The Dilemma

Notes on having spent the last two weeks in a classroom inside the main building because my portable is uninhabitable:

• I don't go home sweaty because I don't ever have to go outside except to get in the car.
• The air conditioning is constant and comfortable.
• Students who need a drink just step out in the hall, get the drink, and come back into class and there's no hassle
• I get a lot more done on my prep because the copier/library/materials room are all right there...& if I forget a pen, or a transparency sheet, it isn't a 1/4 mile hike to get it.
• We have a window, so we have natural lighting; it feels so good.
• It doesn't have a "funny" smell--the portable always had a funny smell--even before the birds
• It's nice to have other people nearby.
• I can go to the bathroom if I have an emergency--the teacher next door can "cover" my class.

I heard from the office that someone is scheduled to come out this week and do the clean-up on the portables that have pigeon nests in the ducts (at least two). So possibly, we could return to our normal room in a week. Now, my dilemma is I've grown very fond of being back inside the regular building. Hmm...even if the room is small and I keep needing things that are outside. Good thing there are only 29 days left until I don't have to worry about this problem EVER AGAIN.

(Because I'll quit working as a teacher if I'm ever told I must teach in a portable in the future.)

Day and Night

DAY: Since we can no longer use my wretched portable classroom because of the foul/fowl odor and the random falling larva, I am holding class in a borrowed room. The second graders who normally use it are on track break. We squeeze our fourth grade selves in there and try to be academic. It is a challenge. Each student has a pile of books to deal with, but nowhere to store them. Over and over each day I reach for something that is...in the portable. Hmmm....punt.
We spent the last three days feverishly completing our Science Fair projects and displays to the exclusion of all else. Then I stayed until 6:00 P.M. today attending the Science Fair.

NIGHT: After cleaning house for a bit, then reading the newspaper, I went out and jumped in the pool. Then I soaked in the hot tub,and now I'm going to eat my supper, watch tonight's taped Jeopardy and go to bed.

My life is like NIGHT and DAY.

Picking Rocks

We decided to remove all the landscaping rocks around the pool so we could lay out new weed-deterent cloth, plant some new things and get rid of all the sneaky grass that has grown up through the rocks. It wasn't a very big area, so it didn't seem like a huge task. Good grief....I hope I never encounter an actual huge task. Duh. My Pollyana Brain always thinks jobs are going to be easier than they actually turn out to be.

One complication of my ill-timed ambition was the temperature. When I decided to start this after school on Thursday it was 105 degrees. Yup--105. But it was really evening and the sun was low enough in the sky as to not be actually shining on me. The pool wall created a shadow. But, nevertheless, the air temp was 105. Even in A Dry Heat this is not work weather. It was a small space, so mostly I was on my knees with a trowel scooping. Cool Guy was busy in the garage with some engine work so I worked alone until it was too dark to see.

Then Friday, Cool Guy came out and helped me for an hour and we cleared off another large area. But Friday it was 108. So after that hour, we looked at one another, put up the shovels and got in the pool. A FABULOUS IDEA!

At last using some common sense...we got up early on Saturday morning and finished the job while it was still shady on that side of the house and the air temperature was below 100. So, now we have naked ground ready for the new landscape cloth, more plants to soften the wall areas and a new load of rocks. Which I really, really hope will be easier to spread than to clear off. We'll see.

Ultimately though, this rock picking beats the rock picking I did as a farm girl: when I finish up here I can dive in the pool. Back then, finishing up for the day was followed by two hours of cow milking.

Sum-Sum-Summertime

Today is the Summer Solstice, the First Day of Summer, the Longest Day of the Year. I love summer. Summer used to mean hauling hay. But it also meant time to ride my horse, bonfires out in the pasture with dutch-oven potatoes followed by marshmallows on a stick. For ten years it meant I got my Real Life back---school was finished and I could stay home and do things around my house every day. Even though I've now taught school for 12 years, I stayed home and was the Mom for 19 years before that and so I'm not accustomed to being considered a "working woman" entirely.

Summer means sweet corn, blue crabs, fresh tomatoes and fire flies in Maryland. Summer means "late night, early morning low-cloudiness", hours at the beach, no rain, and strawberries in South California. Summer means twilight till 10:00, rodeos, and creamed fresh peas in Wyoming.

When I was a little girl summer lasted forever. We had our weekly swimming lesson at a pool that was filled by a natural hot sulfur spring, so we smelled like rotten eggs all the rest of the day. We'd build a little playhouse under the lilac trees with a blanket and pretend to be nurses, using our little brothers for patients. We'd lick a lilac leaf and plaster it on their arms and it would stick like a Bandaide. Sometimes we'd bring a snack into our shady cove by raiding the garden in the only row we were permitted to raid: the turnips. Mother planted the turnips for snacking, so we'd peel and slice it and bring out the salt shaker. They were juicy and a little bit spicy.

Some other blog maybe I'll recount the summer of a working farm girl. But not this one. This blog is for the joys of summer.

Who knew that I'd learn to love summer in the desert? We drove through the Mohave on the annual trek to The Grandmas for twenty years and I'd just grit my teeth as we survived another trip in the latest old vehicle with no air conditioning. But! Ten years of East Coast humidity taught me to finally understand the phrase, "But it's a DRY heat" and now, I just love 100+ degrees: I have a pool.

A Fowl Smell

Monday morning I went to work and spent about an hour in my classroom before the students arrived. I usually do this. But when the students came marching in following the morning announcements they all grabbed their noses and began to complain about the nasty smell. I had a very bad cold and could smell nothing since Friday. Often the carpet has an icky odor and then there is the funky smell of 10 year-old kids after a hot recess that has permeated the atmosphere. But no...this was evidently different.

Another teacher comes to my room on M-W mornings for an hour to give an extra lesson on writing to try to boost our school's fifth grade writing test scores. (She figures by starting on them in fourth grade, there's a better chance to get some improvement for fifth grade.) Well, when she stepped in the door, she too declared "Ick---something really smells in here--like the bottom of a bird cage, only worse." I stepped out and got the custodian. He concurred---bleh.

Evidently the pigeons whose babies we've heard cheeping in our air conditioner vent had reached a critical mass of guano, or perhaps there had been a fatality in the nest. Something foul and fowl-ish was wafting down from the air conditioner vent and the room reeked. Lucky me with the head cold! We opened the doors, I sprayed Febreeze all around. It didn't help much.

Then, just after her lesson finished, as we were starting math, a half-inch long maggot dropped from the vent and plopped onto a boy's desk at table 3. EEEKK!!! I calmly scooped it up onto an index card, folded the card over and stapled it shut into a little envelope. With ten minutes the fat juicy maggot had stretched itself thin and was wriggling out between the staples. DOUBLE EEEK!!! I dropped the whole thing into a cup.

When the students went to the library at 11:00 I went to the office with my maggot friend and had a cow. Bad plan. The next day I brought in homemade banana bread to mollify the secretary whom I'd alienated with my shouted "Why AREN'T maggots an emergency for maintenance!!??" I was directed to go yell at the principal because she (the secretary) didn't make enough money to get yelled at. Oops.

So--the solution? I moved out of my room with my class and their books to a teacher's room who is on track break. That worked for two days. Then I moved to another room because someone needed the previous room for something else. Today we had a field trip. But the rest of the week we're camping in a tiny room.

I've seen e-mails that indicate that perhaps next week some contract crew will come and remove the cause of the wretched odor and then someone else will come and put a wire grate over the opening the pigeons used to gain access to the air ducts. But not necessarily next week.

No, maggots are NOT an emergency. Sigh. Seven weeks to go.

Love/Hate

In keeping with the blog-fads, I submit the following:

25 Things I Love:

1. new books
2. swimming
3. the way horses smell
4. fresh tomatoes from my garden
5. the ocean
6. chocolate licorice
7. playing the piano when no one is listening
8. the first day of school
9. the last day of school
10. raw oysters
11. tulips and lilacs
12. Halloween decorations
13. Christmas
14. kneading bread dough
15. reading the newspaper
16. mushrooms
17. shrimp
18. clean sheets on my bed
19. Cool Guy
20. mountains
21. the smell of hay
22. driving across the country
23. the smell of sagebrush
24. dark chocolate
25. the hot tub

25 Things I Hate

1. cleaning the refrigerator
2. head colds
3. people spitting on the ground in public
4. hauling hay bales
5. parents who yell at and jerk their kid instead of just listening
6. teaching in a portable classroom waaaay out there
7. numb fingers and toes from cold weather
8. East coast high humidity
9. stupid people who drive erratically
10. running out of milk
11. feta cheese
12. black licorice
13. banana-flavored things
14. sleeping in a hot room
15. racial bigotry from anyone
16. vulgar movies rated PG-13
17. sore feet
18. bugs that fly into my face
19. cockroaches
20. taggers and their ugly graffiti
21. those filmy plastic shopping bags
22. litterers
23. arguments
24. menudo
25. mosquito bites

Music History 101

Today we had an assembly featuring a candidate for president who is good buddies with the person for whom our school is named. When our principal was informed that this visit would occur, complete with the full contingent of press, we kicked into gear and did a massive school-wide refresher of bulletin boards, wall-stuff, flower planting, etc. It was rather inconvenient and time-consuming and annoying to go through all this to be a photo-op, but we did it and the whole event was very nice. Our students behaved well, the questions they asked at the Q&A were pertinent, and the stroll through the halls with the reporters and entourage was very nice, blah, blah.

We had a performance by a group of second graders of the song "Yankee-Doodle Dandy" while they wore darling little three corner hats that were very red/white/blue and then they did a round dance to a recorded instrumental of "Yankee-Doodle Dandy."

When we returned to our fourth grade class-room several of my students were exclaiming with disgust "Why did they sing that stupid Barney song??" HUH? BARNEY SONG? I asked one of my more obnoxious girls to explain to me WHAT Barney song. She hummed "Yankee Doodle".

WHAT? BARNEY?

So we spent a few minutes while Mrs. Teacher explained that maybe Barney borrowed the tune, but that was no Barney song. We learned about its 200+ year history and the Continental soldiers who seized onto the British ridicule and made it their Revolutionary Pride Song.

Whew--the things I don't know they don't know. Wow.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

When I was a child I grew up in a world where, not only was everyone white, but many of them were my cousins. It was a very small town. However, I knew people of different races, I saw people of different races when we went to other towns, and of course I watched t.v. and saw a variety of people.

Today in my class--where I am the sole blonde/blue-eyed person---I showed them some photos of my trip to Morocco. Included in this were pictures of the taxi-man's son and nephew. When their sweet little faces came up on the screen (I used a CD in my computer and an LCD projector) a voice in my room called out, "They're white!" (They have black hair, olive skin and dark brown eyes.) These boys are in fact Berber children--whose ethnic origins I'm not quite sure of, although they are not Arabic. Hence: berber: barbarians--a moniker the local people of the area now called Morocco were given by the invading Arabs many centuries ago. But I digress...

My thought was when I heard that remark was, "Huh?" I mean why do these kids of mine ALWAYS point out the race of someone? There was an ugly slur delivered against a hispanic boy by a black student today because he was boiling mad about losing at marbles. Ironically, the hispanic boy has been a great buddy of the black kid for months and they frequently choose each other as partners in class. Whenever things get tense, racial remarks are ALWAYS used by my students. No one can ever be upset about the normal things of kid life in my class without the racial remarks being muttered, shouted, or whined.

When Archie Bunker first came to television I was a teenager. Most of the rude/colloquial terms he used when referring to people of other-than-his group I had never heard before. I'm confident my parents had opinions and prejudices but we didn't hear about it from their lips.

So what is wrong with these parents of my students that their nine year children are so conversant with the absolute worst part of American society---sterotyping with ugly racial comments??

It's Just So Random

Saturday I attended a family reunion with my brothers and sisters and our extended families. Lots of tiny babies! We had a great time. It was held at a large waterpark/amusement park complex in Utah.

My daughter and I took her two little ones over to the pool area and dressed in our swimsuits. Just then, my son called to say that he was at the front gate, and his wife was feeling well enough to come with them afterall, so could I meet them with the extra ticket. Sure--I couldn't walk through the park in my bathing suit, so I just pulled on my djellaba--a long gown worn by many people in Morocco over their other clothing when going out. Then when they are out in public they are the shape of a door--a modest Muslim dresses this way. (It is pronounced gel-laba.)

As I went out the gate to the parking lot, the woman ahead of me stopped to hold the gate and commented: "That's a lovely djellaba!"
I replied in astonishment, "Thank you...Wow! You know it is a djellaba!"
She nodded and went on "Did you get it in Morocco?"
"Yes, "I told her, and that we just returned from a visit to our daughter who is there in the Peace Corps.

This lady, too, was a Peace Corps Volunteer who'd served in Morocco, south and east of the area where our daughter is living. We exchanged a little more conversation and then separated to go on with the day.

Now, ISN'T THAT JUST SO RANDOM?

A Big Thank You to Mother Nature

Today, my class went on a field trip that included a walk along a desert nature trail. (For those of you not familiar with the desert, or who may be snickering "Oxymoron: desert/nature" there is a whole amazing world out here in the desert--it's just subtle.)

In preparation for this field trip I'd pointed out that on this trail in a previous visit I'd seen rabbits, lizards and many birds. But in order for them to see these creatures, it would be necessary to walk quietly and keep out a sharp eye.

Then, when we arrived at the site our guide briefed us for the walk also reminding everyone to walk carefully, and when they spotted some wildlife, to "freeze and point" and then everyone would see the signal and we could observe without frightening away our desert friend.

So, now the pressure was on. What if we went the whole length of the path and didn't see anyone?? These students mostly live in apartments, in a world of concrete with their only "wildlife" experience the pesky pigeons who are nesting on our portable classroom roof.

BUT--just like someone had been sneaking ahead of us and planting them--every few yards we got to freeze and point! We saw four lizards, a jackrabbit and a cottontail, several quail and three enormous crows who just glared back at us as though we were the attraction and they were the visitors. Oh, and a beautiful carmel colored dragon fly landed on a bush and some of my eagle-eyed students pointed it out to us all. Cool.

Plus, we finished the twenty minute walk all extremely grateful that we weren't on the old California trail, with "just four more weeks" until we reached our destination. Wow, how DID those pioneer ancestors do it?

The Settlement

We were able to settle out of court, when today a lady came by and picked up the little dog.

I got home last night and there, on the light pole by our mailbox, was a poster advertising a lost dog who fit the description of our guest. This morning the lady returned my phone call (she'd left her cell at work) and we handed over the little mopster an hour ago.

Kitty Cat is breathing easier. Now, if she could just find a hit man for the birds...

Why Kitty Cat Filed the Lawsuit

Well, first, a little bedraggled doggie turned up on our doorstep Saturday morning. We thought he was with the boy selling something for his school, but hours later, the little dustmop with paws was still lying there. And it was 100 degrees. So we gave him a bowl of water, which he promptly consumed. And then we carried him into the back yard so he could lay on the grass in the shade of a tree. THE OUTRAGE!! A dog in her yard!!

Then we gave him a packet of Kitty-Chicken. UNBELIEVABLE!!

He was so dehydrated that we were afraid he might die overnight--he could hardly walk, he was shaking, his eyes were cloudy. He looked tough. But by Sunday afternoon, he was up and walking and toddled over to the door, and came into the dining room. THE NERVE!!

Then, last night when I came home from the airport, Kitty Cat was batting a small bird around the front yard and I picked her up so she wouldn't kill it. Just then, some other cat leaped off the wall and snatched up the birdie in its mouth and the birdie let out a loud squeak and then was silent as the other cat ran away....oh.

This morning the parents of the bird (who have spent a great deal of time shrieking at Kitty Cat whenever she ventures into the yard) were physically dive bombing her on the patio. And it wasn't even her who got to torture the baby bird and have a wonderful time doing so!!!

So, that's why she hired the lawyer. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

Harvest Time at Rancho Las Vegas

Hey, hey, hey! We're eating tomatoes--fresh picked, vine ripened. So, this belies the common rumor that you can't grow tomatoes in Las Vegas. You can grow them, but you must plant them in March, and keep them well watered, pick off the green worms, and get them all eaten in May and June because in July the heat will cook the plants in the ground.

Actually I read that the reason they don't do well in mid-summer is that the air temperature is so hot, 24/7, that the blossoms don't set into fruit. And that may well be true. This week has been very hot--98, 99, even 100 degrees, but night is still "cool"--it goes down to 70. But this "cool" time has been enough, or perhaps it hasn't yet been hot for enough days in a row to affect my plants, because they are still flowering and setting fruit.

And the compost bin is working great! We dumped out a batch of lovely dirt-smelling soil tonight and put it in a storage bin. When I clear out the lettuce (going to seed) I'll dig in some of this awesome dirt to the area and watch the crookneck and zucchini grow. I love this job!!

News Flash

Today I had a doctor appointment with another specialist to see if I can find a reason for the continual pain in my right hip--the pain that was supposed to be taken care of 11 months ago with the surgery...sigh. It's Back!!

Anyway, among the many things we ruled out were lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia---Whew.

But, one thing he has postulated that could be a cause: (here's the news flash)

I have flat feet.

He pointed this out while examining various tendons and pressure points to rule out several of those other icky diseases one wouldn't wish on an enemy.

Yes!! Flat feet!! Once again, a master of the obvious, noting that I have no arches. When I get out of the pool it looks like Donald Duck was walking on my patio. I even have knobby knees because of my life time of pronated ankles and totally, like a pancake, with no curve whatsoever, FLAT FEET. Yes, I knew that.

Anyway, his point being (and I don't mean to ridicule him--he is an excellent doctor and I really feel confident in his plan to get more data from blood tests and look into this further) that perhaps this is a muscular-skeletal problem from a life time of odd-feet. Hey...weirder things have happened.

Stay tuned.

Grad Student

I almost forgot! I have been accepted to San Jose State University in the School of Library and Information Science master's degree program. I got an e-mail on Friday telling me so. I don't live in California so they let me in their special all on-line program. I feel a little nervous now that I've actually been told "yes". It seemed like a great idea a few months ago when my daughter suggested it...I hope it continues to be a great idea as I pursue this degree. I realize that I enjoy sitting in classes and asking questions of an actual person most of the time. On the other hand, not having to drive to a location away from home, after working all day, also seems like a massive luxury.

I'll probably need to replace the laptop that was stolen from our house and clean off my desk in the spare room. My real concern is that I'm starting at a new school with a completely different format (I'm going to teach writing to a series of fourth grade classes) plus start grad school all the same week in August. Whew. Nothing ever happens one at a time in real life, does it?

Anyway, at the other end of the odyssey will be a master's degree that I can use in school as a librarian, or I can go to work at a library if I ever get completely burned out on school. I can also work part-time as an old lady, too, as life goes on and the full-time gig becomes too difficult. At the very least, I'll be able to advance on the salary scale in my district. Library work--it seems like letting the fox guard the chicken coop in my case--how will I ever get anything done surrounded by all those words I haven't read yet??

Happy Birthday

Today is my sister's birthday. I'm 54, she would have been 53, but she died two years ago. We were born 15 months apart--to the day. Once my mom told me why; I guess since I was a mother at the time she felt I was a fellow adult to whom she could tell that story. It was amusing, and it revealed my mom to be the youngster she was at that time--24 with three kids.
(It seems that her mother was sleeping on their couch that night,visiting in order to be to an early morning appointment, and my mom was too embarrassed to get up in the middle of the night and fetch her birth control from the bathroom in case her mom would awaken and figure out that---oh no!---her married daughter had sex with her husband...[they'd been married six years.] My mom laughed about it when she told me.) At the time, I was pregnant with #3 in three years. Hyper-fertility runs in the family?

My sister's birth has an story, too. Our dad worked days as a farmer and nights at the concrete batch plant at the site of large dam being built about 60 miles from our home. My mom would fret because it was dangerous and he got very little sleep during that year. He was usually home by morning to milk their couple of cows--she milked them in the evening. But this day he didn't come home and she was at the hospital. I don't know who milked, or who drove her there, or where my two older sisters and the baby (Me) were hanging out. But Mother was there, with a new baby girl and he came strolling in around 11:00 A.M. She been worrying about him being hurt or killed at work all the while she was in labor and getting a ride and finding a sitter and--and--She was so happy to see him alive and well she forgot to yell at him for stressing her so.

There'd been a chance to work overtime for a few hours and he, and the friend he rode with, took the opportunity to earn the extra money. As they drove into the north end of town (our farm was seven miles south of town) my dad said to his friend driving, (again--according to Mother--) "Let's swing past the hospital and see my new baby." There were no cell phones, he didn't have any way to know for sure. My mom said his friend was all "Yeah, right," and then had to eat his words when VOILA there was a new baby!

And she was the CUTEST baby! Her hair was dark at first, but grew into a white fluff that stayed platinum blonde her entire life. I'm sure that many people assumed she colored it. Nope. She was always a little disappointed that none of her children inherited her super blonde hair. Maybe a grandchild will.

We were always treated as a unit, even though we didn't look alike. Yes, we were both blonde, but I was usually taller and my hair was never as pale as hers. But our proximity in age and our matching dresses, which were handed down from our two older sisters, tended to blur us together for many. And, we were together all the time. Since we lived out there on the farm, we were each other's playmate.

Then when we got old enough to do chores like milking and hauling hay we were a killer team. As teenagers, we were buff and cute. One summer my dad decided to haul his own milk to town every morning. So we usually did it. Hey--it was a chance to drive! We'd pull up to the creamery and back up to the rack to unload the ten gallon cans. We may have had about nine cans, I forget. And it was hard work--the rack was positioned for the milk trucks, not a pick-up. We had to lift them up. One of us would get on the rack to receive and the other stand in the bed and hand them up. We probably set ourselves up for a lifetime of bad backs, but we were NOT going to ask any of those men standing around to help. We were tough enough. Looking back, the men probably enjoyed the show. It also makes me realize why we didn't get many dates. We probably scared off the boys.

We slept in the same bed until I graduated from high school and left home. She was very noble about this considering that I was a bed-wetter for a long, long time. We took swimming lessons together--she passed beginners in one year, and it took me three. We took piano lessons together. She didn't really like it, but I still play today. We tormented and tortured our little brother together. He has grown up to be a very fine adult despite us. The biggest problem she had as my sister is that school was easy for me. I was a good reader and spelling was a snap. She struggled with reading, needed speech therapy, and didn't spell worth a darn most of her life. This was a problem because we went through the same schools with teachers expecting her to be me academically. She always worked really hard and got mediocre results and I didn't work very hard and did well. She became an avid reader as an adult because she spent so much time convalescing from a ridiculous number of surgeries and reading became a delight to her. Practice makes perfect!

This blog will be much too long if I continue to tell you all the things we did together, or the ways in which our lives diverged. But she was such a great sister, that it didn't matter how far apart we were geographically, or in lifestyle, as soon as we got back together, it was just like no time had gone by. I was so shocked when she died suddenly just after her 51st birthday. It's like a part of me is gone, too. I still have four other sisters living. As dear as they all are, none of them have the same significance as she does because for almost twenty years, everything I did, she did too, mostly--right beside me. So when I say a part of me is gone, it really is--my other ears, my other eyes--the other half of our childhood. The hole heals over, but the surface is soft as a cobweb and I have to be careful so it doesn't tear.

Notes on the Trip

We didn't need the diarrhea medicine. There.
But I think I need it now. Or maybe it's just stress.

Traveling is stressful. Good stress is just as stressful as bad stress.

Breakfast is such a different concept in other countries/cultures.
As a child, we had a "balanced" meal: fruit, cereal, meat, eggs of some form--every single day.
As a mother, I was boring: cereal and bananas, or pancakes and bananas, or eggs and bananas.
As an adult: 1 banana, 1 glass of chocolate milk, 1 toasted English muffin--usually in the car as I drive to the school.
In Morocco--heavily influenced by France--split baguettes with butter and jam on the side, mint tea or coffee (hot cocoa for me). Then you sit and eat it for about an hour as you enjoy the lovely morning air by the sea. You can also toast the baguettes on the grill.

Driving in Morocco seemed random in that the traffic rules were quite free-form. On the highway, to pass, you would go up very close to the big truck in front of you, slightly straddling the lines and then when an opportunity presented itself, you would roar around the truck and pull back in front of it quickly, because likely there was another vehicle approaching, maybe passing their own big truck. This did not result in angry honking, or finger-gestures. It was the routine.

Cool Guy and I discussed this, and we think that many of the driving techniques result from the personal space differences there in the crowded cities, and in their culture. It wasn't a problem to drive really close and share the same lane, or crowd past someone so close it made me gasp, or the pedestrians would frequently touch your car as they passed (not a slap or rebuke). And--often you saw two men walking together shoulders touching, even arm in arm--women were usually arm in arm or holding hands, a group of young boys would be a unit--they were so close together as they walked. It is just normal to be closer physically there than in the U.S. So evidently that also transfers to driving.

Interestingly--the personal closeness in public does not apply to man/woman couples. There is NO PDA or even touching or proximity. Very hashuma. Also the only people who would be together as man/woman would be a married couple. But--keep your distance. (of course, tourists don't count in these rules.)

Chwarma is delicious. Someone in the U.S. needs to start a chwarma craze and franchise it all over the country.

I don't know how they get milk from those skinny cows.

What are the sheep eating in that seemingly rock and dirt "pasture"?

Goats can climb trees.

I prefer toilet paper from the United States--so spoiled here with our septic systems.

I prefer toilet paper.

Ice is nice, but very American.

Now, I'm an International Grammar Cop. (they spent a lot of money and design effort in the new parts of the Madrid airport and it is very classy--I was surprised by the occasional English grammar-flubs in the official signage--you'd think they'd have really checked that.)

Best thing I took: several packets of travel-sized wet wipes and "personal cleansing cloths".

What I didn't need: so many changes of clothes. And I really packed light. You can wear the same clothes for more than 24 hours, no problem. Just washing your hands and face can sometimes feel like a whole bath.

Outside the city, I didn't look at men directly. I got a very hostile vibe if I did. Hmm.

I'll never complain about the rocks on my father's farm again---they were nothing compared to most of the farm land I saw in Morocco.

Parts of Morocco near the city of Marrakesh look amazingly like Iowa--large cultivated fields with properous looking farm sites: a grouping of buildings with hay stacks, and barns. But if you looked closely you'd see donkey carts alongside the combines and tractors. And every village has a mosque tower.

School girls walking along in groups, chattering back and forth, wearing backpacks--but also wearing head scarfs and long jalabbas.

Pink houses---like it's a rule.

Except in Essouira where the official colors are blue and white. It's very soothing to see all the buildings that aren't just stone painted white with blue trim.

Morocco is a very geometric place: the buildings are quadrilaterals--mostly squares, and the doorways are curves. Windows: rectangles or squares. Bread: circles. People: rectangles.

An American passport is a fine thing to possess.

Jet Lag

Which continent is this?
What time zone?
What does the clock say?
Is that A.M. or P.M?

I think I'll take a nap.

Special Guests

We ate dinner withTaxi-Man, and his family. There is no experience to compare it too, other than being royalty or something, I guess. (names are in code, BTW)

We arrived in Skye's douar (neighborhood) in the evening. It is a long, long drive from Marrakech. She often referred in her blog of taking the taxi drive to a town in Tiznit province, a nearby city-ish type of community, where the internet cafe is, and better shopping. It's like Skye lives in Smoot and this town is Idaho Falls and there is no Afton. We had stopped in there to get a few vegetables, check her mail and do cyber-cafe, and then we headed up into the hills to her home. I'll have to post some photos when we get back home where I can do it better, so it will be hard to describe her house without them. Most houses there are two-story, with the bottom floor being a large garage, or a place where you can put your shop, or your cow. Then you climb the steep cement stairs up and around to the living quarters. Also cement floors--that's why there are so many lovely rugs in all the shops. Skye's house is, ummm...basic. "But," she revels, "I have a faucet! and my toilet flushes." And she does have a refrigerator and sink, also with faucet. Her toilet is a squat toilet--tiled hole in the floor with places where you place your feet and then--well--squat--then you pour the bucket down it and it goes into a cesspool arrangement under the house. It does not smell, but it takes a little getting used to. But it beats the calf pen in the middle of the milking barn!!

We changed into our long skirts--the girls did--and we drove up to Taxi Man's house. We were met in the front by a neighbor boy who was daring enough to greet us, then several other neighbor women and some children greeted me, but immediately evaporated at the sight of Mustach (Cool Guy's new name in Morocco--all the street vendors call this out to him.) We entered the courtyard of Taxi-Man's house and it was the royal treatment from that moment on.

Grandfather met us--hand kissing, bowing, grandma met me (too shy to greet Cool Guy) handkissing, cheek kissing, bowing, asalaam alaykums all around. The mom met us and kissed cheeks, she was brave enough to greet Cool Guy, the 14 year old daughter, met us, we were invited into the kitchen where she was chopping onions for our tajine dinner. Grandpa went to another room to watch t.v.--loud t.v. because he is mostly deaf--the 7 year old son came into the living room with us, and Skye, Cool Guy, me and Taxi-Man sat on pillows and talked. All through this whole scene of greetings, there was the two year old girl like a little whirlwind zipping around, chattering, greeting, hollering, snatching stuff from people--acting like a two year old!! Once she was showing off a pretty scarf (the mom, grandma and daughter all wore an inside head wrap--it covers your hair but not your face) but Whirlwind doesn't wear anything on her curly black hair that was pulled back into little pigtails. But when she dropped the scarf on the floor near me and I picked it up and started arranging it on my head---THAT was the wrong thing to do. She immediately burst into tears and stood by her dad wailing and pointing, "Whirlwind's (some word in Tashelheit I don't know)!!!" It was a crisis till I gave it back. Whew.

I started blowing bubbles (I brought several bottles) and that smoothed things over a bit. Then Skye spoke for me while I gave Whirlwind a stuffed duck, her brother and cousin (a little cousin from the way outback living with them so he can go to school) and the big sister all got zipper bags with a few pencils, pens, and some stickers and a post-it pad in them. Hugely popular!! Especially with the country cousin who Skye loves and says is so shy and loves every little bitty thing anyone gives him because everything is a novelty.

Then, the ladies brought out the party clothes and Cool Guy and I were dressed in the regalia--silver headwear, necklaces, embroidered skirts and veils, etc. etc. Cool Guy mostly got to wear the long man gown called a jalabba. Then we took photos, and Skye explained how this was the normal dress for the endless stream of special holidays and feasts constantly being held. Taxi-Man pointed out that his wife has embroidered all the fancy work on the clothing and it is yet being embellished as the years go by. It's impressive.

We were first served bread from the clay oven with condiments like honey, oil, and a nutty tasting dip from argon oil and ground nuts. Then we were served tajine---a little clay casserole-like dish with a cover. The onions, peas, tomatoes and other flavors are laid in the bottom, then tiny meatballs were put over that and then the heavy lid is put on it and it is placed in the oven to cook. It was very lean and tasty beef. We ate it by scooping up from our section a mouthful with a little chunk of bread. We were offered citron soda (just like Squirt) or Coke. Skye says this was an ultra-special occasion, she's never been served soda at his house. Desert was slices of melon, or oranges and apples that we cut and peeled ourselves. We were paunched. Mom and sister served us but didn't eat with us, only the one brother. The rest were too shy to eat with Cool Guy and Whirlwind had burned herself into the ground like only a two year can, and was in bed asleep.

We ate sitting on our pillows, from a short round table that afterward was cleaned up and stacked back up in the corner on another one like it. They also have a china cabinet piece of furniture in this room, where mom put away all the fancy clothes, and the serving trays. But the rest of the furnishings are carpets, and pillows with pictures on the wall. One of the pictures is a Muslim representation of the lineage of religion, basically. It is a tree, with the root being Adam, then he read us the names as he pointed up the trunk and out onto the branching limbs. Noah, Moses, Abrahim--then it branched off in a fork--Ishmael and Mohammed are on that side and David, Solomon and Jesus are the other side. All the great prophets from which we can all learn.

Taxi-Man spent a lot of time waxing philosophical about religion, world peace, the brotherhood of mankind, what a wonderful daughter we have, what great parents we are, how welcome we are to come to his home anytime, and if he came to America he was likewise welcomed to our home we assured him. He explained that we had no need to ever worry about Skye, he protected her like his own daughter. (And she concurred.)

We also received two lovely gifts: a beautiful silver tray with little ball feet that is very elaborate with designs and cutwork from the duar association whom Skye has been assisting in their quest to build a community sewer system. They got the grant money and it is being built even as we speak--it more of a large soak basin that will last for many many years and prevent sewage from going into the river, which is a source for many to wash clothes, and bath. The "river" is currently a dry bed right now--no rain this year. This makes the sewage drain basin even more critical, because now the sewage just sits there, instead of being washed down the river and diluted. The other gift was shoes for us---the cool red and yellow Moroccan shoes, mine are even embroidered with elaborate colors. My large American feet defeated this gift...but the shoes will stretch Taxi-Man assured me, and I intend to stretch them because they're pretty cool.

Okay, we finally got all of our greetings accomplished and we left, you can see every star in the sky there---no yard lights! We went back to Skye's house, sat up on the roof for a while and admired the stars and heard the dogs howl and slept until we were awakened by the 4:30 A.M. Call to Prayer at the mosque just down the street. Then the street got very busy with donkey carts, and trucks and taxis because Monday is market day there. Only men go to market, BTW, in this little area. And they sit outside along the street and talk loudly, too. The school is just around the corner from her house and the kids were yelling and playing just like kids do everywhere. So foreign and yet so similar. We packed up and headed back out to the city of Essouraira where we are now---about five hour drive from her place. It's on the ocean and tomorrow we'll go up to Casablanca to get on the plane for Spain.

We're shopping and this afternoon we're going to the public baths. Then, later, the French Organic Restaurant for supper. Periodically I do a reality check---Eek! Morocco!! Like last night when we came out of the restaurant: it was dark, we're in the medina (the old walled city) and so all the doorways are arches. We stepped from the lighted restaurant into the cobble-stone alley and a shadow came along the opposing alley and across that doorway passed a women completely obscurred in veils and wraps. She went by quietly and we kept walking through the walled paths until we came to a large blue door, for which we had the key, and went in to climb four flights of steep brick stairs to the little patio where our rooms are, overlooking a battery of cannons from 1760 lining the wall along the edge of the sea. The surf is crashing in thunderous blows and the wind is blowing, but you can see some stars. Way cool---I'm having a good time.

Traveling Through Morocco

We arrived in Casablanca, late--but Skye wasn't alarmed because in Morocco one doesn't try to hurry things along. It only results in frustration. We got a rental car and drove for about three hours to Marrakech. Lots of farmland, lots of sheep, cows (unbelievably skinny cows) decrepid donkeys-just hairy tractors basically. There were some large well-kept compounds: a ten foot wall surrounding the house and gardens and outbuildings, with the two story cistern. There were rundown tiny little houses/compounds. There are many tractors, plus the donkeys--huge loads of hay passed us continually. I was looking at one side of the road, saying "I don't know what that is..." referring to a plant, and Cool Guy said, pointing the other side of the road, "But you know what THOSE are." A field full of bales!!

The countryside is remarkably like the desert southwest in America. Same geology, same plants, similar topography. The highways here are really modern and well maintained, we traveled part of the way on a new super-connector highway. The city of Marrakech is bustling and the streets are a mishmash of scooters, bicycles, donkey carts, overloaded trucks, taxis and the occasional tourist who foolishly thought they could drive here. Actually, Cool Guy is doing an excellent job--he's been in training for this traffic in Tel Aviv, he says. I just sit with clenched teeth and shallow breathing as the Collision Ballet is performed around me. Amazingly--no one hit anyone, no pedestrians were killed or even bumped. I don't know how!!

We're on our way to Skye's house tonight (been driving all day in succession through twins of:
San Joaquin Valley
Southern Utah
Nevada
Southern Idaho--south of Burley on 84 headed to Utah.

Weird how similar the plants, geology etc. is.) You get the reality check with the road signs in Arabic and French, the overloaded taxis, the gendarmes who stopped us to check us out at an intersection and Skye pretended to not understand their French which was basically an invitation to give them a "little something" for our alleged infraction.

I'll write some more in a couple of days. We're out of tourist land mostly here and so people stare. We're eating with Skye's taxi driver's family tonight. He's been texting her all day on her phone for updates of our progress. She texts him back to be patient and relax, we'll be there when we get there...

Our food so far has been totally delicious--of course, most of it was in nice restaurants in Marrakech--Italian one night and Thai another. But we ate lunch in the souk and it was chwarma--a chicken thing in bread and it was yummy. Cool Guy eats it all the time in Israel and was pleased to find it here, too. Lots of juice and fruit--everything room temp. Ice is not a feature of Morocco.

I'm amazed at how much French I understand. And how readily it comes back to me when I try to speak to people. I can make simple sentences, and have no trouble reading menus and road signs and directions. Cool...Although I did explain in French today to our proprietess as we left our lodging that I enjoyed her riad Mucho...duh...instead of bien. But enough Spanish people come there that she knew what I meant.

Au Revoir for now!!