of getting scooped up by my grandpa's giant tractor shovel and carried through the air or husking corn in grandma's front yard and storing the corn worms in a jar to scare her with later.  

Or Disneyland.  Somehow that sneaks in there pretty regularly too.      



By the by, if you aren't from the West and want to feel what I'm talking about - you should read "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac Mcarthy or any of his Border Trilogy.  They are superb.

On The Bus: The Airplane Edition

"In a car or a plane or a choo choo train"

Ahh, one of our favorite songs from English Camp, lots of fun in Italy last summer. We could work in 5 or 6 rounds of this song before the kids got bored. It was golden.

But I digress: Air Travel. I have flown quite a bit this past year. With coming home from Jerusalem, moving to DC and visiting Utah a few times, and the free ticket bonanza of Christmas 2010,  I've had my share of Bloody Mary Mix.  (Max is a ginger-ale guy, but nothing says fancy to me like spicy tomato juice with a lime.)  I was able to visit my sister in Wisconsin this past week and never before had I felt like airplane travel had so much in common with public transportation.  Of course there's always the underlying smell of body oder and the loudness of either engines or babies - or a combination of both - but this particular flight was really....well, ghetto.

When I got to my seat there were cracker crumbs from here 'till Sunday on the cushion.  No big deal, I wiped them off.  But then I noticed that the little pouch on the back of the chair in front of me was full of someone else's garbage already.  Half eaten lunchable anyone?  But the best was when I noticed the cushion on the chair next to me had been pulled about half way off revealing the metal hinges and gizmos below it.  I tried to pull the cushion back to its original position for my future neighbor, but it wouldn't budge.  She ended up just putting her jacket over the bare metal which was probably a  good thing because there were several empty water bottles in the pouch in front of her where she would have put it otherwise.

But don't think I'm complaining.  I actually love public transportation.  A few weeks ago I was talking to my sister on the phone about something sad and I burst into tears right on the bus.  No one around me even batted an eye.  There is no such thing as "normal" behavior on public transportation or public spaces for that matter and thus you get to be surrounded by people and potential conversations while still enjoying a high level of reclusiveness if you choose.  That's part of what I like about being in a foreign country, but that's a post for another day.

More than loving public transportation, flying amazes me.  I'm always glued to the window when we take off and I can't believe the modern marvel it is.  Not only how fast air travel is, but the sheer mechanics of moving a hundred people and their tiny pretzel bags from one place to another through the air.  So, I'll take my smelly cabin-mates and crumbed upped seats any day.   


PS - here is a picture of me with my adorable little niece.  And one of her with an angry face. It's my favorite face of hers.    

Handcrafted in Morocco

Zellij

Morocco has a rich history of handcrafted art.  Think painstakingly painted, fired, and set tile work called Zellij, hand carved stone and wood in intricately detailed geometrical patterns, handmade leather work and a host of other handcrafted goods.  Morocco is very proud of its tradition of highly skilled artists and it has really made the effort to promote the making and selling of local handcrafted goods in light of cheap tourist goods flooding the market.

I just finished reading "A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco" by Suzanna Clarke who, in preparation for remodeling a Dar (house) in Fez (and in preparation for the book too I'd imagine) learned about all things Moroccan art and architecture.  The two often go hand in hand.  She worked with local craftsman to try and restore a centuries old house as faithful to the neighborhood and artistic blueprint as possible.  Throughout the book she explores dealing with locals, red tape to high heaven, and the many aspects of Moroccan Architecture and hand-craftmenship (a word I may have made up).  Tahir Shah's "A Year in Casablanca" provided similar insight into the art and architecture found in the region.  


The point is, it's amazing.  I don't think I'll do a very good job at explaining how amazing, so check out these slides about a new Moroccan architecture exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.  You can also read the New York Times Article about it here.