At the end of March
I met my dear grandparents
down in Marrakesh¹

We had orange juice
for breakfast every morning
It was delicious²

Lunch at a café
recommended by my friend
and very purple³

They both exited
into sunlight, their figures
dark against the door⁴

Heat in the main square
radiated off a man
in red, who strode on⁵

We walked through the souks
dark with shadows but light in
the eyes of merchants⁶

The streets are filled with
scooters and people just step
aside as they pass.⁷

It rained each evening,
which didn’t stop the scooters
that slipped through the night

I saw the garden
of Yves Saint-Laurent, a famed
designer of plants⁸

This small bee, employed
for flower upkeep, inspects
each blossom closely⁹

We found ourselves in
a cathedral of cacti
stretched above our heads

I imagined some
as extraterrestrial
imports from Venus

The garden made my
grandparents smile and then I
snapped a quick photo

Grandma’s lunch: penne
with aubergine, a fancy
French word for eggplant

Mine: fresh tomato
buffalo mozzarella
fresh pesto drizzle

Homemade pastilla
for you-know-who, who ate it
with relish and fork

On to Ben Youssef
Madrasa, scholars replaced
with tourists by now¹⁰

Each tile in its place
like the veins of a new leaf
glowing in the sun

A woman crosses
my photo, her reflection
in water and lens

Once a student sat
here, writing verse in patterned
window light, alone

This park was supposed
to have frolicking salmon
but it was too dry

The largest Jewish
population in the town
lies under this ground¹¹

Children tried to lead
us to the synagogue, but
we found it ourselves¹²

1. I did not arrive via donkey cart; rather, I missed my train and took an all-night bus from Tangier, befriending two Marrakshi girls along the way.
2. I had two cups, fresh squeezed.
3. We ate harira and halwa chebakia; practicing for Ramadan.
4. And paused to wait for me.
5. If he had known that I was taking his picture, he would have turned around and demanded money. Nothing is free in Marrakesh.
6. A scarf-seller went through four price changes with me after I revealed that I live in Morocco and know what things cost. Despite this, I’m certain he still made a huge profit.
7. I rode one myself to the train station with a friend. Traffic patterns in Morocco are a unique experience and require a mental balance between vigilance and trust.
8. He also designed clothes in his spare time.
9. He refused to turn around and pose for a photo. Being camera-shy myself, I could empathize.
10. Ben Youssef Madrasa was, at one time, one of the largest Islamic colleges in North Africa. It is famous for its intricate carvings and tilework.
11. In the Mellah district. Marrakesh once had a huge Jewish community, but most emigrated to Israel decades ago. Local families still maintain the grounds. “Mellah” means “salt” in Arabic and Hebrew.
12. A surprising number of children in Marrakesh employ the “guess where the tourists are going and walk just slightly ahead of them, then demand money when they reach their destination” trick. I was not impressed.

Early January in Tangier was exciting, and not just because of the delightful weather. Not one, but two friends, Christopher² and Erin,³ joined me in Morocco for the final week of my vacation. If I described our activities in detail, I would be sitting here on my couch, wasting beautiful Tangier sunshine for the rest of the day. Instead, here is a bulleted list:

• Met some American college students at the airport, who were hilariously unprepared for their two-day trip to Morocco. How can someone be unprepared for a two-day trip, you ask? Well, they planned to visit five or six cities, nevermind the geographic impossibility of such a plan. Gave them a lift into town and advised them to stick to northern Morocco unless they wanted to spend their whole trip on a bus.
• Hosted a couchsurfer from Hong Kong named Yik. She was tiny with great big glasses, and had a plethora of cautionary tales to tell about traveling in southern Morocco.
• Went to Casa Barata. Casa Barata is probably the biggest flea market you’ve ever seen, with everything from fancy women’s shoes to a lumberyard.⁴
• Exchanged holiday gifts.
• Ate the most depressing pizza of my life. Undercooked meat and all. Swore never to order from the place again. Ordered from them two weeks later. Regretted it even more.⁵
• Began putting together a gigantic Gustav Klimt puzzle on my dining room table. (Still in progress, though a few of the pieces have been chewed beyond recognition by the cat.)⁶
• Forced both of them to try every food available to us, including the ones I don’t like. (Liver.)
• Watched a lot of movies. I fell asleep halfway through many.
• Ate many grilled cheese sandwiches, prepared lovingly by Erin, grilled cheese chef extraordinaire.
• Attempted to travel to Chefchaouen for a weekend. This plan fell through.
• Attended a group dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant and found out that Harry, close friend/running partner,⁷ was moving to Jeddah. Had a little extra wine.
• Attempted to travel to Asilah for a day. Made it within two kilometers of the city, spent too long at lunch (which was delicious)⁸ and had to head back.
• Set a personal record walking to a meeting in town: nearly 3 kilometers in 15 minutes, including a bakery stop along the way. Did arrive slightly out of breath.
• Both Christopher and Erin came to school with me and helped out a bit with the students. Erin gave several talks to the lower school about graduate study, technology, robots, and other science-related topics.⁹
• Temporarily adopted Sophie, an American volunteer at the Cinémathèque, who stayed with us for a week before continuing down to Casablanca for a film production internship.
• Successfully traveled to Chefchaouen, where we spent a day exploring the city, taking goofy photos, eating sandwiches, and meeting colorful characters. Upon arrival, we followed a complete stranger from the bus stop (which was actually just on the side of the road instead of the usual bus station) to our hotel without incident. Spent a lot of time talking about Chaouen, his daughters, the unusual lack of rainfall this winter, and his drunk friend who tumbled to his death near where we were walking. Gave a few dirhams to get rid of him once we were safely within sight of the hotel. It worked out in the end, but was not an experience that I care to repeat.
• Before heading back to Tangier, we sipped mint tea at a rooftop café. This seems as if it would be a fairly straightforward task. However, it was complicated by the bees. Christopher’s tea-drinking experience was calm and incident-free. Erin, however, was subjected to what she viewed as extreme anthophilan discrimination. Bees swarmed her glass, until one got a little too close to the hot tea and fell in, expiring instantly. Erin was horrified, and Christopher, ever the gentleman, kindly offered to trade glasses.¹⁰ But as soon as Erin raised the new glass to her lips, a second bee plummeted into the tea. And then a third. In the end, Erin just waited for all the bees with a death wish to drown themselves in her tea, calmly scooped them out, then smashed them angrily on the table, yelling insults. Erin does not like bees.
• Ate shawarma.
• Caught a screening of Chaplin‘s The Kid at the Cinémathèque. Persuaded five friends¹¹ to come with me. Wonderful to see a young, multicultural audience enjoying Chaplin. I’ve always argued that his films are accessible for all age groups and speakers of any language, and it was nice to see further proof of this.¹²
• Ordered some mediocre Thai food.
• Ordered some mediocre Lebanese food.¹³
• Ate delicious Moroccan food at Darna, a nonprofit near the medina that supports homeless or disadvantaged children and women in Tangier. They have an amazing café that–for some reason–I only discovered recently. It was Friday, so couscous with stewed vegetables, salad, tea. Everything there tasted like someone’s lovable grandmother had cooked it especially for us.
• Christopher returned to frigid Ninotsminda.
• Ate heart-shaped pasta.¹⁴
• Played an intensely competitive¹⁵ game of Scrabble with Erin, Barbara, and Sophie. Erin won, but barely.
• Designed a postcard for the Alliance Française’s Les Lutins du Court-Métrage short film festival. (If you’re in the DC area, I highly recommend catching a night or two of this festival. Lots of fun! And I’m not just saying that because I created the promotional material.)
• Ate many clementines.
• Had another movie night for the kids.
• Trained a new library volunteer.
• Acquired an accordion.¹⁶
• Cooked delicious baked macaroni and cheese with pasta shells, onions, potatoes, breadcrumbs, and two types of cheese.
• Left Erin at the airport. Did not sneak any bees or liver into her suitcase.

See how much shorter that was?

Since then, most of my activities have been work-related. Beginning in January, I am running a new, monthly film series in partnership with the American Legation. We’re screening films in English at the Legation, which are free and open to the public. Our hope is that it will bring the community closer together, provide much-needed practice for English language learners in Tangier, and expose audiences to films they otherwise might not have a chance to see.¹⁷ Our first movie was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, followed by a great discussion.

I also hosted a sleepover in the library for the third and fourth grade girls. We watched a couple of movies, played games, ate pizza, did a creative writing activity,¹⁸ told ghost stories, danced, listened to music, giggled a lot, and lounged around in pajamas eating croissants the next morning. They hadn’t even left yet when they started asking me when the next one would be.

Until next time, dear readers. Catch a Chaplin film, if you can, and always avoid bees in your tea.

Special behind-the-scenes photo of the author aggravating a grouchy kitten with her camera.¹⁹

And, of course, the aforementioned friends:

Scrabble, mid-game:

The last moments of a bee:

1. Isn’t “notwithstanding” a great word? Almost as good as the phrase “be that as it may”, which–as a friend of mine always says–is hilarious because it’s just a fancy way of saying “You’re right but I am too proud to admit it directly.”
2. Of Peace Corps Georgia fame.
3. Formerly of Spokane, now in charge of rolling her eyes at undergraduates in Maryland.
4. Don’t wear those shoes in the lumberyard, though.
5. This is a sequel to my falafel ordeal in Adams Morgan. I kept buying falafel from the same mediocre falafel shop for months, despite swearing each time–with each stomachache–that I would never risk it again.
6. This makes it even more challenging.
7. And husband of my other dear friend, Barbara, second grade teacher and all-around badass.
8. It was, as far as I could tell, the Moroccan equivalent of hamburgers. Small chunks of grilled hamburger meat, served with Moroccan bread and dipping sauce. Fell way, way off the pseudo-vegetarian wagon that month.
9. At the insistence of the fourth grade class, she also dispelled the Bloody Mary myth. “Science has proven that Bloody Mary does not exist. Trust me, I tested it.” She later undermined her argument by explaining the peer review process in detail, including the fact that many other scientists would have to replicate her results before they were accepted as fact.
10. He scooped out the dead bee with a piece of tin foil before drinking.
11. Including Christopher and Erin, who had no choice.
12. I had completely forgotten about that trippy angels vs. demons dream sequence in the middle. Very fun.
13. Seriously, Tangier? This is the best you’ve got? Making my own tabbouleh from now on.
14. How is it that I can find a box of heart-shaped pasta, but no bulgar wheat?
15. Erin and I were the intensely competitive ones. Barbara was pleasantly ambitious, and Sophie was cheerful despite trailing by over one hundred points.
16. My neighbors will be thrilled.
17. The Cinémathèque is fantastic, but rarely screens films in English. When it does, they are generally dubbed.
18. Yes, I convinced a group of fifteen kids to write when they didn’t have to.
19. Courtesy of Christopher.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
(George Bernard Shaw)

I woke up in Wales on Monday morning, looked out the window, and went back to sleep. Here’s the thing about working in a school library: whenever a new super-strain of bacteria or virus emerges after circling happily through the kindergartners, it’s only a matter of time. Every teacher around you can be hacking and coughing and sneezing and sniffling, but you always think to yourself, “I’ll be okay. I wash my hands. I have a giant bottle of hand sanitizer that lives on my desk. If I see a child sneeze on a book, I wipe that book down with germ-killing alcohol. And then spray it with pure ozone. While wearing a biohazard suit.¹ Besides, I have excellent immunity from constant exposure to these things. I eat about ten clementines a day.²” Well, readers, there comes a point when even the best precautions can no longer protect you from five to ten different versions of the common cold all vying, like tiny gladiators, to battle against your immune system in the grand stadium of your body. One of them is bound to get in.

And so it was for me last week. My first day was one of denial. So what if I’ve got that weird tickle in the back of my throat that always signals an impending illness? It could be anything. I’ll just eat an extra couple of clementines.³ On day two, congestion and optimism went hand-in-hand. Hey, at least this cold is progressing really fast! At this rate, all my symptoms will be gone by the time I fly to England on Sunday. On Friday I bargained. If I skip karaoke tonight⁴ and rest instead, I’ll be better by tomorrow night. Saturday, acceptance. I’m going to England with a cold. My ears will pop on the plane and it will probably hurt because I’m so congested. Then we will arrive in rainy, frigid weather and I will have to take two trains to Wales, arriving too late at night to get proper sleep. This cold ain’t going nowhere.

Luckily for me, Barbara, my traveling companions and host in Wales, was even sicker than me. Harry, her husband, and I looked after her in the various airports and trains. Seeing someone who’d caught an even worse bug from the students made me grateful that mine was just a run-of-the-mill, pool-of-snot-on-your-pillow-at-night, annoying-but-ultimately-harmless-sniffling kind of cold. We spent the first day in Wales sitting in front of their log stove, nibbling chocolate and various types of cheeses while the weather outside couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to drizzle, mist, or pour. We did that the second day, too. And the third day. In fact, I am told there are many beautiful and wondrous things in the Cardiff area, but this week, amid sniffles and group coughing fits, sitting in front of the fire with a ball of yarn and some music was the most splendid thing I could imagine.⁵

I made one brief foray into Cardiff, accompanying Harry on some errands around town. And that’s when the reverse culture shock hit me. I walked down the packed main street, shops ablaze with blinking Christmas lights and signs in nearly every window: “SALE!” “40% OFF EVERYTHING!” “50%” “BUY ONE GET ONE FREE” “75%” “FREE PRIVATE JET AND MANSION BY THE SEA WITH PURCHASE OF ONE-YEAR PHONE PLAN + DONATION OF YOUR FIRSTBORN CHILD!”⁶ I wandered, dazed, down noisy streets, through fluorescent shopping centers, past teenagers with neon hair and armies of chain-smoking mothers, strollers of wailing toddlers at the ready. I had forgotten exactly how commercial the western world can be especially–but not only–at this time of year. I wondered how I’d ever coped with it in the first place, and sat on a bench, ears buzzing and hands shaking, for the better part of an hour.

Many people who come to Morocco comment on how commercial it is. “It’s all about the money there,” they say, or “Everyone’s just looking to sell something”. I hear this constantly, from snobbish European tourists and wandering hippies alike. And excuse me, visitors to Morocco, but have you taken a good look at your own country recently? It’s incredible to me that the irony of this attitude isn’t immediately apparent to them. Yes, Morocco is commercial. But never in its wildest dreams could it be as commercial as the United States, England, or any major European country. And thank goodness! I love living in a country where towns haven’t yet been taken over by strip malls and Wal-Marts, where local businesses and even individual artisans flourish! You want a hat made in Tangier? Go to a haberdasher! When was the last time you saw a real, functioning tailor? How about a watchmaker? And you know that merchant who sells you leather goods and Berber carpets at double the correct price because you’re tourist?⁷ That money goes to his family, his friends, local businesses and cafés; not to multinational corporations.

There’s surely a lesson in the following anecdote, dear readers, but I’ll be darned if I know what it is. I arrived at the Cardiff train station with forty-five minutes to spare. I did the civilized thing and purchased a delightful orange-flavored hot chocolate from a cheerful fellow at the station café, then parked myself in an armchair, sipping my drink and reading Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. When the 10:45 to Nottingham appeared on the board, I walked out to the designated platform, double-checked the arrivals sign, and waited. At just after 10:45, a train pulled in. I lined up with a group of other Nottingham-bound passengers and we chatted while waiting for everyone to disembark. “Is this the train to Manchester or Nottingham?” A man in a tweed cap asked. “Oh, this one is Nottingham,” several others replied. “Manchester is next.” I boarded my train. A man in a business suit sat beside me and I smiled companionably, asking him “This is the train to Nottingham, right?” He smiled back and nodded. “That’s right.” Doubly reassured, I put in my headphones and gazed out of the window as the countryside began drifting by.

Possibly half an hour later, the conductor ambled through and frowned at my ticket. Uh oh, I thought. I’ve seen this look on a conductor’s face before. Either he’s constipated or I’m on the wrong train. “Sorry,” he grumbled, though he didn’t sound especially sorry, “They changed the platform back at Cardiff. Didn’t you know? You should have gotten off at the last stop and taken your train from there. Now you’ll have to get off at gobbledygook⁸ and wait for the next train to whatchamacallit⁹ and from there find a train to Nottingham.”

Now, unlike my dear mother, who tears up at the beginning, middle, and end of nearly any film,¹⁰ I don’t cry easily. But when I disembarked from that train in Cyllewuinaellyn,¹¹ rain pouring down on me, and noticed that the next train back to Newport (where I could catch the correct train to Nottingham) wasn’t due for another hour, I lost it a bit. After a minute of solitary sobbing, which would have embarrassing had the platform not been completely deserted, I wiped the tears and snot from my face and sorted out my tickets back.¹² The kindly ticket lady took one look at my flushed face, huge backpack, and rain soaked clothing, and wrote me a special note to take on the next train: “Due to platform alteration at Cardiff, Customer & others¹³ boarded wrong train. Please Allow to Travel on New Service [squiggly signature and official stamp]”

Halfway through the cab ride, I started laughing. My knickers were all in a twist¹⁴ over this train mix-up, but in Morocco it would be business as usual. I’d smile wryly, shake it off, and get on with my day. But because it happened in the UK, a place I associate with order and punctuality,¹⁵ I had a much harder time dealing with the change. In Tangier screwups like this are a part of everyday life, and I expect them all the way from a spice merchant in the street to a government official in the visa office.

After laughing loudly and awkwardly, I explained this to my bemused cab driver, who chuckled and said something reassuring and Welsh about everything being “all right now” and feeling “better after you’ve ‘ad a cup of coffee and a bacon roll”. Thanks, wise cab driver.¹⁶

On the train to Nottingham,¹⁷ I looked out the window and listened to the rhythmic humming noise as we breezed through an overcast landscape. “Aah-ah aah-ah aah-ah” over and over, turning to “aah-ooooo” when the the train slows. I saw a little girl with a headscarf and pretended that I was back in Morocco, on a train from Tangier to Marrakesh. It’s pretty hard to imagine Morocco while gazing at the British countryside. Like an English garden, there’s something reassuringly tame, yet also wild about the landscape here. Wet green fields in grids, with (sometimes) neatly trimmed hedges arching up into the hills. Craggy winter trees sprouting along roads and beside cottages. Thorns and gorse and nettles lining wooded footpaths. Rain pouring down until it turns the fields a bright, joyful green and fills the country lanes with calf-deep puddles of icy water. Wind that cuts through every layer of clothing and makes you feel as if you’re walking around this landscape naked, like a modern-day Lear.¹⁸

I enjoyed exactly one day of good health before relapsing in Newark. Whatever hit me this second time around was a doozy! Sore throat, cough, congestion, runny nose and eyes… probably the sickest I’ve been in five or six years. Spent a sniffly Christmas with family, maintaining a safe distance so as not to spread my horrible germs. Saw my two lovely cousins, which cheered me up more than all my Christmas stocking chocolates combined. Not much else to report, except that I’m happily tucked into bed,¹⁹ hoping that tomorrow is a little better.²⁰

And two special bonus holiday photos of the beautiful food²¹ I ate on Christmas day, despite the sore throat:

1. Those last two things may not be entirely true.
2. This is true.
3. A word of advice: twelve clementines in one day may not actually be excellent for your health.
4. And, by extension, copious amounts of wine.
5. Harry fell ill on the second-to-last day, too, making the house of invalids complete. A perfect concept for a singularly dull reality TV show. Cough cough cough. Barbara? Can I get you some cheese? Yes, please. All r–cough–ight. Harry, are you downstairs? Cough cough sneeze. Not at present. Would you like me to bring you a snack? No, that’s–cough cough–all right. I’ll come down. And so on and so forth.
6. Well no, not really.
7. It’s still half the Wal-Mart or Target price.
8. He didn’t actually say “gobbledygook”. He said something Welsh.
9. He probably also didn’t say “whatchamacallit”, given that he was a proper adult and a locomotive professional.
10. But only during scenes that are one of the following: dramatic, heartfelt, humorous, scary, reassuring, upsetting.
11. Disclaimer: This is not the real name of the town. But, to the best of my recollection, it may well have sounded something like this.
12. This following my memorable train mishap of last year, when I fell blissfully asleep on a train from London and overshot my intended destination by three stops and forty minutes.
13. Thanks, kindly ticket lady for making me sound a little less like an idiot.
14. To use one of my favorite English expressions.
15. Well, also delicious breakfasts, some of history’s greatest authors and worst monarchs, mad cow disease, pantomimes, and the Spice Girls.
16. Sidenote: You know how difficult it can be to hear taxi drivers through that muffled intercom when there’s a plastic barrier behind the front seats? Well, imagine that plus a thick Welsh accent. I smiled a lot, and agreed whenever I guessed it might be appropriate. For all I know, he might have been inviting me back to his place for a mountain of bacon rolls and Welsh sitcoms. He did point out his house during the drive to Newport.
17. The real one this time.
18. What, exactly, is it that makes us think that the British landscape is so hospitable in comparison with northern Morocco? The worst that happens there is a touch of sunburn or an unusually chilly sea breeze that makes you shiver in your t-shirt. Macbeth, Mary Lennox, the Baskerville hounds, and most of Daphne Du Maurier’s characters will all tell you that the British Isles are wild, untamed, and dangerous. Unless, like Drs. Doolittle and DeSoto, you can communicate with dogs, you will have to assume that this is what the Baskerville hounds are saying.
19. And have been all day.
20. I wrote the more eloquent sections of this post during my one healthy day, and it probably shows.
21. Prepared by my aunt, uncle, and cousins, who worked tirelessly for days to bring us a gorgeous Christmas lunch.

For fear of boring myself¹ I’ll try to keep this post brief. I took advantage of the long weekend at the end of week seventeen to attend a holiday market at the American Legation, where Moroccan women sold handmade crafts to benefit various local charities.² The next day I hosted the library’s second fundraising cinema night,³ which was a big success. Filled the library with happy third and fourth graders, who were surprisingly excited to be in the library on the weekend. They loved the film and some even helped me clean up at the end.⁴

Those who know me well⁵ will remember that I have very strong feelings about Thanksgiving. Thankfully,⁶ I haven’t had to deal with the horrors of selective history education since my elementary school days. But this year I found myself in a school for Thanksgiving, surrounded by construction paper turkeys, small children in various interpretations of Native American and Puritan dress, and an excited holiday atmosphere around the school.⁷

The first thing I did on Thanksgiving morning was send the following card via email to my friends and family:⁸

Unexpectedly, this particular Thanksgiving grinch was summoned to photograph the Kindergarten Thanksgiving lunch in the lower school. Picture this: four Kindergarten classes (roughly ages 2-7) all sitting around an enormous row of tables stretching all the way down the hall. Now add in the teachers and a few parent volunteers rushing around the perimeter, frantically distributing food and ushering children through the crowd. Remember, many children are talking, many are yelling, but all are making some kind of noise. A group of troublemakers at the end decides to bang their plastic plates against the table in unison. Another group fights over their seats. And then the plates are filled with food and a hush falls over the room. Children pose for me, mid-chicken leg⁹ and grinning.

Now, I’m not saying that my feelings about Thanksgiving have changed, but spending lunchtime with a room full of happy kindergartners made my week.

My eighteenth week in Morocco also saw the first meeting of the brand new upper school art club in the library. There are no official art classes for grades 7-12, so I started an after school art club with two other teachers. We’re just two meetings in, but it’s been great fun. Eventually, I think the art club will function as a kind of individual workshop time with group lessons for students who are interested in particular activities. We’ll be doing “traditional” art, knitting and crocheting, origami, sewing, beadwork, and much more! Teachers and students will take turns teaching the group, depending upon each person’s area of expertise. On the weekend I had more house guests, French ones this time, who were on a one-year bicycle tour of Mediterranean Europe. I showed them around town a bit and took advantage of the opportunity to practice my French. After dinner and dessert, we sat on a wall in the kasbah looking out across the ocean to Spain while a man played guitar and a group of giggling children practiced their flamenco dancing.

Week nineteen? More work. I had a dear friend visiting from DC for a few days, so we had great fun chatting, exploring the city, and figuring out which local foods might give him an allergic reaction. The week ended with another movie night, this time for the fifth and sixth grades.¹⁰ I celebrated my five month-iversary in Morocco with two Spanish friends, eating tagine and lobia at my usual haunt, and chaotic week twenty-one was full of “last week of school” activities.¹¹

Early Sunday morning I hopped on an airplane with two friends and–after two flights, a five-hour layover in Madrid, two more trains, and a short drive–we found ourselves at their cozy house in Wales. I snuggled into warm blankets and slept until morning.¹²

I have a secret to share with you, dear readers. After three weeks devoid of photos, blog posts, sunlight, and fun, I was feeling pretty demoralized. I seriously considered ending this weekly tradition for good, and instead returning to my pre-Morocco sporadic blogging schedule. And then I heard from some of you, in comments, via email or Skype, and even through a lovingly crafted letter in the mail.¹³ I thought for a while about my stress at work, lack of creative time, and shameful neglect of my camera and music. And you know what? Writing, reading, painting, photographing, music-making, and adventuring are the things that make me happy, and absolutely shouldn’t be relegated to the “well, if I have time” category.

So here I am, back and newly motivated. I’ll be blogging the next two weeks from England,¹⁴ and then back to Morocco in the new year.¹⁵

And in the way of an apology for the delay, here is a special bonus photograph of Loki supervising my blogging. It’s hard work, but someone has to do it. He’s especially adept at catching stray commas.

1. And you, too, dear readers.
2. Bought a little surprise for my mum. No guessing! You’ll have to wait ’til Christmas.
3. These biweekly movie nights are going to fund new shelf labels, a better speaker system, new furniture, and, of course, books.
4. I may or may not have bribed them with candy.
5. Or casual acquaintances who have unwittingly made the mistake of bringing up the subject.
6. See what I did there?
7. The fact that there was no *actual* holiday that week didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits in the least, and the kids were still running around the school chattering excitedly.
8. I spent the next few hours feeling simultaneously accomplished and guilty.
9. Chicken was served instead of turkey, for the most part, due to availability. Other dishes included salad, fresh fruit, rice, and some Moroccan cakes.
10. Getting closer to buying nice things for the library!
11. I even managed to find a decent fake Christmas tree and put it up in my apartment living room, which now cozy and feels a bit more like home. After making construction paper decorations, and adding some house guests and friends to complete my little Tangier family, I was all set.
12. Rainy morning, of course, since this is Wales in winter.
13. You know who you are.
14. Hopefully with cheering holiday photographs.
15. The jury is still out on whether I should continue the “Morocco, Week __” titling scheme while in England. Maybe I’ll stop being lazy and write clever titles for each new post.

Later in the day, one of the more difficult kindergarten classes came in for their story. When it was time for them to leave the library, I tried playing the mandolin as they lined up. Worked like a charm. Twenty-four of the rowdiest children at our school quietly faced forward, lined up, and walked back to class. Admittedly, a couple of them nearly walked into doors because they were craning around to watch me play as they trotted off. I felt a bit like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. (You know, minus trapping the children in a mountain to punish their parents.)

The rest of the week went smoothly, and on Saturday afternoon I was off to Spain. You might remember from my last post that Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival which includes sheep sacrifice, was coming up. Well, rather than listen to thousands of dismayed sheep bleating across the city (and smelling them roasting later on) I opted to travel to northern Spain. My goal, San Sebastián, (Donostia in Basque) was only two flights and a three-hour bus ride away. On the first flight I sat next to a young man who had never flown before. Through him, I remembered the wonder of seeing the tops of clouds for the first time. It was great seeing the look in his eyes in the moment when the plane lifted off the runway.

Smooth sailing at the Madrid airport, though I’ve never liked the place. It’s sprawling, sterile, unnecessarily cavernous, and always seems empty in relation to its size. I looked out the window on my flight to Santander and was lulled to sleep by the gray expanse of clouds and the sound of the engine. I woke up to turbulence and passengers discussing it nervously. There was a tense atmosphere as the plane shook and wobble its way through the storm, but I closed my eyes and ears, and let the airplane rock me back to sleep. We landed over water, with the last sunlight glowing faintly behind a wall of clouds. After crossing a drizzly runway, I splurged and paid 8.50 euros for a Spanish-English dictionary, figuring that it would be a good resource should any translation crises occur.³ Half an hour after my flight arrived, I caught the night bus⁴ to San Sebastián, about a three-hour journey.

We rushed through the night, rain glistening on the ground, across a landscape so dark that it blended into the overcast night sky. The other passengers chatted quietly or slept. We stopped in Bilbao and I was the only one left besides an elderly couple in the back who stood to stretch their legs, then sank comfortably back down into their seats. I looked out at Bilbao and thought for a while about how shockingly different the scenery was from Morocco. Even after only four months, I was so used to the landscape, the structures, and the people that Spain seemed utterly alien to me. I had even been taken aback by the bathrooms at the airport, with their uniform, painted doors and automatic dryers. The road had rails, lights, and resembled most of the roads I was used to from the US. But where were the grand taxis crammed full of people traveling two towns over? Where were the boys selling onions and live chickens by the side of the road? Where were the familiar mosque towers in every village? What about the occasional run-down bus careening precariously as it rattles and whizzes down a mountain road? I felt a brief moment of homesickness for Morocco, until the Spanish bus driver honked his horn. That felt a little more like home.⁵ I arrived in San Sebastián at night, in the rain, and headed to a friend’s house. Undaunted by the howling wind and violent raindrops on my window, I went to sleep excited about my first experience in Basque Country the following day.

The next day it rained, too. In fact, I was told by my friend that it was the most unpleasant weather he’d ever seen in the city. Crossing a bridge by the port, I saw waves taller than any I’d ever seen, blown in by ferocious winds. We walked around town until every article of clothing was soaked, fingertips wrinkled.  Stopped into a bar for orange juice and warmth. It was crowded with refugees of the wind and rain, who chatted and sipped their coffee while waiting out the storm. We trudged home eventually, squelch squelch squelch, and changed into dry clothes. After a simple three-course lunch and a delicious nap, I spent the evening discussing psychology, learning Basque pronunciation, and listening to the rain.

On Monday the rain was light enough for me to explore San Sebastián all day. As my sandals were soaked from the night before, my friend lent me a pair of sneakers and off I went. Mid-morning, I slipped into Cathédrale Buen Pastor behind two women in beige raincoats. My plan was to stay long enough to dry off a bit, but it was so peaceful that I ended up sitting in a pew for three quarters of an hour, writing down my thoughts⁶ and admiring the Neo-Gothic architecture. Women walked in every couple of minutes, pausing briefly in front of the pulpit before continuing to the other side. Bells chimed nine times, twice, and sounded much more distant inside than out.

I looked at the arching ceilings and the orange-yellow light coming from electric bulbs attached to every few columns. It was so dark outside that even the stained glass windows were dim, barely illuminated by a gray sky. (So different from that day in Sacre Coeur when I stepped into a dappled pool of light that danced down from colored glass.) There was a pipe organ in the back of the cathedral. I’ve always wanted to be in a church when somebody is practicing the organ.⁷ To hear and feel the music as it ricochets across columns, in and out of pews, brushes against each colored pane of glass before catching warm candle air and rising swiftly away like a freed balloon.

Passing women gone, I found myself alone in the cathedral. Just me, the columns, and the shadows. Rows of wooden pews waiting for the next mass. I spent some time studying the confessionals; I’ve never confessed. I’ve only seen it in movies. I wondered briefly if it’s like going to a therapist. What are the differences? What does it feel like to have your sins peeled away? Do you feel light and free, or naked, exposed, and alone?

Sitting there, in the dim electric light, I was reminded of a library. Or maybe, for me, libraries are cathedrals. Holy places. I could so easily imagine the walls lined with books, every cranny and crevice, all the way up to the stained glass. Around the lower windows, climbing one at a time like ivy, books filling this beautiful, arched space. There would be the tallest ladders stretching up into the shadows. The pipe organ remains, of course, and every time it’s played, the books would shake off their dust and resonate with joy.

I wandered down the streets of San Sebastián, hunched in the rain. I tried on hats in a very fancy hat shop, and the Spanish-speaking saleswoman was extremely patient. Eventually decided against a hat that day, as none were waterproof. I followed the scent of fresh bread to a bakery and was amazed at the number of people bustling in and out despite the rain. A sign of a good bakery. I found out from a man in a music shop that there were no accordions for sale in the entire city.⁸ I played piano in a second music shop, but was refused an audience with the mandolin. I was drawn into another shop by a beautiful dress in the window, and decided to make it myself in Morocco. Whenever I passed a fashion shop, I received judgmental looks from the people inside. I must have been a funny sight; oversized men’s sneakers, voluminous blue skirt with pockets, mismatched turtleneck, tiny backpack. I consoled myself by deciding that, were they visiting for the weekend from Morocco with only a few items of clothing, most of which had gotten soaked the day before, they would be dressed that way too.

In the early evening, I returned to the cathedral for a second time. It was even more deserted than it had been earlier in the day. The rush hour street sounds were muffled and distant, and when I sneezed it echoed all around the room. The stained glass was dimmer than ever, and I closed my eyes for a few minutes as all my thoughts drifted away into the dark. I had pintxos (pronounced “peen-cho”) for dinner, and they were so good that couldn’t stop thinking about them for hours afterward. (A pintxo, dear reader, is the Basque version of tapas, only about ten times more delicious.) Went to bed and dreamed of picnics in the sun.

On Tuesday I woke up early with sunlight⁹ trickling in through my window. My first stop was a recommended bakery, where I picked up a baguette and a croissant. Ate the croissant while crossing the city, much to the envy of passers-by on their way to work. I walked through the old town and climbed up, up, up the hill to the old fort.¹⁰ Clouds were spread out across the sky in ripples, like a worn out blanket, sea glimmering below. The ocean was dappled with sunlight, and the rugged clouds above made it look like two landscapes instead of one. A red sailboat bobbed miles out, as clouds floated past it and the ocean changed color with the sun. I looked the other way, over the city, and saw mist rising off the buildings and hills. I sat in a park at the top of the hill, nibbling my baguette and enjoying my first glimpse of sun in three days. I listened to birds chirping and muffled footsteps on stone. Too late in the year for tourists, the people who passed by were runners, dog walkers, middle-aged lovers. I tried to lure a bird in front of my camera with a piece of baguette, but it got the better of both me and the bread. I walked down, squinting in the sunlight, past happy dogs and a family on a picnic.

On the bus to Santander, I watched the Basque countryside drift lazily by. Old stone farmhouses with terra cotta roofs. Rectangular and blocky with small square windows, they made me think of cow herds, strawberry jam, and family around the fire. Every so often, the ocean would appear between two hills. I remember thinking about the huge valleys going by with sheep grazing on the slopes, then remembering that I was going by, not the valleys, and certainly not the sheep. Other roads twisted through fields and trees, disappearing into the hills. I thought about how I would like to come back and explore every single one of them, given the time.¹¹

In Santander, I visited yet another historic cathedral and, for the first time in my life, lit one of those tiny prayer candles.¹² I bought yarn at a knitting shop, sipped tea and read a book in a café, visited a dive bar with a friend, and ended my day curled on her couch, crocheting a scarf and listening to Spanish television. In the airplane on the way back, I looked out the window as we crossed the mountains of northern Spain. There were roads zig-zagging up steep slopes, and I imagined cars simply tumbling backdown. The sun glinted across rivers, like spotlights in succession. Further south, a dense cloud bank hung over farmland. The clouds looked so solid that it seemed it would hurt to fall into into them. They were packed tightly, with a band of blue sky above, followed by another stretch of solid, white clouds that ended in a line near the horizon as if painted on with one, long brush stroke. In the midst of turbulence, the flight crew offered fake cigarette packs over the intercom. “Tobacco flavored. They produce NO smoke!”

1. If you didn’t catch all my pre-Halloween adventures in the last post, go take a look.
2. Ironically, I think this was the closest I’ve gotten to dressing like a Moroccan. Long skirt, long sleeves, head covering…
3. I had a printed page of useful Spanish phrases, too.
4. The bus driver had a passenger list, and knew my name as soon as I reached for my UK passport.
5. Morocco may be the only place I’ve been where drivers honk more than they do in Washington, DC.
6. Most of this post was written by hand in the cathedral, on the back of my San Sebastián map.
7. When do they do it? In the middle of the day? At night? Does it wake up the neighbors?
8. So much for my half-baked “buy an accordion and somehow transport it back to Tangier” plan.
9. Finally!
10. Thanks to the pleasant weather, I was out of the man shoes and back in my sandals, skirt, and leggings.
11. There is a beautiful coastal path from San Sebastián to Hondarribia, a neighboring town, that takes about ten hours to hike. It’s already on my to-do list for my next visit to the area.
12. I spent about five minutes deliberating over this, but decided eventually that one does not have to be religious to light a candle. I decided that I would light mine to send good wishes and love to my friends and family back in the states.

On Wednesday I made a new friend, Fabian. Fab left Germany in September to embark upon a traveling charity project, Fab&Vivien Around the World. Here are the details in his own words:

“10 Bucks, two friends and one crazy bet around the world. Fab&Vivien claim that for each 10€ donated to social grassroots projects, they will find 1 person to sing with them. As they travel around the world, imagine they go to Thailand and raise 1000€ for a new school – and 100 people singing in a mass performance! And as if that wasn’t spectacular enough: It has to be a song in the local language: “mai dai kee itcha”, you know?! If Fab&Vivien loose the bet, a horrible penalty awaits them: Will it be sleeping on a scary cemetery or working hard on a local field?”

Kind of a neat idea, right? Fab and I had a long evening getting lost in the medina, drinking mint tea at my usual rooftop hangout,² and discussing his project, music, Moroccan culture, and whatever else we could think of.

I don’t remember why I originally volunteered to chaperone the high school Halloween party, but on Friday night I found myself at the school gate shining a flashlight into girls’ purses.³ I spent the second hour standing around outside the building with the other faculty members, bored out of my mind. The students were all inside, dancing to the kind of music I usually go out of my way to avoid. But since it was between boredom outside and hearing loss inside, I ventured in. Now, I know I see these kids every day, but it made such a difference being around them during a social event. They looked like they were having such fun, and I couldn’t help but feel happy and energized, too. I spent the last hour dancing.

I got a call bright and early on Saturday morning from Fab, who wanted to go hiking. It wasn’t until we both got into the car that we realized that neither of us actually had a destination in mind. Thankfully, I recalled some scenery I’d notice on my trip to M’diq the previous weekend and suggested Tétouan as a closer alternative to Chefchaouen. As soon as we saw big mountains, we took the first road off into the hills, driving past an enormous open-air sheep market,⁴ run-down houses, and women moving huge sacks of something from a taxi into their homes. Parked where the road ended, and managed to confirm with two women (who were staring at us) that there was, indeed, a way to hike up into the mountains from our side of the hills.⁵

Fab needed to film scenes during our hike for his next video installment, and appointed me director for the day. If you’ve been reading this blog faithfully, you’ll remember that nearly every time I try to go on a pleasant, civilized hike in Morocco I end up losing the path, wading through miles of thorns, climbing cliffs, and asking goatherds for directions. This is exactly what happened to me and Fab. Just so you’ve got a clear mental image, remember that, as designated camerawoman, I had to scramble up those cliffs first and and capture Fab climbing them.⁶ We even had a couple of alarming encounters with unsettlingly large and orange spiders.⁷ We reached the top of the ridge, legs covered in scratches and cuts, and utterly triumphant. Two goatherds had been watching our progress,⁸ and I offered them a few handfuls of nuts and dried fruit. (Fab gave them cookies.) I confirmed with them that a path devoid of thorns actually existed, handed out some more food, then continued up the mountain.⁹

Predictably, after hauling ourselves to the top of the first peak and discovering that it was not, in fact, the highest point on the ridge, we set off for the next mountain. At the top of that one, Fab parked himself on a flat rock, probably hoping that I’d be satisfied with our considerable achievement. After all, even the (now far away) goatherds looked impressed. But when I turned, I saw one more ridge just a little higher than the one on which I was perched. So off I went, Fab calling after me to “please try not to fall”. After a few close calls¹⁰ I plopped down on the highest rock on the highest ridge on the highest mountain. The wind blew noises up from the valley below, and I could hear birds chirping, goats bleating, and water dripping between rocks. I smelled wood smoke as the goatherds lit a fire and cooked their lunch. One of them got out a thin flute and began to play a beautiful, haunting melody. Even the birds paused to listen.

We raced the sun down the mountain, guessing at paths until we ended up in a sandy clearing where teenagers were finishing up a soccer game. They followed us down the path and around the hillside, calling out and throwing the occasional rock. (It sounds shocking, I know, but we were so tired and scratched that we didn’t much care.) We lost them eventually, only to be discovered by a pack of wild dogs. They growled at us out of the dark, and I picked up a rock and a big stick, just in case. Finally we rediscovered the tiny village where we’d parked the car and walked down the hill toward the lights of the local mosque. Dogs and children long gone, Fab and I grinned silently at one another. A group of women carrying freshly baked bread emerged from around the corner. They took one look at us, our cuts, our sun-burnished faces, and handed one of the loaves over to us. We sat in the car, still grinning, and nibbled warm bread.¹¹

On Sunday I hosted a Halloween movie night in the library for grades four through six, which was a great success and not at all as chaotic as I’d feared. Raised a decent amount of money for the library¹² and the kids had a great time, repeatedly asking when the next one would be. Even parents were excited; perhaps partially because of the extra two hours they had to themselves, but also to see their children involved in extracurricular activities and socializing outside of school.

I ended my eventful week with a kitten on my lap, a bottle of wine, and my mandolin.

1. The usual bit about perpetuating stereotypes, but also the simple fact that the movie isn’t well-known to many people outside the English-speaking world. While I remember watching The Sound of Music several times a year from an early age, many Austrians don’t even hear of it until well into their adult lives.
2. Got lost trying to find it, of course. Also pranked two kids who were following us around, and it was extremely satisfying.
3. Thankfully, I found no drugs or alcohol. Instead, most purses were crammed with spare clothes, makeup, and even shoes. The girls had left home dressed modestly, changed at at a friend’s house along the way, then arrived at school for the party in a completely different outfit than the one that their parents had approved. I had a pretty hard time controlling my laughter when I found three makeup bags, a pair of jeans, a shirt, a sweater, and two shoes… all in the same bag. Incidentally, nobody wore a Halloween costume. I was told by a senior, point blank, that if I wore a costume I would be laughed right out the door. Apparently costumes aren’t cool anymore. What these kids don’t realize is that once they go to college, Halloween is all about the costumes. Revealing, skin-tight ones that are just an excuse for girls to wear even fewer items of clothing around campus than usual, but still technically costumes.
4. In preparation for Eid al-Adha, an important Muslim festival that involves sheep sacrifice.
5. Also that it was okay to park the car there.
6. You can see some of the footage I filmed here: http://www.fabandvivien.com/webisode-2-good-bye-europe-and-the-importance-of-patience/
7. Another bad habit of mine: forgetting to maintain a safe distance from possibly venomous creatures. Like the time I walked right up to a rattlesnake in Shenandoah National Park for the sake of a clear photograph. My macro lens was back at home, so I leaned in until I was nearly touching the web. I don’t think the spider was poisonous. As a lifelong arachnophobe, I was pretty proud of myself. How’s that for exposure therapy?
8. They were undoubtedly entertained by our hour-long effort to climb the relatively small hill below.
9. Among other things, we made friends with a couple of sweet goats, followed a dung beetle around with the video camera, and I collected some wild succulent samples. Sedum sediforme, to be exact.
10. Sorry, family members reading this.
11. The moral of this story is: Sometimes if you can get past children throwing stones and ferocious dogs, smiling women will give you homemade bread for your journey home.
12. We’re on our way to having enough money to order real, actual books!

Partially because I was rejuvenated from a relaxing weekend in Chefchaouen, and partially because my work week was only four days long, my week started out great. Got lots done in the library, and even managed to begin the planning stages of a new, exciting project in the community. More on that later.² I cooked yummy Ethiopian food,³ had a couple of delicious dinners with friends, and enjoyed the city at night.⁴

Most of Friday was fantastic. For the hour before school started, I played Metropolis in the library for whoever felt like walking in and taking a look. A few of the students asked me what it was, and were impressed when I told them the film was made in 1927! They thought that was very cool. Later on, several teachers decided that they wanted to show their kids videos in the library as a special Friday treat. The Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten One classes got really into the Tom & Jerry cartoons I showed them, dancing along to the music and calling out the names of animals they recognized.⁵ One of the high school students was in the library doing work, and I caught him looking over at the video and grinning a few times. Proves my theory that there’s no age limit to good cartoons.

The afternoon, like many Friday afternoons in the library, was a bit (well, a lot) more stressful. Made it through the day, barely, and then spent the night unwinding at home with Loki on my lap and pasta in my belly. Went to bed early with a book.

I woke up on Saturday morning, still in a funk, and hopped into (well, trudged over and slouched into) a car with a friend, and we were off to M’diq, a seaside town about 45 minutes from Tangier. It was overcast and windy, with patches of blue sky peeking through like they were painted on. We pulled up to a windswept beach, where men dressed in somber colors were pacing along the water’s edge, lost in thought. I pulled out my seashell-collecting bag and started off down the beach.⁶

I was immediately amazed at how perfectly shaped and colorful the shells were. Each time I picked one up, I’d find an even prettier shell just a few paces away. White, yellow, purple, blue, pink, red, brown… colors I don’t even know how to describe, combined like watercolors over each ruffled surface.⁷ I searched the beach for two hours, unaware of anything but the sand and shells underfoot, the deafening crash of wind-whipped waves, and my own thoughts.⁸

Finally, looking up, I noticed other things. Each wave rolling in behind the next, tall like soldiers constantly battling the sand. The patterns of clouds, dark then light then dark again, stretching out to the horizon. Fishermen reeling in their lines, watching me curiously as I stooped to pick up bits of sea glass.⁹ Leaning in to take a photo that I hoped would capture the windy violence of the waves, one took me by surprise and I ended up with ocean all over my ankles and feet. Turned around to see that I had an audience of one, an old man leaning against the beach wall. I scampered back out of the surf and laughed at myself for a long time. I think he was laughing with me.

Once my seashell bag became too heavy to carry comfortably, I retrieved my friend and we set off for another part of town. Met some new friends (one Moroccan and two Czechs) for a fresh seafood lunch on the dock¹⁰ Then home again, home again jiggity jig, as the rhyme goes. Just in time for sunset, dinner, cat.

And we’re back to Sunday, with the sunlight in my window. Possibly for the first time in years, I stayed in bed to read a book. (The Help by Kathryn Stockett.) I adored it. It may sound odd coming from someone who is currently making a living working with books, but this book continually reminded me of how much literature can enrich lives. Since I moved to Morocco, I’ve made a conscious effort to reclaim my identity as a ravenous reader, something that I left behind back in middle school when academic reading became my primary focus. I think it’s probably true, too, that I’m inspired by some of my students. The ones who come into the library to return books they’ve taken only the day before, gushing about how much they loved every page. That used to be me, and–in my heart–it’s still me. The rigors of adult working life aside, I’m still that little girl who begged to be taken to the public library,¹¹ who checked out twenty books at a time and read them all in the first four days, who hid under the covers with a flashlight because reading was more important than rules about bedtime.

Arranged all of my new shells in a beautiful but wholly unnecessary manner, then took photographs. Went for the second run of my adult life and survived.¹² It was a gorgeous autumn day in Tangier, with constantly shifting light and a slightly wilder-than-usual sea breeze. Ran into town along the ocean, then up through the medina and back home via my favorite bakery, where I picked up two loaves of warm, freshly baked bread.

1. Sunrise arrives later here each day. On the days I go to work early–which is most days–I sometimes arrive at school before the sun does. On a related note, if someone can tell me why I’ve been going to work an hour early, making my workdays at least ten hours long, I’ll give ‘em 20 dirhams and a cat treat. Yes, it’s because I have lots of work to do, but doesn’t everyone?
2. I know, I promise that every time.
3. Recipe in a subsequent post.
4. That’s all I seem to manage these days, since I go to work just after sunrise and sometimes stay till after dark. It’s a good thing Tangier is such a nocturnal town… there’s always something to see/do/eat at any hour of the night.
5. In one of the Tom & Jerry cartoons, Tom is serenading a lovely female cat with his upright bass, singing a song with the lyrics “Is you is, or is you ain’t my baby?” Kathy, the assistant librarian, pointed out that at the end of the day these kids will probably go home and sing that for their parents, bad grammar and all. Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR-Ckj5M-jU
6. I sent my friend in the other direction, since we were both collecting shells and I tend to be intensely competitive.
7. Luckily, I don’t have to describe them because I took photos. This was, hands down, the best beach for shell collecting that I’ve ever visited.
8. I like the idea that, when shell-hunting, you only see the product of other beachcombers. Maybe one has picked only orange and white shells, or another wanted ones small enough to put on a necklace. So you arrive and see a beach made of everyone’s extras, constantly shifting. Sorted by both tides and people.
9. Hoping these will become jewelry in the near future.
10. Yes, I know you’re shocked. I ate baysara, a delicious soup made primarily of puréed lentils, a salad, and some bread. Everyone else ate bug-eyed sardines and upset-looking shrimp. Less shocked now, right?
11. And eventually volunteered there, just to spend more time with the books.
12. I want you, dear readers, to picture the looks I get when I go for a run. First of all, I’m running for exercise, which, apparently, isn’t done much here. Second, I’m wearing shorts and a tank top, something I wouldn’t normally wear out. Third, I’m a girl. Fourth, I’ve got on those ridiculous looking Vibram FiveFingers shoes and they’re bright blue. Just imagine the reaction. Puzzled looks galore.

“The only things they trust are the racing ships
Posiedon gave, to sail the deep blue sea
like white wings in the sky, or a flashing thought.”
The Odyssey (Homer)

One of the perks of working in a school¹ is getting to hear children say all sorts of silly things. Students at AST (especially the kindergartners) are fond of exclaiming, “Oh my God!” at the drop of a hat, for instance.² Talking about volcanoes? “Oh my God!” Finding out that a dinosaur in a book is too tall to fit on the page? “Oh my God!” Explaining that a tomato is a fruit? “Oh my God!” I suppose our students just have a flair for the dramatic. And not just in one language, either! On Monday I happened upon a little tyke sitting outside the office, where kids usually wait for parents to pick them up. His family are native French speakers, so sometimes I ask him questions in French.

Me: “Bonjour! Tu es malade?”
Student: “Oui, je suis trés, trés malade.”
Me: “Oh, c’est beaucoup!”
Student: “Oui! C’est trés beaucoup! Je suis trés beaucoup malade!”

And this is just a five-year-old. You should see the high schoolers.

Week twelve was also the week that the first grade discovered Schoolhouse Rock. I’ve been showing them a few songs during each of their scheduled library sessions, and they’re loving it. Sometimes they even start singing along with the chorus! Good to know that something so well-loved during my time (and before) can still excite children today. On Tuesday, to my extreme dismay, I came down with the superbug that’s been going around.³ Most of my week’s activities were accompanied by sad sniffling and self-pity. On Thursday I welcomed a friend from Germany, Patricia, who is traveling south through Morocco to sub-Saharan Africa to complete a documentary project. I took her on a tour of the medina at night, climbed up to my usual mint tea rooftop haunt, and ended the evening with a yummy vegetarian Moroccan dinner. Sniffles at a minimum.

Friday was the start of a four-day weekend for me (midterm break) and I celebrated by waking up early and having an invigorating swim in the school pool. Dried off in the sun while reading The Odyssey⁴ and snacked on some pastries. Patricia and I packed up a picnic lunch of bread, cheese, tomato, green peppers, carrots, and cucumber before heading out on the town. I had intended to take her to a great spot in the kasbah that overlooks the Atlantic ocean all the way to Spain, but instead got horribly lost. After wandering around the city for over an hour, we ended up in a beautiful rocky spot right next to the water. Fishermen tended their lines nearby and the sun shone white and tiny through the last of the morning mist. We wandered along the ocean wall for another hour, hopping from rock to rock and receiving strange looks from passers-by. On the way home, I found a cat family snuggling up for their mid-afternoon nap.

I continued to relax throughout Saturday, beginning with a soothing and uneventful bus ride to Chaouen.⁵ Patricia explored the city while I sat in the hotel gardens, drank homemade juice and tea with friends, chatted about healthy eating, and read my book. I found a fantastic green insect⁶ and made many failed attempts to capture it on film. (Eventually sketched it instead.) Got a massage later in the day and fell asleep to the sound of water trickling outside my window.

We woke up early on Sunday morning and set off for the mosque on the hill, just in time to see the sun rising over the mountains. And then do you know what we saw?⁷ We saw another mosque, on a second hill, away across the sloping farmland. So we went there. In the process, we wandered into someone’s backyard and paused behind a barn, looking around at the scenery.⁸ And, of course, from there we saw a trail winding up into the mountains. The lady of the house leaned over her fence to say hello, and I asked her (again, through gestures and smiles) whether it was possible to reach the top of the mountain on that trail. She nodded and waved encouragingly, so up we went.

From the top of the mountain we had a great view of the valley, complete with little houses, fields, dirt paths, and–of course–upset donkeys. But then I turned and looked up at the mountain next to ours. And would you believe it, there were a couple of tiny people waving and cheering at the top. “Well, gee,” I thought to myself, “I could go there.” It took me about fifteen minutes to convince poor Patricia accompany me on this challenge, and then we were off! Down the trail until there was no more trail. Into a ravine. Straight up a few rock walls, with the wind blowing us sideways. Through prickly bushes. By the time we arrived at the top, scratched and breathless, the happy hikers were long gone. A boy watched us from a distance, perched on a rock with his dog and goats nearby. After taking in the view and catching our breath, we decided it was time to head down. It was my silly idea, of course, to attempt a loop and go back on opposite side of the mountain. Neither of us were thrilled with the idea of inching our way down the cliff face we’d just had to climb, and assumed that an easier trail existed on the other side. The goatherd demonstrated with sweeping arm gestures the course of the path down the hill, and, squinting, we thought we could see where it twisted away down the mountainside.⁹ So with naïve enthusiasm, we set off downhill.

After about five minutes, the trail disappeared. After half an hour, we ran out of water just in time for the hottest part of the day. We waded through bushes and thorns, catching sight of trail after trail, all of which wove in and out of trees, shrubs, and boulders, eventually ending abruptly and leaving us even more lost than ever. (Luckily, we were always within sight of the top of the mountain and the wide valley across to Chefchaouen. Just no way of getting there!) Finally, we picked up a more promising trail, following human, dog, and goat hoof-prints through the undergrowth. We crested a second mountain, then looked down at–oh joy–the wide dirt road that leads back out of the mountains and into town. We half walked, half tumbled the rest of the way and set off down the dusty track with renewed energy.

A woman and daughter passed us, grinning, with about forty goats in tow. Perhaps surprised to see anyone–let alone two foreign women–this far into the mountains, they invited us to their house.¹⁰ Exhausted and intently focused on reaching Chefchaouen, we politely declined and continued on our way. We probably only walked on that road for about an hour, but it felt like three. The afternoon sun beat down on us and we tried to focus on encouraging things like a patch of shade at the end of the next switchback, or the delicious fruit salad that we would eat when we got back to the hotel. By the time we stumbled in through the upper city gates, we must have been quite a sight. Scratched, bruised, covered in dust and dirt, a little sunburned, hair marvelously askew. We waited in line at the spring behind two little boys, who took one look at us and waved us up to the tap. The first taste of water after our adventure was impossibly wonderful.

As our morning stroll had turned into a day hike, I soon realized that I had under an hour to grab my things and head to the station to catch my bus back to Tangier. Upon arrival, however, I found myself in a crowd of dismayed Moroccans. The bus office’s computer was down. By the time a slightly grouchy man got everything back up and I reached his desk, the last ticket had been sold. I hung around the bus station, trying to decide whether to buy a ticket for the next day and add another night to my stay in Chefchaouen. Suddenly, and miraculously, one of the other frustrated travelers told me that there was a second bus about to leave, with just two spots left. I paid a slightly shady-looking man my bus fare, was rushed aboard, and settled into the last remaining seat, hoping that the bus would indeed carry me to Tangier. I envisioned a number of alarming possibilities, but–resigned–decided that this was all part of the adventure. The bus sputtered to a start and chugged its way up the hill and out of town. Every time the bus slowed, its engine sputtered and whined a bit, and I watched the other passengers exchange worried looks. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

The bus stopped again in Tétouan (about an hour away from Tangier) and, after waiting to make sure it got started again, I pulled out my book and read all about Odysseus and his travel-related catastrophes until we arrived safe and sound (and sputtering) at the Tangier bus station. Walked to a park to meet a friend, ate my weight in salad and stewed beans,¹¹ then ended my day with a huge cup of every ice cream flavor¹² in the shop.

1. Other than the long holidays, of course.
2. Imagine this with a slight Moroccan accent.
3. My immune system is pretty good, but apparently not good enough to withstand an infection bred in a school full of small children.
4. I’m working on it right now with one of my students, and it makes such a difference to re-read it after so many years. There are passages in the book that are simply breathtaking, and reading it near the Mediterranean just feels right somehow.
5. Yes, again. It’s the most beautiful place I could think of to go within a three-hour radius.
6. A type of shield bug, I think.
7. Warning: this is going to be just like the song my parents used to sing to me when we went hiking, “The Bear Went Over the Mountain”.
8. Our reverie was interrupted sporadically by the sound of upset donkeys. I don’t know why they were upset, but if you have ever heard a donkey bray you’ll understand what I mean. The sound echoed across the hills, and I got the distinct feeling that the donkeys were just complaining to one another about the quality of their hay, or the lack of universal health care options at their local farms.
9. Can you see where this is going?
10. Which was, I assume, the lonely farmhouse where the road met our trail.
11. I hadn’t actually eaten yet that day, since the walk was supposed to be a leisurely pre-breakfast stroll, and then I was rushing to catch my bus.
12. Minus bubblegum.

On Tuesday evening, I accompanied a couple of friends to an informal basketball game with their buddies, where–for lack of proper footwear–I sat and snickered at their warmup hijinks. Ten minutes of utter chaos, with the ball being thrown in every direction but the correct one, funny jumping and spinning, and goofy grins on every single face. One of my friends even did a spontaneous headstand on the court. I expected the actual game to continue in this fashion, but once they worked out all that silliness, they weren’t half bad at basketball.⁴ The wind picked up later in the evening, and when it grew too cold to play, we did the most logical thing we could think of. We went for ice cream. I had every single flavor all in one cup, with no regrets. We sat on rocks overlooking the Atlantic ocean, the lights of Spain, and the stars. I nibbled on an ice cream cone⁵ and thought about how lucky I am to live somewhere so beautiful.

The rest of my week was occupied by–in no particular order–book cataloging, reading, sleeping, eating, and playing with Loki.⁶ Friday I spent more time with Wafae’s lovely children. We made harira and discussed aging. I was in the library all morning Saturday to supervise installation of our brand new, first ever air conditioning unit!⁷ This is actually much more exciting than it sounds, because the library is sweltering in hot weather. Instead of being a wonderful workspace for the school community, it becomes our own personal sauna. Only the people who are paid to be there–myself and the assistant librarian–brave the heat on those days. Though a small change in the grand scheme of things, this will make a huge difference for our students and faculty.

Sunday morning I went to the big farmer’s market⁸ downtown and bought the following: four tomatoes, three large green peppers, four onions, six carrots, one large bunch of bananas, one kilo of apples, three large bunches of garlic, one head of lettuce, one kilo of assorted nuts, three kilos of dried fruit, and two medium-sized clay pots, all for 198 dirhams, which is roughly $24.⁹

After my shopping victory, I was spirited away to the beach by my friends, where we grilled chicken over a fire and I climbed lots of rocks. I watched the sun set over the ocean, and even though I watch the sun set over the ocean at least once a week, each time is different. Each location, each color, each white and orange-tinged wave. I wish there were a way to file away sunsets like a stamp collection, capturing the exact colors, the direction of the breeze, the smells, the glinting pinpoints of light that stretch out to the horizon. But I suppose sunsets have to be fleeting. Otherwise, why would you look for the next one?

1. Slow in the sense that I didn’t do much for fun, but worked all the time instead.
2. Yasmine and Naoufel, my co-worker Wafae’s children. They’re my two favorite new friends.
3. I have been specifying the type of pastry every time because I am aware that you, my readers, are extremely discerning and absolutely need to know whether each pastry is Moroccan-style or French-style.
4. Not that I’m a great judge.
5. If you’ve ever seen me eat ice cream, you know that it meets a very speedy demise.
6. His new favorite toy is my drying rack. He thinks it exists purely for his entertainment, and when I attempt to restore its original function, he leaps up and pulls my items of clothing down, one at a time.
7. Thanks to a generous donation from a dear friend of mine.
8. It sounds strange to me to say “farmer’s market” here, because nearly every market here would meet the western world’s definition of a farmer’s market.
9. I am operating under the assumption that everyone, like me, wants to know exactly how much food costs here and what kinds of things I buy day-to-day. I love coming home with fresh vegetables, tallying them as I put them away, and then doing a series of currency conversions to determine exactly how glad I am to be in a country where food is unbelievably cheap. FYI, without the dried fruit/nuts and clay pots, my total was 39.50 dirhams, less than $5. That’s for two weeks’ worth of tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, bananas, apples, garlic, and lettuce.

My tenth week in Morocco was challenging. I had one of those workweeks where the few rewarding moments are swept away in a deluge of minor catastrophes.² Despite all of that, this week I put the finishing touches on a school reading contest (with the help of my intrepid student volunteers, of course), fleshed out ideas for a few library fundraisers, and got paid. And, of course, read one of my other favorite childhood books to the kindergarteners, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. Loved the amazed faces when Micky flies his dough-y airplane to get milk for the bakers.³ Still in store for the kindergarteners: Pierre, Just A Dream, Cautionary Tales for Children, The Adventures of Isabel, Amos & Boris, The Paper Bag Princess,⁴ Two Bad Ants.⁵

The aforementioned young ladies from Bristol stayed two nights with me early in the week, and were lovely house guests. They played with Loki, shared pastries, and commiserated with me over a rough day. On Thursday, two of my favorite people in Tangier came over for dinner⁶ and we chatted and joked late into the night. Friday evening I curled up on the couch and watched Empire of the Sun with Loki, who was very interested in the airplanes and scenes with young Christian Bale crawling through rushes and tall grass. (He was less interested in the coming-of-age and cross-cultural tolerance aspects of the film, as they involved neither cats nor shiny objects.) Later he climbed the drying rack and swatted at tiny imaginary airplanes in my living room.

I woke up early on Saturday⁷ and, after a brief game of tag with Loki, hopped in a car to Chefchaouen⁸ with a friend. Since my first visit consisted mostly of hiking the nearby mountains, I was determined to spend this time in an exhaustive exploration of the town itself. My tour began, naturally, with a Moroccan-style breakfast on a shady rooftop. Fresh bread, olive oil, eggs, four types of cheeses, and some kind of shredded meat.⁹ A scraggly kitten camped out under the table, helping us to finish our breakfast. After eating, we traversed nearly every street and every shade of blue. We climbed hundreds of steps to the very top of Chefchaouen and stood beside the old city wall, surveying the cascade of blue rooftops and valley beyond. I caught and released a very daring grasshopper, then skipped back down the steps to the bottom of Chefchaouen to explore the ancient walled kasbah. Wandered through the prison,¹⁰ then climbed two towers and looked down at people passing through the streets. Saw flocks of birds sailing down from the mountains and weaving  between mosque towers before alighting in the town square. I even had a chance to be an annoying know-it-all when I overheard three American tourists discussing a rosemary bush in the kasbah garden. “It’s basil, guys.” “No, basil has actual leaves. It’s gotta be sage.” I think I walked up and, with barely concealed amusement, corrected them. Also gave a good tip about cooking potatoes with rosemary, though it was likely lost on my listeners.¹¹ Upon taking a photo of intricate green tile in a doorway, I was smacked on the rear end with a plastic water bottle by an old woman, who grinned and cracked what I’m sure was a hilarious joke in Arabic.

Now that the architectural and historical exploration had come to its end, we spent the next two hours exploring the local shops. We had a long conversation with a weaver, and sat in a huge room filled with folded carpets while a pair of merchants unfolded each in front of us on the floor to display its color and pattern. All afternoon, we bartered, laughed, argued, admired.¹² I found the happiest cat in town curled up in a pile of blankets outside a weaver’s shop. I bought a blanket I’d been lusting after since my first trip there, with every shade of blue to remind me of Chaouen’s painted walls.¹³ We attempted, for at least an hour, to locate a green blanket that wasn’t woven out of fluorescent thread.¹⁴ Everywhere we went, we were shown the same blinding lime green/forest green combination. We explained, in multiple languages, what normal green should look like, pointed to relevant colors, and gesticulated wildly. Each shopkeeper was so keen on making a sale that he dug out every blanket he had that even contained a hint of green.¹⁵ After being shown about twenty different fluorescent green blankets in twelve shops, I announced, “If you can show me a tree this color, I will buy your blanket.”

Exhausted by the bright colors, we tiptoed up to another rooftop café, where I sipped mint tea and watched the late afternoon bustle of the town square. On the way to the hotel, we ran head-on into a wedding procession and were engulfed in smiling, singing women who sprinkled me with flowery oils as they walked by. Later, I found myself walking up the street side-by-side with a little girl who wheeled a pink stroller in an extremely businesslike manner. Since she looked like she knew where she was going, I accompanied her for about five minutes, earning appreciative smiles and laughter from nearby women and children. Just after sunset, when the edges of the mountains were glowing and the moon hung low above us, we trekked up a small mountain to Chefchaouen’s most famous mosque. We sat on a wall and nibbled a chocolate bar while lights gradually blinked on across town until the whole valley looked like a reverse night sky, with a city of stars below and the real sky dark above.

Back at the hotel,¹⁶ we shared a stranger’s chocolate cake and conversed for hours about religion, global politics, travel, and–of course–Morocco. Read myself to sleep only to be awakened at four o’clock in the morning by an overzealous imam in a nearby mosque. My friend had happened upon a geode the night before during our walk up to the mosque, so–being the avid rock collector that I am–I set out on my own to repeat the journey. After reaching the mosque with no sign of amethyst, quartz, or any other attractive mineral, I continued up the side of the mountain. I sat on a boulder and looked back at the town, cut in half by early morning sunlight and shadow. A woman herding goats made her way up the slope past me, shhing and clicking at them as they meandered across the rocky ground. Lost in thought, I gazed down at the tiny figures moving about blue streets below.

Eventually, like the ill-fated protagonist in so many fairy tales, I wandered off the path. About halfway up the mountain, I crossed paths with the goat herder a second time. She was sitting on the shady side of a boulder with her daughter while their goats grazed contentedly nearby. I nodded and sat down a few feet away, but was soon invited to share their shade. Through gestures and smiles, I introduced myself and told them how much I loved their town and their mountains. The girl, Nada, watched me, curiously, before deciding that I was okay and enlisting my help in digging six little holes in the dirt. She scampered around collecting dried rodent pellets and handing them to me to deposit in each hole. I assumed this was to be some sort of game, but after a while I realized that she was just trying to occupy the time. I pulled out the colored string I carry with me everywhere and showed both of them the friendship bracelet I’d been working on. We sat together, squinting in the sunlight and listening to happy goat bleats, for nearly half an hour. Before leaving, I dug two spare friendship bracelets out of my pocket and tied them around Nada’s wrist. She met me again on the road down the mountain and grinned at me before disappearing behind a whitewashed gate. My search for a geode was long forgotten.

1. I am doing my best, however, to eliminate both peanut butter and nutella from my diet. Because this is a task of near-Herculean proportions, I’m just taking things one day at a time.
2. Catastrophe is a strong word, but I felt pretty strongly all week.
3. Did you know that this book is listed as one of the most controversial children’s books ever written, mostly because of depicted nudity, and has been banned in many places? The kindergarteners giggled through the first couple of pages but got over it quickly. Toward the end, when Mickey’s dough outfit falls off and he’s naked again, one of them exclaimed “Oh my goodness!”
4. True story: I dressed up as the Paper Bag Princess one year for Halloween. My dad got a paper grocery bag and cut out a neck hole and two arm holes, then I trick-or-treated in it all night.
5. I have a much longer list, but perhaps my overabundance of opinions on children’s literature are best left for another day.
6. Spaghetti with fresh onions, garlic, green pepper, and carrots in the sauce. Fruit smoothies accompanied by assorted French and Moroccan-style pastries for dessert.
7. Or, to be precise, every hour beginning at 2:00am.
8. A charming mountain town about three hours from Tangier, known for its gorgeous blue walls and handwoven blankets. Known affectionately as “Chaouen” by locals.
9. Still on my unique and confusing pollotarian diet, but maintaining my “try everything once” rule.
10. Tried on the shackles chained to the wall, but my small hands slipped right through them. May have made a joke about how no prison can hold me.
11. If they can’t even tell the difference between rosemary and basil, they probably don’t spend much time cooking.
12. I even managed to pick up a birthday gift my darling sister and celebrated track star, of whom I am very proud.
13. Just in time for winter, too. A strategic purchase.
14. An earlier attempt at a gift for my sister, who loves the color green.
15. Except for one obviously colorblind one, who thrust brown and red blankets into our arms.
16. A fabulous place, by the way, Hotel Molino is in a 400-year-old riad in the heart of the medina. This was my second stay there and this time I had the pleasure of meeting the owner. He showed me around his beautiful garden and even gave me two aloe vera plants, something I’d been searching for since arriving in Morocco. Highly recommended.