The Mid-service crisis is far from over. My landlord came by, and I showed him my broken faucet and asked if it was possible to get it fixed. He then told me, or I thought he told me, that he’d come by later, and I could pay him for rent then. That’s what I heard, […]
Category: Peace Corps
Collection of posts formerly titled under the blog I ran called “My Moroccan World” that detailed my time in Morocco as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Transit Stories
So, I’m at this taxi stand, and there’s a guy with two sheep sitting nearby, and I just keep thinking, “Please God, please tell me he’s not gonna try to put those two sheep in the back seat of my taxi.” I end up waiting for, like, two hours, and the four people waiting with […]
Fes
One of the first cities in Morocco I ever had the chance to visit was Fes. For the first three months I lived here, Fes was sort of a central location in my life before I knew my final site, and with every trip there, I got to know the city a little bit better. […]
How to Cook a Tajine
I posted this earlier on my vlog. I usually try not to post the same thing in both places, but this one in particular has been a long time coming, and I think it merits being posted twice. Enjoy! – I am certainly no Julia Child (thank goodness) or a Moroccan mother of eight (again, l-hamdulilah), […]
What it’s like to feel new again, or What’s all this Berber Stuff?
I spend a lot of time on my blog talking about the so-called Arab World, which really just describes countries where Arabic is the chief language. That makes sense, because I live in a community where Arabic is spoken almost exclusively outside of the home, and I rarely encounter anything else. But Morocco isn’t exactly […]
One Year In
Well, today marks one year of living in beautiful Morocco. After the plane touched down, what I remember most is being wide awake on the bus heading for our training site. The countryside was a geography I’d never really seen, some cross between knolls and desert, between palm trees and olive groves. The buildings were […]
Remembering 11 September
I remember sitting in my desk laughing at the television when all planes were diverted to Canada. Someone in the class busted out with a joke, “Yeah, screw Canada,” and we all started laughing desperate to find something to keep us from crying. Mrs. Hardin, our senior English teacher who deserved more love than she […]
Ramadan Kareem (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), a how-to on when to “Say Yes to the Dress”
M’brouk l-3id, or essentially, happy holiday. A month ago, when Ramadan first started, I posted on Facebook, “Ramadan Kareem,” which means that Ramadan is generous. A friend commented back on my post, “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,” who is the retired Lakers basketball player and hopefully equally known for his role in the movie Airplane! as co-pilot Roger […]
A Few Minor Adjustments
In only a week and a half or so, Ramadan will be over. It’s gotten hotter, unbearably hotter, and I’m always a little hungry, always a little thirsty, and probably more irritable than I’ve ever been. Something tells me I’m not alone in this. I was talking with Caity and Avery about that, about how […]
Learning to Cherish Life, or the time I wrote about laundry because I’d rather write about it than do it
This time last year, I was spending many waking hours sitting around in my parent’s living room, newly homeless, and staring at two large backpacks ready to leave for Morocco. I was still a month away from staging in Philadelphia, but I was ready to go; I was ready for a big change in my […]
