I wasn't going to talk about this.

There are a number of things I have trouble with. I'm quick to anger, slow to forgive. I hold on to the past. I cry too easily. I worry constantly. I fall in love at the slightest provocation and at the most inconvenient times. I also have a proud streak that manifests in the strangest ways. 

So I wasn't going to talk about what happened today because it hurts my pride. Because it makes me feel weak and because right now it's keeping me up at night. I wasn't going to talk about it even this afternoon when my friends asked me, but I did then, and it helped, and so I will do it again now and hope that it has the same effect. 

Today I was shopping in the medina and, while trying on a leather jacket in the shop, one of the shop employees started checking the fit on the coat and ended up sliding his hands under my shirt. Most of you who know me know that, if you had asked me how I  would handle this yesterday, I would have said a sucker-punch or maybe knee between his legs. (Add "perhaps a bit too eager for violence" to my list of faults.) Unfortunately I didn't react this way. I froze. I pushed his hands off of me but then I froze. Other employees came in the room. I didn't know what to do so I bought the coat and the bag I'd picked out and I told my friends I needed to get the fuck out of the shop. It really shouldn't surprise any one who knows my friends that they agreed without questions or arguments, that they stayed by my side when I asked them to and gave me water to drink and kept silent when I said that I needed it or that, later, when Beau finally got me to talk about why I was so upset, they comforted me without judgement and had turned my tears into laughter in short order. 

We drank milkshakes and coffee and talked about the sorts of things we usually talk about- variations on a hypothetical situation that tests our friendship and how we'd all handle it. 

I went home and watched bad romantic comedies all of which (oddly) involved female protagonists who, besides having romantic misadventures, are also lawyers. I think the universe, which had been whispering law school, is now actually shouting it. I've only been "graduated" (I technically haven't actually graduated yet I just don't have any more work to do.) for a day, but I feel more certain than ever that law school is what I want to do. (Not just because I think it will make my life more like a romantic comedy, I swear.) 

Tomorrow is my last day in Fes. I will probably cry. I will probably have a hard time fasting when Ramadan starts on Monday and I will probably take a long time to feel as tough as I want to feel again. But, as upset as I am, as angry at myself as I will be no matter what any one tells me otherwise, I am feeling better than I have in a long time. I think I know what I want to do next. I know for sure that I have people in my life who love me and who I can count on. I am going to the ocean in two days and I will spend the next week doing nothing but swimming. And, as I suppose was rather predictable, I am finally feeling like I might sleep. Goodnight. 

Can't give up actin' tough, it's all I'm made of...

I'm about 12 hours away from being done with college. Tomorrow I will take my last final. Maybe it's the intensity of the program, or just the intense nature of being abroad while doing it, but I'm feeling surprisingly emotional about all of it. It doesn't help that my heart feels sore like a muscle I've been overworking. I'm half in love with every single person in my program and constantly amazed by how close we've grown over such a short period of time. I'm about a week away from saying goodbye to all of them- probably some of them forever- and to my host family and all my friends in Fes. On top of this I just got the worst test score I've ever gotten in my college career, which isn't exactly the note you want to go into your final exam on. On top of all of it, I'm about to see my best friend for the first time since she went into the Peace Corps last summer and I can't wait.

So yeah. Emotions. I have lots of them.

I couldn't have gotten through today without my friends. For the walking buddy, the bear-hugs, the steadying hand on my elbow to keep me from sliding into the white board, the generous forgiveness of my ineptitude, the studying companions, the stories, the jokes and the smiles. Thanks, you guys. An education that has spanned 4 colleges in 5 cities and 2 countries over 7 years and more jobs, boyfriends, apartments, roommates and final exams than I can count is careening toward its end. 12 hours left as an undergraduate.

See you on the other side.

I will blog again.

I've been awol from this blog, in part because of the rather intense homework/finals/presentation schedule of the last week of my Arabic class and in part because I've been pretty down lately.

Before I get into all that, because this blog is intended to be about the financial aspects of studying abroad, let me mention a recent happy/strange happenstance that really turned out to be less awesome. The lovely people at Gilman International e-mailed me to let me know they were giving me $500 more. GREAT! Yay! Happiness (and a slight increase in my willingness to eat fancy lunches) ensued. Then I got an e-mail from my school's financial aid department reminding me that I was going to have the $500 deducted from other aid, and I needed to pay that to them right away. I'd be more upset about this but it still means replacing $500 of my loan with $500 of a grant, so I guess I still win? Anyway, just another reminder that winning scholarships often doesn't do much more than offset other forms of aid- there is a limit to the amount of money you're allowed to "earn" this way.

Ok. So now that things are winding down in Morocco (I have less than 2 weeks left with my program) I'm starting to feel an odd combination of things. 1. I'm sad because I will miss all of the great new friends I have made and my life in Fes. 2. I'm homesick because I've been away from my family for so long during a rather turbulent time for them/me. 3. I'm SO EXCITED to see my best friend in August and to spend a month in Burkina Faso with her. Because so many of these feelings are at odds with one another (I can't keep hanging out with my friends here AND see my family AND spend a month with my best friend) I'm trying to just keep them in three distinct boxes in my head and deal with them one at a time as they arise.

I haven't wanted to blog because I haven't wanted to admit that I'm having these feelings and because I've just been overwhelmed with work, and I didn't want my writing to sound like a list of complaints (the homework is really not unreasonable.. it's just sometimes hard to know how to budget "getting really sick from dehydration and spending a night vomiting and trying to keep the room from spinning" into my study schedule. These things happen.  Anyway, I'm off to do more homework and study for the test I have tomorrow. I will try to be better about updating (particularly once we're in Essaouira.)

A cemetery on my side

Priorities are strange things. This morning I heard a kitten crying loudly outside my room, and when I opened the door to leave for class, a skinny ball of furry stripes came darting through my legs and into the house. I picked him up (still wailing) and he curled into a ball in the space between my collarbone and my neck and began purring. I was pretty much done for. I eventually managed to get him off of me, and found him to be about 6 weeks old, very skinny with dark stripes and bright white oversized paws. He followed me (wailing even more loudly now) all the way to the taxi.

There have been several moments over the last few days when I thought I might actually break down and cry. So far it hasn't happened, mostly because I've been in company and well distracted. This kitten almost got me. All morning long I could still hear him crying at me, still see him circling my feet. I sat for the test, I survived the hour of class afterwards, and then we got to the break. I made my decision and set off to return to the Medina.

Frequently when I'm making these rash, emotional decisions, I look for signs from the universe (or God, if you prefer) that I'm doing the right thing. If you're a frequent reader of our class blog (or an ALIF student) you understand that it is usually impossible to get a taxi at the taxi stand near McDonalds. I walked up, asked the first driver I saw if he would take me to Batha and he sort of shrugged in an affirmative manner. I took this as a sign that my truancy was a good call.

Once back in Batha I bought some milk and went looking for my cat. After an unsuccessful search of the street, the neighborhood watch guy waved me over. I started to explain in Arabic and he said (in English) "You are looking for the very small cat? I saw you with him this morning." I told him I was. He smiled and pointed at the milk in my hand "You want to give him milk?" He asked this without a hint of disdain (I expected to get treated like a crazy woman.) Pointing at a hole in the wall he explained the kitten lives in there and that I could leave the milk with him and he would give it to the cat the next time he comes out of the hole. I thanked him and he seemed to understand how important it was to me.

My spirits lifting, I went back to class.

When we took a bus trip to Meknes a few of us played a car game that involved counting livestock and getting points for who had the most cows/sheep/whatever on their side of the car. The rule was that passing a cemetery took away all of your points, setting you back to 0.

I used to think that death, and grief, makes a person irrational, that suddenly the elevated importance lent to every relationship and every person in your life is just a side effect of profound loss. Today I came to the conclusion that I've been all wrong about this. The people I care about seem so much more important because this is how I should feel. Life and time will numb this, I will forget this feeling and I will go back to taking every one I love for granted too often. It is the sad fact of life that we are eager to be lulled into this faith that we will always have more time, that our last words will always get to be said and said well. Death takes this faith away. Right now, while I am still painfully aware of how false this faith is, I want to make sure that I live well, and honestly and that I tell the people I care about how much they mean to me. Right now I want to fix the things I can even if it is only one day of hunger for one very tiny kitten. I do not think this is a sign of misplaced priorities.

On death, without exaggeration

My grandmother died. I want to say something profound, something that will make if feel less like a sucker-punch, something that will make it ok for me to be in Morocco while my sister is so upset. I have nothing. Recently another student on my trip suffered a (I don't want to quantify grief but certainly an even more tragic) loss and I had this flash of fear for her being so far from her own family. Now I understand better than I want to. There was a moment today when I considered leaving. I don't think my family would want it and I think I would regret it. I feel helpless and motion might feel like help but I would arrive in Seattle and be just as lost for what to do.

My grandmother grew up in Nebraska and Wyoming on farms. She stopped going to school when WWII broke out. She married twice, adopted two boys and spent her life working and taking care of my sisters and I. When we came home from school, our parents were both working so she took care of us. She started to get sick a few years ago and she's spent the last few years in an assisted living facility in Nebraska.

I planned on visiting her. I never made it out there. Instead I came here. I swore to myself that I'd call her once a week. It became once a month. And then less. I didn't even call her before I left to let her know I was going to Morocco. This is the guilt of those left behind. Going home would do nothing, now. But I can't mourn here, I can't visit the places she took us as kids, I can't listen to her music or rehash old stories with my sister. She's not here. I want to be somewhere that still remembers her.

I can't go. I understand this, I understand intellectually.  I can't really think intellectually right now so I will let one of my favorite poets say what I can't really.

 

On Death, without Exaggeration

By Wislawa Szymborska 

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

One of these things is a lie...

I recently found out that I probably have to be out of my apartment before I actually get home. This was upsetting and kind of stressful, but I'd just gotten to be sort of OK with it when I got an e-mail from a coworker letting me know that she and another close friend are quitting. I guess I didn't REALLY expect to come home from 3 months of travelling and find my life exactly the way I left it, but I'm only now starting to appreciate how different it will be. I won't live in the same place or with the same people. I won't have classes to go to, or the easy justification of "I'm still in school" to explain why I have no idea what to do with my life. I won't work with the same group, I won't have the same schedule, I will also (most surreally) have a book to promote. I was thinking about all of this while hanging my laundry on the terrace and I didn't feel as panicked about it as I probably should.

I think that I'm ok with the prospect of all of this change, largely because I won't be returning home the same person. Morocco (and the people I've met or gotten to know better in Morocco) has already begun to have some pretty strong effects on my personality. I'm calmer. I'm generally less concerned about things I can't control. I'm spending less time hiding behind my laptop and more time interacting with people (though I still do plenty of hiding behind my laptop, particularly when it's for the slightly more socially acceptable excuse of watching YouTube videos with my friends.) We have just under a month left and then I have another month of travel with my best friend in Burkina Faso. So maybe my life will be wholly unrecognizable once I'm back in Seattle, but, إن شاء الله, so will I. After all, I suspect that might be why I came here in the first place.

Now it is time for rooftop aerobics with my host sister and then dinner. Currently, I'm for sure not sitting in bed eating nutella with a spoon because that would just be silly and I am much too dignified for that. (Lie.)

(see Zoe's post about pre-dinner hunger and you'll understand.)

Crime in a foreign country

So I've already posted about how to be safe and minimize your chances of being a victim of a crime while travelling. One thing I probably didn't stress enough is that even if you do everything right, it can still happen. This morning two of my friends were walking to meet up with us for our weekend adventure in Asilah when they were accosted by two young boys with a big knife. On girl had her purse taken after trying to fight the kids off, but luckily no one was hurt.

I'm furious in a kind of useless, not-helping-and-non-specific kind of way. I'm upset that this happened to them and I'm upset that they were doing everything "right" but were still not safe in our own neighborhood. (Tourists we may appear but these are our families and our homes for the summer. We live here, we are not just snapping photos and buying souvenirs.) We got to experience the joy of hanging out in a police station (one which, I should add, had a really unsettling amount of blood spattered inside it) and filing a report. But I'm grateful to the host father of a different classmate, who helped the girls and alerted neighborhood security, to the police who helped us (and to the palace guards who helped us find the police) and to the residents of the neighborhood who helped the police in their investigation. We decided to catch a later train, so the weekend beach trip is still on. The only thing taken was cash, credit cards, ID and a camera (luckily NOT my friend's passport.) No one was hurt. All in all we've been very lucky, and I think even the girls who were robbed feel that it could have been much, much worse.

Still crime is a frightening and upsetting thing to experience. It can happen to any one at any time of day and under just about any circumstance. Being alert and prepared is the best any of us can do.

Bokononism

Today I went book shopping. I love book shopping, no matter what country I'm in. A friend in my program has never read Vonnegut and I found Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5 at the campus bookshop so I'm doing what I can to remedy this situation. (Luckily he didn't take much persuading. Normally with book suggestions I'd wait anxiously worrying about how my suggestion might be received but as I'm convinced this individual is a member of my karass I'm not too worried. Plus I have two other classmates looking to convert as soon as he's done with them, so I may have a happy bunch of Vonnegut fans in a few weeks, إن شاء الله

One of the great things about sharing Vonnegut with some one else is that I get to re-live the first time I read Cat's Cradle, after my older sister pushed it on me. I was so skeptical at first, but I converted quickly and read all of his writing that I could get my hands on after that. I don't think I realized how common the experience was until I saw Mr. Vonnegut interviewed by Jon Stewart, who said something along the lines of "as an adolescent he made my life bearable". Truer words were never spoken.

Later on in the evening I went to a religious book store to try to get an English/Arabic copy of the Qur'an. The man working at the shop told me to sit down and wait for him and then left the shop (and me alone in it) for a good 10 minutes. Apparently he wasn't too concerned at the possibility that I might steal anything. He brought be a very used but very beautiful bilingual copy so hopefully I can spend Ramadan working my way through it now that I have a better grasp of Arabic (I can't read it in Arabic, yet, but I will at least have a better idea of what the translation is getting at.)

Anyway, homework is beckoning and I am already exhausted. Busy, busy, busy....

Blogging instead of studying

I am not ready to write about the weekend. I don't think it can be done. I can't write about a place where red and blue and hot and cold and stars have no meaning because the words don't mean enough, because the words taste insipid at the sight of these things.

I met my camel as she lay down at the front of our three-woman caravan. She had scars on her face that looked like the word الله. (It was not, it just looked that way.) I named her Scar, and when I ask the other caravans how to say this in Arabic they think I mean "star". Star is the name a private-school girl gives her first pony. Star is not the name of my camel. She is not pretty or twinkly or in any way ponylike. She is Scar. She is what is left of injury after it has healed.

Her life is not easy. It is clear to see that though the guides are kind men who probably like the camels well enough, the camels have been ridden too often and too far, fed too little and too poorly to be called happy. I do not think the man leading me into the desert with no shoes is to blame for this.

Anyway, we arrive. I can see Algeria from the oasis where we camp. Algeria does not look that different from Morocco. We climb the sand, recklessly, gleefully, sliding and panting and collapsing not halfway to the top. We play like children because we are in the desert and the sand is soft like snow. We play because we have no studying to do and no work to go to and no host families to please and even the heat doesn't seem so bad here.

The drums start after dinner. The drums are played in a way that tempts the untrained ear to listen and understand, if nothing else, that these drums are loved by the hands upon them.

I slip out from the crowd, ignoring the long shadows reaching for me in the firelight. I turn to the hills, and walk until the darkness is too thick to see. The sand is warm. I am not afraid of bugs, anymore. I did not think I would ever stop being afraid of bugs but in this moment I am not.

Above me the sky is not even fully dark yet and already there are more stars than I remembered possible. The cloudy arm of a galaxy spans above me and no moon dims the imposible brightness of these ancient suns. I believe in everything. I believe in life on other planets. I believe in God. I believe that all of us are pieces of the same whole. I believe that I see you walking alone in the dunes north east of me and that you see me lying in the sand, believing. The desert has taken my understanding of what is possible and twisted it, dried it out and polished it bright and foreign and beautiful. I don't realize I am asleep until I feel my body jerk upwards, resisting.

Eventually I return to camp. We sleep outside, on beds taken from tents and placed below the sky. Sleep may be a strong word. It is still dark when we rise and decide to try and climb the dune, the rising mountain of loose sand that will not suffer our clumsy steps. We call it climbing but you would not know it from crawling, likely. I pull myself to the top and collapse, gasping. The sun has just barely begun to bleed dark blue into the black of the horizon.

As the sun comes up I feel the others sitting beside me and believe (even as the stars disappear slowly) that we are all still pieces of the same whole. We stay in this state of oneness for a while, until the sun is full above Algeria and it is time to descend. We do not walk down, we drift, float, sink, slide all at the same time. The camels are keening in the distance, impatient for the ride home. Reassured of the living (both yours and mine)I depart as eagerly as I arrived, waiting with the confidence of another for whatever will come next. We wind our way out through the dune and I wonder if happiness is something that can be found in the desert and, more importantly, if it is possible to carry it with me on the way out.

Into the dunes

I forget who it was who totalled our amount of travel time yesterday at around 15 hours, but the reasoning was sound. Between climbing sand dunes, riding camels, frequent stops followed by surprising amounts of traffic, if felt like we did nothing but move from place to place yesterday. Good thing I aim to be more nomadic, I suppose. I was surprised that I enjoyed the camel riding as much as I did, but I definitely preferred my camel to the van.

Two nights ago, after we arrived in camp, I wandered out during the drum circle to lay under the stars and listen from the dark. I don't think I've ever seen so many stars out at night. The milky way was gorgeous, the moon was too small to be seen, and there were even a few shooting stars. The wind (which my ALIF roommate said kept her group in tents almost the whole time last week) was just a low whistle in the distance. It was magic. Once I'd been out there for a while I began to drift off. A few times I woke myself up or other students' voices in the distance woke me up, and eventually some of the Amazigh guides found me. One sat down and we began talking in a mix of English, Arabic, Darija and Spanish. He asked me about my life in Seattle and when I told him it was beautiful in the desert he said it was his job. He does it every day, so he is used to it. He said he likes it sometimes, but also that he was sick of the types of tourists who came out to drink and do drugs and party all night long. I'm still having a hard time imagining how any one could get used to the beauty of the Sahara. Tourists must be really, really awful.

The next morning we woke up at 4 (the plan was 5 but I'm actually kind of OK with the ALIF jerk who decided to shout to all of his friends at 4 am) and climbed the biggest dune around. I thought I was going to give up at several points, but Kristi and Ryan kept me going. Getting to the top (almost 45 minutes later) was so worth it. The sunrise was incredible (I'll post pictures but my iphone can't do it justice.)

I hope this wasn't my last trip to the Sahara. It feels like the kind of thing that might be logistically difficult to pull off twice in one lifetime, but I'm going to try my hardest to go back one day, إن شاء الله

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