This evening, I ate a salad drizzled with olive oil. We continued sitting around the table after the dishes had been cleared, and I saw a small puddle of oil on the table. Without a second thought, I wiped it up with my hand and began rubbing my hands together, massaging the oil into my skin.

My visiting friend did her best not to react, but from a quick expression that flickered across her face, I suddenly realized that this is Not A Normal American Thing To Do.

But it's a perfectly normal Moroccan thing to do.

For most of my female American friends, cleaning one's hands involves warm water, soap, and then lotion. The soap and warm water strip the natural oils from one's hands, so women (and, I imagine, some men) rub lotion in to make up for it.

But during the two years I spent in my cold mountain village, we had a different custom. And nobody spent money on lotion except *maybe* some rosewater oils for use on special occasions. But in my village, the cold and dry air keeps skin constantly dry and often chapped. Hands, which get plunged into water for cleanliness and laundering and dishwashing, can get scaly with the cold. So when you encounter something oily, you take advantage of it.

Most of my American friends would never dream of putting oil directly onto their hands, unless it's mineral oil and they're about to give a massage. But olive oil? Rendered animal fat? Not a chance.

But if you think about it, lotion is really just a mechanism for delivering moisture. Most prize themselves on a "non-greasy feeling," but the fact is, they're trying to approximate chemically what natural oils produce, well, naturally.

After Americans eat a greasy meal, they head for the hot water and soap. And maybe lotion, afterwards. After Moroccans eat a greasy meal, they rub their hands together until the oil has soaked into the skin, leaving the hands smooth and soft. (Smoother and softer, anyway.)

This phenomenon was thrown into relief for me when my American family came to visit me. My oldest sister was being feted for having done well on her college entrance exam (which I believe is the International Baccalaureate, or IB). My host family insisted that my biological family join in the celebration, of course.

We all drank tea and ate various celebratory goodies, mostly cookies and pastries. At one point, my mom asked for a napkin. I translated the request (using the French word for napkin, serviette, since there's no Tam word for it that I know of), and one of the many hostesses ran off to find us some.

She came back just as we were finishing up a particularly greasy crepe-like pastry. Mom, Dad, and my sister all hastily took advantage of the chance to wipe their hands. When I was handed a napkin, though, Ama and I laughed as I realized it was too late -- I had just finished rubbing the oil into my hands. "She's not an American girl. She's an Ait Hadidou girl," Ama said proudly.

The unexpected praise caught me off-guard, and made my eyes water with emotion. I know part of it was that Ama had felt threatened by the arrival of my *other* mother, and she was trying to maintain her claim to me -- but she also meant it. I'd actually succeeded, at least in that moment, of being truly accepted by this community I'd lived in for a year.

All of this came flashing back to me tonight, as I found myself making good use of the spilled olive oil. (And by the by, olive oil and corn oil have less smell than most lotions, and are actually more effective at keeping skin moisturized. For what it's worth.)

I've been back for 18 months now. I served for 27. I've finished the re-entry process, for all intents and purposes, but I like the pieces of Kauthar that have survived my re-becoming my American self. I still say "Bismillah" before beginning anything important. I still say (or think) "Inshallah" when talking about the future. I still find hot running water truly miraculous. And, apparently, I still prefer to use oil rather than scrape it off and then have to replenish my skin's moisture.

Ama would be proud.

Sorry for the long radio-silence, dear readers. Life in America just doesn't seem as exciting to share as life in Morocco did.

But I've run into another culture clash / cross-cultural moment, so thought I'd share.

It's about boobs. Breasts. Mammary organs. Whatever you call them, they belong to about half of the species, so you'd think people would stop being surprised by them. As Julia Roberts pointed out in Notting Hill, "They're just breasts. Every second person has them."

And yet.

In America, they're considered sexual objects, and have remained one of the last bastions of public decency laws. Bikinis have continued to shrink, revealing more and more flesh appears on beaches and pool chairs, but if you want to be completely topless, you need to be on one of a very small number of private beaches.

Facebook ran into a problem a couple years back when it announced that it wouldn't allow visible breasts in posted pictures, whether the photo showed a breastfeeding mother or was designed to "appeal to the prurient interest," as the Supreme Court would say.

Some women considered the conflation of sex with motherhood offensive, and responded by making their profile picture one that showed them nursing a baby.

Now, in 2011, as more and more of my friends become mothers, I see breastfeeding more often -- and that creates moments of culture clash inside my head.

First, some Moroccan background.

In Morocco, most women cover their bodies from neck to wrist to ankle. Many also wear veils over their hair and necks, though some urban women choose not to. Given this cultural expectation of extreme modesty, it surprises many westerners to see the casual attitude towards public breastfeeding.

Most young mothers wear V-necked dresses that allow them to reach in, pull out a boob, and present it to their hungry baby. In colder areas, they'll wear a turtleneck under the dress, which they'll pull up and out of the way to get the boob out. This allows them to remain fully covered -- except for the fully exposed breast.

Once the baby latches on, the breast is somewhat covered, by the child's head, but it's still plenty visible.

Even more surprising to me, when I first arrived in Morocco, is that the young mothers don't expect you to look away.

I figured that some sort of principle of "averted gaze" must exist, to allow for at least the illusion of modesty -- something like the principle operating in gym showers in America, where women all bathe together, quickly, without making eye contact, and without any acknowledgement that they might actually see each other's bodies.

On the contrary, Moroccan mothers would ask my opinion of the babies latched onto their breasts.

Eventually I figured out that infants spend the vast majority of their tiny lives completely swaddled, wrapped from head to toe and tied onto their mothers' backs. Meal times -- that is, while nursing -- is the only chance you'll ever have to see the baby.

So young mothers *expect* you to gather around, coo at the baby, exclaim over its cuteness / handsomeness / resemblance to (insert family member here) / etc. All the things that mothers everywhere expect you to do with their babies, but in Morocco, it could only happen while the infants in question were attached to the organ that I'd been raised to consider private, sexual, and inappropriate-in-public.

Moroccan women have limited (but growing, alhumdulillah) access to birth control, which means that babies are everywhere. And nursing mothers are everywhere.

In my first, temporary host family, my sister-in-law had a nursing baby that she wanted me to admire. In my second, permanent host family, I attended the birth of my nephew and then my little brother, plus I saw dozens -- hundreds? -- of other babies and mothers around town.

I saw mothers breastfeeding on the tranzit, both to feed a hungry baby and to quiet a fussy child on the long ride. I saw mothers breastfeeding at community events like weddings and other celebrations.

And eventually I learned to get over my Western attitude of embarrassment, and celebrate the tiny new life as I was expected to. I found a mental trick: I created a mental equivalence between the boob and a bottle. After all, if I saw a mom bottle-feeding a baby, I wouldn't get weird and evasive and try to look away. Similarly, in Morocco, if I saw a mom breastfeeding a baby, I shouldn't have any reaction other than smiling at the child. When a boob appeared, I treated it exactly as I would have if a bottle had appeared.

When my replacement (Hassan) showed up in my village, I warned Ama that he might be embarrassed when she fed our little brother. ("Our" because he lived with the same family I did, so he became my brother and adopted all my brothers and sisters.) I explained that in America, women don't commonly breastfeed in public -- I skipped discussion of the controversy, for simplicity's sake -- and so he might react in ways she would find odd if she pulled out a boob in front of him.

I mostly wanted Ama to understand that if Hassan suddenly began staring at his shoes, or refusing to make eye contact with her, or in any other way acted like she was doing something odd, it was really because he was just having an American reaction to a Moroccan scene.

I also warned him that she would breastfeed in front of him, and that he should not react, if he could help it.

They both agreed to make allowances for the culture of the other, which I thought was very gracious on both sides, and I prepared for my return to America.

Where I spent more than a year without seeing any breasts in public.

And then, a few weeks ago, I saw a mom comforting her fussy infant by bringing the tiny head to the edge of her sweater. She was wearing loose clothes and had turned away from the bulk of the people in the room, but made no move to drape a cloth over herself or the baby.

And I found myself having a classic Moroccan reaction: wanting to coo at the baby and smile down at the breastfeeding scene.

I caught myself in time, alhumdulillah. While many moms -- apparently including this one -- have been asserting their right to breastfeed in public, I'm pretty sure it's still not acceptable in America for people to act like they're watching.

And in America, we have lots of other chances to coo at babies. They don't spend most of their time swaddled away, out of sight.

On the other hand, since many Americans still feel a fair amount of disapprobation for public breastfeeding, maybe the moms would appreciate it if someone showed cheerful approval.

Or maybe I've just been brainwashed by Morocco, and have lost all sense of American propriety.

So, breastfeeding moms, I ask you: How do you want me to respond? Should I engage my powers of averted vision and pretend nothing is happening? Should I smile down at the baby and boob, as I would in Morocco? Something inbetween? Something else entirely?

Comments welcome (and helpful!).

The debate over the new TSA screening procedures has reached the shrillest heights of internet shrieking and blanket coverage by the major media. This morning, CNN is interviewing John Tyner, aka Mr. "Don't Touch My Junk."

I doubt my two cents will add much to the firehose, but I still want to say my piece.

I've received airport pat-downs. The American version, where I'm pulled aside and my body briskly checked for concealed items, as well as the Middle Eastern version, where I'm taken into a closet-sized room by a woman who put her hands firmly on most of my torso and legs. She knew how easy it is to hide small items inside a bra, but was able to search in a way that was professional and left me reassured that my flight was safe.

I'm not morally posed to pat-downs. In fact, after the most thorough one I got in an American airport, I made a point of stopping by the supervisor's table and saying that the (male) guard who had searched me had been professional and courteous in what couldn't have been a comfortable experience for either of us, and I wanted him to get recognition for doing a difficult job well.

Two weeks ago, I experienced one of the AIT scans while en route to DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity. Advanced Imaging Technology. Sounds so innocuous, doesn't it?

I'd never heard of them before, and had no idea what to expect - I may be a journalist, but I don't own a TV, so I still miss a lot of "what's current in America" - but as an experienced traveler, I obediently took off my shoes, emptied my pockets of everything, from keys to chapstick, stepped on the indicated squares, put my hands on my head, and waited.

I felt the strangest combination of pressure and vibration. The phrase that came to mind was that the air was ionizing around me, but I've forgotten enough chemistry that I don't even know if that makes sense. I just know that I felt the concussive force of something invisible, like I'd gotten a few-second version of standing in front of a speaker at a rock concert, combined with a buzzy, trembly, vibrating sensation that I imagine Star Trek's transporters would feel like (if someone ever invents them).

And then it was done. I took my hands down, put my keys and chapstick back into my pocket, and went off to my gate, trying to shake of the feeling that I'd walked through a wall - or that a wall had walked through me.

I now know that I'd been bombarded either by millimeter wave electromagnetic waves (seems likely, given the sensation) or by X-ray backscatter. Both are designed to render an image of my body under my clothes, so someone in a nearby booth or room got a view of me that I don't give to strangers.

Though I hadn't known it at the time, I'd had an alternative: if I wanted to opt out of the digital strip search, I could go for the non-digital equivalent, which the TSA euphamistically refers to as an "enhanced pat-down". This isn't the back-of-the-hand quick check of American airports in past years, nor is it the firmer palm-and-fingers search I got in Jordan and Egypt. (Morocco, interestingly, sticks to metal detectors.)

The "enhanced pat-down" gives TSA agents the right to fondle, grope, and rub my body. My whole body. Yes, that part, too. Through my clothes, true, but it's still a level of physical intimacy that I am absolutely not comfortable with.

My ACLU contact has observed that the sheer invasiveness seems designed to "drive" people to the AIT scan, which, given the options, does seem like the lesser of two evils. When TSA began pilot testing the AIT machines, 98 percent of passengers, presented with the choice of a big scary box and a groping, chose the big box.

But what has American passenger fear come to that we're choosing to let a stranger view us naked?

When I spoke to a Fourth Amendment scholar last night - being a journalist does have some perks, and one is that world-renowned scholars take my calls - he made a lot of points that I didn't want to hear, because I was clinging to the idea that this is an unreasonable search, performed without a warrant.

But the precedents he saw were in DUI checkpoints, where drivers give an "implied consent" - that is, as I learned in my high school legal studies course, where the act of driving on the road is a choice, which includes an implicit consent to take a Breathalyzer or walk a straight line when asked. Flying, the professor said, is a similarly chosen activity that provides its own implied consent to jump through whatever hoops the government deems necessary. "You don't have to fly," he kept saying.

But I live 3000 miles away from my loved ones, I kept silently retorting. I don't have enough vacation time to drive or take the train.

Sometime in the century since the Wright Brothers worked their Kitty Hawk miracle, air travel has come to feel like a right, available to anyone who can afford it.

And now my right to see my loved ones is confronted with the public's right not to have planes blow up.

The professor talked about the "balance" between society's interest and the individual's privacy interest. The only ground he gave me was just how very invasive this search is.

The ACLU spokesman I spoke with (who was actually waiting for my call - my job is pretty awesome) pointed out that neither the scan nor the pat-down can reveal anything concealed in a body cavity, nor is it particularly good at finding liquid explosives, which are therefore the logical next steps for terrorists. And I really, really don't want to imagine what security will look like after the first time a terrorist hides a bomb inside her body.

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, thousands of passengers (of the nearly two million who will fly that day, according to the ATA spokesman who, yes, took my call) are planning to opt out of the digital strip search in a form of not-exactly-civil-disobedience, but a show of civil obedience that will cause delays, longer lines, and, most importantly, show people who may believe that this is all just media hype that Americans are being groped in airports.

As one young mother said, after she was sexually assaulted by a TSA agent (and the agent's boss acknowledged it as assault only because the agent didn't tell the mother exactly where her hands were going to be, before putting them there), TSA agents are now freely encouraged to do things to American citizens, not charged with anything, without a shred of probable cause, that soldiers are prohibited doing to enemy combatants seized as prisoners of war.

After two years in Morocco, I've had every surface of my body fondled at least once, always by a stranger, usually in a crowd.

Not surprisingly, the regular gropings and grabbings and fondlings left me feeling remarkably unsafe.

I never thought the American government would repeat the process, in the name of my safety.

Saturday, I volunteered at Boston's Head of the Charles, the biggest regatta in the world. (Or so they claim, though I had a South African fellow-volunteer assure me that the Henley Regatta in England is still the biggest.)

Knowing that I'd be outside, on the water, exposed, for about 10 hours, I dressed carefully.

For the first time since leaving Morocco, I layered on multiple sets of long underwear, and kept layering up.

As I walked towards the subway in the chill predawn, I realized that for the first time since starting my new job (ie since buying work-appropriate clothing), I was dressed completely in clothes that I'd brought back from Morocco.

Two sets of long underwear: checkThermal jacket: checkPolar fleece: checkJeans: checkHiking boots: checkSmartWool socks: check

And moreover, as I'd noticed while dressing, these clothes are RAGGED.

I wore. them. out.

Life in the Peace Corps is hard on clothes. I tended to wear them a lot of times between washings, and then to wash them, I'd soak them overnight (which is hard on the fibers) and then scrub the bejeebers out of them (which is hard on everything). But what damaged even more of my clothes than the heavy wear and tear and washing? Burns. Between sitting too close to my heater, wrapping myself around my heater, carrying my heater from one room to another, and using my sleeves as hot-mitts in the kitchen, I managed to burn virtually every piece of clothing at least once.

I'd forgotten this till I got dressed Saturday morning, and kept finding more damaged bits.

My favorite blue jacket? Hole in the forearm. Bigger than a quarter, smaller than a ChipsAhoy cookie.

My beloved green fleece? Sleeves mostly destroyed with multiple burns from (ab)use as hot mitts.

My trusty jeans? Hole near the hem from sitting too close to the fire. It used to be the size of a nickel, but it's growing.

My stalwart hiking boots? Scuffed and stained and trim-torn-off. Oh, and I'd forgotten that I have the slipperiest laces in all of creation: I have to quadruple-knot them, and they still tend to come untied every few minutes. Square knots, too.

And so on.

As I tromped in my trusty (abused) boots towards the T, I couldn't escape the conclusion that I was one raggedy-looking PCV by the end of my service.

And yet it seemed so normal at the time...

"Why does that not surprise me?" I typed in a quick message to a friend.

And then I looked at it.

Something was off.

I didn't know what, quite, but definitely something.

I said it again, in my head.

One more time.

I shook it off and tried to regenerate the sentiment.

"Why am I not surprised?" floated into my head.

Aaaa-HA!

Nailed it.

I erased my first fumble and wrote in the correct American idiom.

You know, I worked really hard not to lose my English.

I blogged most days. I watched American-made movies and TV shows on my laptop. I talked to my fellow PCVs.

And yet.

Yesterday, in my job as a cub reporter, I was rewriting somebody else's headline. The point of the story was that life is hard in Vegas, and people are moving out in droves. I toyed with some variation on "Leaving Las Vegas" and then thought of the phrase "Las Vegas goes bust."

And then I stared at it.

Goes bust?

Things go BOOM when they explode. But do they go bust?

I knew I was thinking of that expression from that card game where you lose when you go over 21. Was that 'going bust'? No. Yes. No.

I gave up.

I turned to the cubicle next to mine and interrupted my long-suffering co-worker (long-suffering, 'cause I interrupt him a lot) to ask, "You know how when you're playing that game, with the, um, Blackjack!, when you're playing Blackjack and you keep hitting and you go over 21?" He nodded. "Is that called 'going bust'?" He nodded again. "Are you sure?" I persisted. He nodded a third time.

I thanked him, and then felt compelled to explain that the idioms are just hard. My vocabulary is mostly intact, though I still grope for esoteric words sometimes, but idioms... Idioms are all about turns of phrase, and my phrases tend to twist and writhe, these days. They never sound right, whether I've caught the American expression or not.

And to be honest, it's not just the esoteric words. It's all the ones that don't get used commonly. Today, not three hours ago, I spent a few seconds trying to come up with the word germ. I was describing Lord Jeffrey Amherst's use of smallpox as an agent of biological warfare, so the word was necessary, and I just ... couldn't ... find it. Instead, gene kept coming in its place. I knew the words looked similar, had the same general shape, but no... And of course, the right word arrived.

Which idioms still sometimes don't do.

Am I the only one who finds that odd?

Or, I mean, who thinks it's weird?

Bloody American English. ::sigh::

A moment ago, I sneezed and an acquaintance who happened to be passing by said, "Gesundheit."

I thanked him, and then murmured to myself, "Rhummikallah...humdullah."

Which are, of course, the Arabic phrases for sneezes.

I'm not even sure of the literal translation of the first one, because people only ever use it after someone sneezes. It would be like a Martian visiting America and concluding that "God bless you" means "Oh, hey, you sneezed."

Rhummikallah what somebody else should say when you sneeze. You, post-sneeze, should say humdullah, to express your gratitude for ... I don't know, still being alive or something.

(I didn't say I actually *understood* the God-phrases, I just know how and when to *use* them.)

On the whole, though, moments of involuntary Arabic have steadily dwindled.

Last night, half asleep and on the phone, I murmured, "Mashi mushkil" when I meant "It's all good." They mean the same thing, and in my somnolence, the wrong one floated to my lips.

But other than those - the sneezes and the sleepies - I don't think I've spoken Arabic (let alone Tamazight) in a few days. Well, OK, last night at dinner I was telling a friend about some Moroccan history, and referred to the Amazighn and their language Tamazight. Which gave me a chance to roll my throat a little, which it likes.

Who knew I would miss the physical experience of speaking my crazy language?? The tongue rolls and throat rolls and throat flexures and such things that simply aren't used when speaking English.

Yesterday, I said, "Guten nacht" (and yes, it fit in the context of the conversation, but it would take too long to explain how), and realized that for the first time in a lifetime of (very sporadic) attempts, I can say it correctly. I had a sudden impulse to start singing "Silent night" in German, just so I could keep using that ch-ch-ch sound.

I can't wait to start wishing people Happy Channukah. Maybe I'll start baking challah and offering it to friends at work.

Maybe it's time to find an Arabic class around here after all.

Tonight, I went to a "Games Night" at a friend's house. After several hours of Metro and Apples2Apples and Rock Band, those of us taking public transportation said goodnight, and headed back into the city.

We peeled apart, to our separate destinations, and I found myself alone on Boston's T. (For non-Bostonians: formally known as the MBTA, or Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, the public transportation system is informally known as "the bus" for the bus and "the T" for the subway/elevated rail system.)

A few stops down the line, a group of girls in little black dresses and strappy sandals clambered on. They'd been at a bachelorette party, and were now headed back to their hotel. Some hijinx ensued, and after they got off, those of us still on the T had a rare spirit of conviviality. I got off with several of them, and said a cheery goodnight as they headed to the buses and I started walking back to my apartment.

I'd checked the route repeatedly on the map, but there was one critical decision I needed to make. I needed to walk west, NOT east, ie in the direction of Massachusetts Avenue. So when I got out onto the street, I took a minute to figure out the compass points, and then head west. But I wasn't 100% sure of my process, so asked the first car I passed (driving in the other direction on a divided road, so as to ensure that he couldn't possibly follow me afterwards - City Living 101) "Is this the way to Mass Ave?" He confirmed that it was, so I continued briskly down the road.

A few intersections later, I saw a car pulled over to the side of the road. A beefy fellow - a textbook example of a Joe Sixpack - said, "Mumblemumble Mass Ave?"

I pointed the direction I was walking. "Mass Ave is this way," I announced with confidence.

"Ih day toe ya kah?" he continued.

I stared at him. Why was Joe Sixpack suddenly speaking Japanese? As though he expected me to understand it??

But I still wanted to be helpful, and the last thing I'd understood was "Mass Ave?", so I reiterated, "Mass Ave is up that way."

He tried again, with all the tolerant patience of the village women who had needed to repeat themselves for their poor pale friend. "I easkt," and suddenly I heard the thick Boston accent, and began calibrating my ear for it, "Did day toe ya kah?" And this time I understood him. Did they tow your car?

Turns out the same skills that helped me decipher the mumbled language of my illiterate neighbors are helping me here in Beantown.

I smiled and shook my head. "I'm walking from the subway," I said, gesturing back towards the T stop, now several blocks away.

"OK, well, bee kayuhful, sweedaat," he said. Be careful, sweetheart.

I smiled and thanked him and continued on my way, with a prayer of thanksgiving in my heart for all kind-hearted souls. I made it the next few blocks peacefully, exchanging greetings with the other folks still out on the sidewalks ("Weyah's the paaty?" "There's no party,"), and then let myself in through my wrought iron gate, suddenly so reminiscent of the steel door I'd lived behind during my years in Morocco.

I pulled it locked behind me with the same sweet comfort of knowing that I was home - for however long or short this apartment remains my home.

At no point in the half-mile walk had I ever felt unsafe, despite the hour, the setting, or the presence or absence of others on the street. Instead, I'd received help when I needed it, kind words from a stranger, and friendly conversation with some folks who'd blown their tire across the street.

Welcome to your first Saturday night in Boston, little Volunteer!

I'm settling into a new neighborhood, and therefore still learning my way around, learning the local amenities, etc.

The other day, in my first walk-about, I saw a sign saying "INTERNATIONAL FOODS". At first I walked by, since I was making a beeline for a major chain grocery story I'd heard was just up the road, but I glanced in as I strode by.

It took a couple seconds to register what I'd seen: two women in head scarves.

I stopped, turned around, and retraced my steps. The two women - apparently a mother and daughter, based on resemblance and interactions - seemed relieved and thrilled to have a customer.

I started shopping, and the overeager daughter (whose English is the best in the family, and so takes on the bulk of the customer relations) followed me around the store, chattering nervously. I stocked up in the spice section, because everything was so cheap! (Americans spend waaaaay too much on spices. 4 to 8 dollars for a small jar?? Go to any international foods store and get a small plastic bag with at least as much volume - and usually more - for a DOLLAR. It's still more than spices cost me when I bought them in souq, when this amount would have set me back 2 dirhams, or about 25 cents.)

When I went to check out, the mom and daughter started squabbling about the prices. I think the mom wanted to give me a discount so I'd come back again, but the daughter wanted to drive a harder bargain now.

I didn't catch every word (but then, I never really did in Morocco, either), but I did understand the numbers.

When they said, "Tlat", meaning 3, I echoed it. The daughter looked up at me. The mom had already turned to go into the back of the store, and I don't think she heard.

"I speak a little Arabic," I said. The daughter's eyes grew wider. "Shweeya, mashi bzzef," I added. A little, not much.

"That's Moroccan," she said flatly.

"Yes, I lived in Morocco for the past two years."

"I speak the real Arabic. I can't understand Moroccan."

I admit, I was put off by her high-handedness, but smiled and said, "Yes, Darija is different from Classical Arabic. But at least you recognized it. You understand some."

She seemed to find such an implication insulting, and went back to calculating my tab. I started asking a few questions. Turns out the shop is owned by an Iraqi family who have been in America for two years. The daughter's accent is the lightest Arabic accent I've ever heard. I had to listen carefully to even realize that there *is* one, because I'm so used to listening through much thicker Arabic accents.

By the time I was done, the mom had come back to the front of the store. As I left, I said to her, "Shukran jazillan." Thank you very much.

Her daughter tossed off a careless, "Afwan." You're welcome.

But the mom's face lit up in a way I haven't seen since Morocco, with the incredulous joy of finding a fellow language-speaker. It's a widening of the eyes and a dropping of the jaw and a radiance that suffuses the features. I hadn't realized till I saw it just how much I've missed it. How much I loved surprising people by treating them as members of a shared community, when they expected the condescension of the high-handed tourist to the local peasant (or, in this case, of the citizen to the immigrant).

As I walked out the door, the mom rushed forward a few steps to call, "Salaam-u alaykum!" Peace be upon you! With a big smile, I called back, "Wa alaykum as-salaam." And also with you.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Kauthar. :D

The continuing adventures of your favorite RPCV [that's Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, to those of you just tuning in]...

Emerging from the Peace Corps into America is daunting enough under the best of circumstances, as I've outlined in these posts. Emerging into the worst economy since the Great Depression ... has been its own challenge.

Virtually none of the RPCVs who finished with me, 3 months ago yesterday, have a job right now. Some are about to start graduate/nursing/business/medical school. Many, actually. But many others are caught in the same joblessness as 10-25% (depending whose numbers you believe) of Americans.

Which makes it kind of remarkable that I have found a job. Alhumdulillah! I'm so very grateful.

But that means that future posts are likely to be about issues facing me at work and at home. My home here in America. Since I created this blog to write about Peace Corps, I feel like I'm bait-and-switch-ing y'all.

I considered starting a new blog, for my new career...but all my friends and relatives [[and some loyal fans who are neither, but who I hope I'll get to meet someday. Seriously, people, introduce yourselves]] know this address and it seems unnecessary to abandon it just to start over.

So...

You'll be hearing about my new adventures, as a journalist in Boston. I haven't yet decided whether I'll link to any stories I write (for publication). That would mean surrendering the anonymity I've clung to for three years.

But for now, let me just say how much I've appreciated all my readers. I don't know who you are (unless you've told me), but thanks to Google Analytics, I know how many of you there are. Knowing that y'all were reading me helped my service immensely. I can't tell you what it meant to know that I had a connection, however tenuous, to the world beyond my mountain village. That people cared about my ongoing experience.

But if you only signed on to hear Morocco and/or Peace Corps stories, I understand. Feel free to go on your way. No hard feelings. I hope you've gotten what you wanted out of my ramblings.

And for those of you sticking around...thanks for sharing my journey.

In the words of the immortal philosophers Calvin & Hobbes:

It's a big world out there. Let's go exploring!

When I moved to Berberville, 27 months ago, one of the first people I met was a tiny little girl that Ama introduced as Kalima (left, with her sister and mine).

"Kalima" sounds like the word kalimo, which means word, so I figured her name was a reference to the holy scriptures in the Qur'an. It occurred to me later that our village's dialect blurs the distinction between l's and r's, and that the little girl's name might be "Karima", a common Arab name.

But since I never saw it written - her mother, like Ama, is illiterate, and even after the child started school, I never asked her to write her name - I simply had to pick a mental spelling, and I've always thought of her as Kalima.

Kalima's mother is Rebha - one of a thousand women in the area to carry that very common Tamazight name. This particular Rebha is Ama's next door neighbor, and her closest friend. Their daughters pour into and out of each other's houses, playing and giggling at all hours of the day and into the twilight. Kalima is the youngest of the girls, and tends to follow Noora and Fatima around with the eager delight that I remember following my big sister around with myself, when I was 5 or 6 like Kalima. (Ages are usually vague, too, because dates are as hazy as written words for the women in my village.)

Whenever I think of Kalima, who I haven't seen in three months, I first remember her sparkling eyes, dancing with mischief and innocence and delight. Sometimes all at once. I've never seen such bright eyes. They glowed with some inner radiance.

Next, I remember her ready smile, with its tiny white milk-teeth. Rebha is one of the better cooks in Berberville, but refined sugar is rare (except in tea!), which might explain why Kalima's teeth remain perfect, without benefit of western impositions like a toothbrush.

Many Berberville children were wary of the tall pale foreigner, but Kalima - like her older sister, Noora - accepted me immediately. After a long day of children clamoring for my attention or begging for candy, it was always restful to run into Kalima on the path by Ama's house, and relax in her undemanding presence.

Kalima and Noora could be found underfoot at Ama's house at least as often as any of my own little brothers and sisters, so she shows up in several of the pictures I shot in my host family's house. Here, she and my sister are reading (or at least looking at) books I brought back from Rabat:

I also took a few deliberate portraits of her on the day of my cousin Lucky's wedding, because she was dressed in her sparkling new caftan (and apparently trying to focus on a mote of dust a foot in front of her ):

For reasons that I never understood - despite repeated painstaking explanations using lots of words I didn't understand - one of Kalima's neighbors decided that he wanted to buy brand new caftans for Kalima and Noora, for the wedding.

Kalima in her new caftan:

Caftans are an Arab import into my Berber village, but they're hugely popular at weddings. Made of satin (or shiny polyester), embroidered with bright patterns, and often liberally sprinkled with sequins, caftans are long, tightly belted garments that manage to cover a girl or woman from neck to wrist to ankle, while still showing the general curves of her body and flowing gracefully with her movements.

Every young woman needs at least one caftan to wear to family weddings - and *somebody* gets married almost every summer evening in my little town. Of course, the entire town is always welcomed at any wedding - whatever you're wearing - but relatives of the bride or groom are expected to dress up. And in Berberville, wedding dress code = caftan. For women, anyway. For men, it's simply the white tunics they wear to pray in the mosque.

Wealthy young women own more than one caftan, plus girls tend to loan them out as freely as my friends swapped our gel bracelets in elementary school, so pretty much anyone who wants to dress up for a wedding will be able to.

The little girls aren't quite as lucky. Since little girls everywhere grow like pretty little weeds, buying custom-tailored garments that can only be worn a handful of times before they're outgrown doesn't make sense to most families. So little girls whose sisters or cousins are getting married usually have to make do with hand-me-down caftans, belted and cinched within an inch of their lives.

At our cousin Lucky's wedding, my little sister Fatima was one such cinched figure, tripping over a hem that trailed a good six inches on the floor, and nearly drowning in a garment meant for a girl at least twice as wide as my stick-thin sister.

But Kalima and Noora got brand-new, custom-fitted caftans. I think because their neighbor is related to the family of the groom, who is connected in some truly round-about manner with the mother of the bride...? Yeah, I never did figure out exactly how they scored new caftans, but that didn't stop me from beaming happily (and snapping lots of pictures) as they paraded around town in hand-tailored finery.

Here's Kalima (second from the right) and a bunch of other sleepy girls at Lucky's wedding. This picture was taken around midnight, when the festivities had been going for about 8 hours and had another 4 or 5 hours to go...

Why am I spending so much time talking about my tiny friend Kalima? Who I met when she was 4 or 5 and who I knew only two years?

Because last week, for no reason anyone could discern, Kalima lay her tiny body down, curled up into an implausibly small ball, and died.

Children die all the time in the Third World, usually from preventable illnesses. I'm truly grateful that none of my tiny friends passed on during the two years I spent in their village.

But that blessed bubble has now burst, and Kalima's shining eyes have closed for the last time.

Ajaar akom Allah.

A few days ago, I spoke to my host mother for only the second time since leaving Morocco.

I miss her.

And she misses me.

My little brothers and sisters mostly miss my cookies. :) Or at least, so Ama tells me. "They like Hassan [my replacement Volunteer]," she assured me, "but they liked you better. He doesn't bake us cookies. They miss your cookies.

"Today," she continued, "Mohammed [my oldest brother] was reminding me that when you came for l-ftor, you always brought cookies. Usually chocolate chip cookies, and sometimes ones you bought in Souqtown. 'Kauthar was better than Hassan is,' he said. 'Her cookies were great.'"

We shared a laugh. I confess I felt a little smug that, while Hassan has moved into my old bedroom in Ama's house, and my old apartment on the other side of town, he hasn't completely supplanted me in the hearts of my family members.

But if he figures out my secret chocolate-chip cookie recipe, that may change... ;)

Homer Simpson made famous the staccato "D'oh!", the exclamation of surprise and embarrassment and recognition-of-one's-own-failings, often accompanied by a face-palm.

I've had a fair number of D'oh! moments in my months back in America.

Moments where my Moroccan expectations don't line up with my Western reality, and leave me feeling like I've got egg on my face.

Like the time I headed over to my favorite coffeeshop in Amherst, MA, USA. Starting my day in a cafe/coffeeshop feels entirely normal to me, since I started most Souqtown mornings in my favorite cafe there, sipping a cup of hleeb b shokolat (hot cocoa, or literally milk with chocolate). That cafe also had the cleanest bathrooms in all of Souqtown, so I often arranged my mornings such that I could take advantage of them. Of course, being the cleanest and best in a small rural town still didn't include such over-the-top, luxurious amenities as toilet paper or soap, so I was always careful to bring my own. This particular sunny day in Amherst, as I strode through town en route to a delicious hot beverage, I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten to put any tissues in my pocket. I stopped in the middle of the street and started to turn back. And then - D'oh! - I realized that American bathrooms HAVE their own toilet paper.

A month later, I made breakfast for my sister and her housemates in northern California. I made one of the staples of my Moroccan mornings, pancakes. In the past two years, I've made enough pancakes to have long since memorized the recipe (which I take disproportionate pride in). So this sunny California morning, I scooped out the floor, sprinkled in the baking powder, poured in the milk, cracked the egg, tossed in the salt and sugar, measured the oil, then dusted in my favorite sweet spices (cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves and ginger) and whisked it all together. Humming under my breath, I ladled the batter into the frying pan, grateful that my sister's house, like my Berberville home, has a gas-powered stove. At least *something* is familiar. Round about the fifth or sixth pancake, I poked a finger in the dough and took a taste. The instant wrinkling of my features must have been comic. The batter was almost inedibly salty. I ran through my mental list of ingredients and confirmed that yeah, I'd used the right proportions. So whence the Dead Sea saltiness? And then - D'oh! - I remembered how, when I first started cooking in my Berberville kitchen, I found that I had to put three to five times as much salt into everything as I was used to, because the kosher salt (halal salt, technically) available there is soooo much weaker than the American variety I'd grown up with. So my mental Moroccan recipe included over a tablespoon of salt for each cup of flour. A TABLESPOON. While the recipe, made with American ingredients, should have needed no more than a TEASPOON. ::sigh::

Another time, in the same kitchen, I was making spaghetti for two. My sister walked in and asked why I was boiling the water in a 10-gallon stockpot. I blinked, looked at the pot, looked at her, looked at the pot again, and said, "Because it was the pot on the drying rack." Sis pulled open the cupboard doors to reveal at least a dozen pans (with their lids!) of every shape and size. Speaking as slowly as I'd been thinking, I said, "I'm used to making do with whatever pan is around. Most of my PCV buddies only own one or two pans, and most Moroccan housewives only two or three. You just ... use what you've got." My sister stared at me, her expression a mix of bemusement and compassion. "It really never occurred to me that there might be another pan around," I concluded, sheepishly. D'oh!

I swear, I became a good cook in Morocco. But nearly every time I've tried to prepare food here, I've run into another D'oh! moment. The ingredients are different. The tools are different. I'm 7,000 feet lower in altitude, so even the air is different. I've gone from being a skilled cook to barely able to boil eggs. ::sigh::

Shweeya b shweeya, little Volunteer, shweeya b shweeya...

The first time I went to Chinatown, it was in New York City. I felt quickly overwhelmed by the foreign smells, sights (Is that really a carcass hanging in the butcher shop?!?), crowding, noise, bustle, and general feeling of barely controlled mayhem.

I've been to a few other Chinatowns since then - DC's has a special place in my heart - and then I spent two years in Morocco. Which, while not Chinese, has its share of open-air markets (called souq), complete with carcass-y butcher shops and dishonest vendors, adding up to its own style of a haggling, shoving, bustling mayhem.

So when I went to San Francisco's Chinatown a little while ago, instead of feeling out of place, like in my first NYC attempt, I found myself simultaneously homesick and right at home. Homesick for Morocco, where I learned to master the souq, to haggle with the best of them, to sneer at unworthy merchandise in hopes of scoring more worthy products...

Plus, some of the products were similar. Like the scarves. I had a two-year love affair with Moroccan scarves, and brought a few dozen back with me. And here, in San Francisco's Chinatown, I found hundreds more in the styles I've come to love! I looked at the prices, wrinkled my forehead, and quickly converted the prices into dirhams. Then my eyes widened with the delight of a shopper who's found a deal.

I did this a few times, for various products, before really consciously realizing what I was doing. And then I had to laugh at myself.

When I first came to Morocco, I converted prices into US dollars, to make sense of the incomprehensible dirhams and riyals. (Riyals are worth 1/20th of a dirham. It's like giving prices in nickels. I, like so many other Moroccan PCVs, am now capable of remarkable mental math feats as long as they involve multiplying or dividing by 20.)

And now, freshly back in America, I'm coverting prices into dirhams, to know if I'm getting a fair deal. Because I have no idea what scarves are supposed to sell for in America, but I know exactly how much I can get them for in Morocco. (25 dirhams apiece in Essaouira, 20 if you find the right guy in the Fes medina, and 40 in Rabat where they're made of better quality fibers. Tourists typically pay 5 to 10 times these prices, but that's 'cause they don't know what they're doing.)

I was in Chinatown with my sister and a friend, who looked up to see what I was laughing about. I explained it to them. My sister the scientist, always looking to make rational sense of the universe, loftily announced that this was entirely normal, and due to the fact that I'd had more scarf-shopping experience in Morocco than in the US. She's not wrong - I don't think I've ever bought a scarf in America - but that's not the whole answer, either. It's about familiarity. Comfort zones. Associations. Chinatown, with its bright colors and rapidfire negotiations and delicious smells, feels more like souq than anyplace I've been in a long time. So of course I'm going to react like I'm in souq - with a sharp eye for a bargain, a savvy sense of fair prices, and a comfort level in, yes, Moroccan dirhams.

In a related note - America money feels like play money to me now. Much like the multicolored Moroccan money did when I first got there. (20 Dh notes are purple, 50's are green, 100's beige, and 200's blue. These last are sometimes called "Big Blues" instead of "Two hundreds".) While I was away, American money changed color. The 5 turned purple. The 10 turned orange. The faces grew and shifted their locations slightly. The 1's retain their classic appearance, but have the buying power of dandilion fluff. How long have I been gone?!?

Ramadan has started, stirring up a host of emotions.

I miss breaking fast with my host family each evening, racing the setting sun across town as I hasten to get there before the moghreb prayer call announces the end of the day of fasting.

I miss the food that the women of my village serve for l-ftor, the fast-breaking meal: dates that my province is justly famous for; olives from the south; cookies (shebbekia and store-bought cookies and whatever else they'd concocted in their kitchens); sweet, herbed, milky coffee (the only time in my life I've drunk coffee without gagging on it); assorted nuts; crepes and pancakes and other bread products, served with honey and jam and oil; and the piece de resistance, fatbread. Mmmmm, fatbread. After you're stuffed, the hostess brings out the second course: harira, the delicious and distinctive creamy Moroccan soup with tomatoes and lentils and short noodles and beans and a dozen other tasty bits. Oh, and the drinks: milk and banana milkshakes and beet juice and fresh-squeezed orange juice...

I miss my large family crowding around a small table, hands and arms reaching past each other as everyone grabs bits of their favorite foods. I miss Ama ladling out a special serving of harira for me, since I'm the only one in the room who doesn't want a bit of meat floating in my bowl.

I miss the constant invitations from everyone in town to share their l-ftor meal. (You get extra brownie points if you share the meal.)

I don't miss the long, hot, thirsty afternoons without water.

Or hanging out with PCV buddies who aren't fasting and who therefore make it that much harder for me. (Let alone the PCVs who try to sneak food in public, to my abiding embarrassment.)

I don't miss the stepped-up efforts to convert me to Islam. You're fasting? And you pray? Praise God! You're practically Muslim already! Just repeat after me: 'There is no God but Allah...'

I don't miss people assuring me that it's healthy to starve all day and then gorge on cookies. (For the record, shebbekia, while delicious, are basically less-puffy glazed donuts. Make pie crust dough, twist it into a pretzel-like knot, deep fry it, dip it in liquid sugar, and then (if desired) sprinkle it with sugar or sesame seeds. Really NOT the best thing to jump-start your intestines with, after a long, dry, hungry day.)

So here I am, in America, after observing Ramadan - ie, fasting and then breaking the fast - for two years. And this year, I'm not fasting. Ur da-tazumagh. Which I feel sporadically guilty about, knowing that the migrating lunar calendar** means that this year is even hotter and harder for my observant friends than last year was.

I'm keeping an eye out for Ramadan foods, but haven't found them yet. My best lead - a restaurant owned by a Moroccan! - went out of business a few years back.

But I'm keeping hope alive. I *will* find fatbread before the month is out. Somewhere, somehow...

** Ramadan, like the rest of the Muslim calendar, uses lunar months, which don't align perfectly with the solar years of the western, Gregorian calendar. This means that each year, Muslim holidays come 10-11 days earlier than they did before, when scheduled on a western calendar. So my first Ramadan filled the month of September, last year's was late August to mid September, and this year's is early August to early September. Etc. In the next few years, Ramadan will continue to march backward through the summer months. Imagine maintaining a pure abstention from any water or any other beverage through the heat of a 130*F desert afternoon...

I'm getting better at giant stores.

[[Giant stores = Target, Walmart, Safeway, CostCo...even a CVS or Walgreens if it has enough aisles.]]

I haven't attempted a mall yet, though. I didn't like malls even before Peace Corps, and my experience with stores tells me that I'm not likely to enjoy them any better, now.

The first time I walked into a giant store, fresh out of Morocco, I got dizzy. Lightheaded. Kinda lost it, a little bit. I couldn't find the edges of the store. Or even of the ceiling, because the shelves rose so high. I felt myself entering a foreign realm, whose edges reached off my mental map. Here, there be dragons.

Commercial dragons.

Who breathe fiery lies about the need for near-infinite selection.

At these giant stores, I can buy anything. Anything that has ever been dreamed of, constructed, and had a pricetag slapped onto it, anyway. And if they don't have it in stock, they can order it for me. (Or I could go home and order it online, myself.)

The number of choices available in these places ... blows my mind.

In Morocco, I'd count myself lucky if I found an American soda that wasn't Coke. ('Cause yeah, Coca-Cola has encircled the globe. Many, many times.) Here, grocery stores devote entire, 50-yard-long aisles to their soda selection. Same with shampoo. Or deodorant. Or ... sponges. Laundry detergents. Frying pans.

How do people make so many meaningless distinctions?

How much mental energy is devoted to distinguishing between essentially identical products, none of which we actually need??

In Morocco, I discovered that products labeled "shower gel" cleaned my hair at least as well as those labeled "shampoo", and usually better. It's handy, only having to bring one small bottle and a towel, and knowing I'll get nice and clean.

So when I stare down the shampoo aisle - or worse, wander through the shampoo maze in a drug store - I'm stunned both by the extraordinary number and types of products, as well as the very idea that people feel the need to have this selection.

Same with cereal.

At one point, when describing my reactions to an RPCV friend, I heard myself use the phrase "temple to consumerism."

Maybe it's because I've spent some time wandering ruins in northern Morocco (once Mauritania, a province of the Roman Empire) and in Rome and Jordan. I've seen temples, built to long-forgotten gods.

And the giant edifices screeching BUY HERE BUY HERE are almost as imposing. They certainly try as hard as any ancient culture to bully me into accepting that their vision of the universe is the correct one. That I'm a deeply flawed mortal, in the hands of an awesomely powerful authority, who will condemn me to eternal torments if I don't have this month's shoes.

(Forget sacrificing a bull - they've taken care of that step, and the ones after it, the sacrificing and butchering and tanning and rendering into steaks and belts and burgers and motorcycle jackets and ... shoes.)

So, yeah, I'm avoiding the mall. And while giant stores no longer make me dizzy, it's because I've gotten better at tunnel-vision. If I make targeted runs for whatever items I planned to buy, I can resist the crushing waves of the oceans of options roaring in my ears.

But I miss my corner hanut, with the limited selection that never felt overly limiting. The entire shop was probably 10 feet across and 15 feet deep, and my friend Ali knew every inch of shelves, and could find anything for me with a smile - or explain that no, he didn't have it, with a somewhat more rueful smile.

I remember complaining about the pressure-to-buy from overeager merchants (which Ali never was, lhumdullah), but it pales in comparison to the pressures that the multi-trillion-dollar commercial enterprises bring to bear.

I never thought I'd say it, but ... I think I miss souq.

Two steps back.

Or at least it kinda feels like that.

Last night, I hung out with some RPCV friends. Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, with whom I'd shared a year or more of my service.

When we set up our plans for the evening, my friend happened to say, "Marhaba!" - one of my favorite Moroccan words.

And I felt a pang. I felt nostalgic and homesick and relieved and excited and grateful, all at once. Because I was finally talking to somebody who understands my crazy language.

When we all got together tonight, I felt a muscle unclench. Not a physical muscle, but a mental one. The tight rein I've been holding over my reflexive use of Tam and Arabic...got relaxed. Released. Freed.

I could drop phrases like, "Aynna trit," As you like / Whatever, or "Msh irra Rrrbi" If God wants, or even "Tnghayi taghufi l-Moghreb." I miss Morocco.

And as I used these expressions, and my friends understood them, I realized how hard I've been clenching this mental muscle.

It's like when you step into a jacuzzi and feel yourself relaxing body parts you hadn't even realized you'd been tensing. That same feeling of unexpected restfulness and ... peace.

I've been trying to act like a "regular American". Like I think in English all the time. Like I find cars and billboards and central A/C perfectly normal.

And I like to imagine that I've been pretty convincing at it.

But I do miss speaking my crazy language. I miss using those muscles in my tongue and throat. I miss hearing others speak it. I miss having people around who share my memories of crowding into a taxi, or battling miscellaneous transportation struggles, or haggling in the souq. Who understand what a blessed miracle hot running water is.

I understand now why RPCVs tend to gravitate towards each other.

Which is why now, this morning, I'm off to see them again. :)

So I've been in America almost a month now. (One month tomorrow, actually.)

And I already miss Morocco.

I don't miss everything. I don't miss the ice-cold tap water, or the never-ending language confusion.

But I do miss ... so many little things.

I miss my baby brother's smiles.

My host mom's hugs.

And her cooking.

Especially her couscous.

I miss seeing people light up when they realize I speak their language.

I miss the pace of my self-structured days.

I miss walking. (Here, all transportation is car-based.)

I miss having people understand me when I speak Arabic or Tam. ('Cause I still do speak them both, if I'm not thinking about it; just now, my sister asked me a quick question, and my reflexive answer was, "Isul l-Hal." Which I then had to translate to, "Not yet.")

And I miss the physical intimacy of Morocco.

I know I've talked before about it, but it's probably been a while, so here's a refresher:

In Morocco, you have to greet everyone you see. And by "greet", I mean touch and speak to. If you walk into a crowded room, you take a minute to walk around and greet everybody. (Unless it's really crazy-crowded, in which case a quick wave at the crowd can suffice.) If you pass a friend on the street, you stop. Extend a hand. If it's an opposite-gender friend, a quick touch of the fingers passes for a handshake, and you ask about each other's well being, then move on. If it's a same-gender friend, you grasp hands, kiss each other's cheeks, and keep hold of each other while you ask about each other's well being, the wellbeing of each other's families, friends, etc. Then you might even kiss cheeks again before saying goodbye.

And when you're sitting in a room with someone of the same gender, you sit *with* them. In each other's personal space. Usually touching them.

I miss that.

The firm press of a friend's/sister's/neighbor's leg against mine as we sit cross-legged against a wall. The weight of a little one leaning back against me.

When I first got to Morocco, I found myself oppressed by all the constant touching. I craved personal space and alone time. I still need both of those things, but now only in moderation - and I now find myself craving the friendly physical contact that is so readily shared in Morocco.

And couscous.

I really miss Ama's couscous.

As I've mentioned before, the Third Goal of Peace Corps is to share world cultures with Americans. In other words, help Americans broaden their perspective beyond their own borders.

And tonight, I have an opportunity to do that.

I know I have some loyal readers in Northern California. If you're free tonight, come to the Arden Branch Library in Sacramento, where I'll be speaking (along with a couple other RPCVs) from 6 to 7:30. Marhaba!

For logistical information: www.peacecorps.gov

Earlier, I handled a honeydew melon, and murmured, "Aftiikh...just one of the many words that I'll probably never use again."

I spent two years trying to learn a language that's not used outside of Morocco, and not understood by most of the folks there, either.

And while I don't mind letting go of shpulel (snail) or abkhosh (black), there are a few words that are just SO HANDY that I'm going to miss them. Or maybe stubbornly insist on using them, despite the confusion and communication FAIL that results...

1. Marhaba. Usually translated as welcome, marhaba means a wealth of things. Make yourself at home. What's mine is yours. Help yourself. Be my guest. Do what you will.

"Hey, can I get the last cupcake?"

"Marhaba."

"I'll be in your town next weekend."

"Marhaba!"

"Is this seat taken?"

"Marhaba."

2. Safi. This one short word (almost rhymes with "coffee", but the vowel is more of an ah than an aw) means enough, I'm all through, that's that, I'm done, that's all she wrote, etc.

"No more couchsurfing for me. Safi."

To a vicious pest (whether beggar child, harassing male, or overzealous clerk): "Safi! Safi-safi-safi."

"Hey, did you ever get that massive project finished?"

"Safi!"

3. Yalla. It's used in all the ways that "Let's go" is in English. We're leaving now. Hurry up. Hey, c'mon already. In Iron Man, the bad guy uses it with his minions, when they're not working fast enough to please him.

"Yalla-yalla-yalla!"

4. Kif-kif. Same thing. Same deal. Same difference. It's all the same. Whatever. I don't care.

"Do you want ice in your water, or not?"

"Kif-kif."

"Are you on Team Edward or Team Jacob?"

"Kif-kif."

5. Maashi kif-kif. NOT the same.

"Folks keep saying, 'Ooh, yes, I've been to Morocco. It's just so Westernized!' And I have to explain that the tourist cities and the rural villages are maashi kif-kif."

"When I left for Morocco, phones had *numbers* on them. Now they're shiny blank plastic things. It's not a phone anymore, it's a Star Trek tricorder-communicator thing. Phone. Computer. MAASHI KIF-KIF."

6. Zween. Fancy. Pretty. Chic. Attractive. Deluxe. Elaborate.

"Ooh, check you out! You're all zween!"

"The public areas are full of zween features like 2-foot-tall cushions and store-bought rugs, but the family rooms have one-inch cushions and (imho, prettier) hand-made rugs."

7. Shweeya. A little bit. Also used in the expression "shweeya b shweeya", meaning "a little at a time" or "bit by bit" or "step by step".

"Are you readjusting to life in America?"

"Shweeya b shweeya."

"Do you want some more cake?"

"Shweeya, thanks."

"All the grass and trees growing everywhere make the air so oxygen-laden that I feel shweeya loopy half the time."

8. Inshallah. If God wills. As God wills. Idiomatically, hopefully. In Arabic and Tam, you can't talk about the future without adding the specific caveat that all plans are subject to the will of God. After 27 months, I can't make absolute statements about the future anymore. In English, I use hedges like, "I'm planning to..." or "I hope to..." or "Hopefully..."

"See you tomorrow!"

"Inshallah!"

"Will you be in the Bay Area all summer?"

"Through August, inshallah."

"So Kauthar, you're going to go to America, find a man, and then bring your man back to Berberville so we can through you a big Berber wedding, right?"

"Inshallah."

9. Lhumdullah and al-humdulillah. Both meaning Thank God or Praise God, the former the more common, more informal version, the latter the more correct and more emphatic form.

"My father's cancer is in total remission!"

"Al-humdulillah!!"

"I found that thumb drive I borrowed from you."

"Oh, lhumdullah, that's great."

"How've you been?"

"Lhumdullah." [Shorthand for "Fine, thanks to God.]

10. Bismillah. Technically, In the name of God, but idiomatically, it's more, OK, let's begin. When you start anything - a meal, a car engine, a journey, a new book - you invoke God's name, to establish that every action you take is done for God.

Climbing into a car: "Bismillah."

Taking the first bite of a meal: "Bismillah."

Taking the first bite of a really fabulous looking dessert: "Bis-miiiii-laaah!"

It's no coincidence that several of these are "God phrases". I *like* the God phrases, even more than most other PCVs. In America, at least in the major metropolitan centers where I've spent the past weeks, God's name isn't part of the educated white vernacular. In English, I feel like I'm taking God's name in vain if I say, "Oh, thank God!" or "God willing" or a half-dozen other expressions that I can routinely use in Arabic. And I *like* thanking God for all good things, and acknowledging that I'm submitting my will to God's, and all the other things that I can do in Arabic without a second thought, but can't do in English without feeling like I'm coming across as a "Bible-thumping Jesus freak," as one friend would say. (Yeah, you know who you are.)

Part of me wants to keep using these ten words/expressions, because they're just so handy...but the point of words, handy or cumbersome, is communication. And if nobody understands me, I'm not communicating anything.

Safi.

I'm readjusting to life in America.

I still looooove hot showers, but I no longer flip out when I see *hot*water* emerging from the wall.

Tonight, I attended a fancy dinner, and while I did flip out over the leafy greens* (there was spinach in the salad, and swiss chard in the couscous!!), the table-full of flatware didn't bother me. (It helped a LOT that we only had one fork, one knife, and one spoon apiece.) We did each get two glasses, but there was still enough white space on the table that it didn't feel overwhelming.

Grocery stores are still overwhelming.

As are jumbo stores like Target and Walmart.

When I know I'm going to one of those, I plan ahead, take deep breaths, and carefully limit my field of view. I very deliberately shutter myself - add invisible blinders, so to speak - so that I don't see enough to freak me out. If I don't, and I let myself see the entire Temple To Consumerism, my pulse speeds up, my gag reflex engages, and I kinda hate America for a minute. (Seriously, people, how many kinds of white-flour-and-corn-syrup combinations do you need to eat breakfast??)

What else...

I almost never walk down the middle of the street anymore. Which is good, 'cause my friends kinda thought I had a death wish for a while, there. It's hard to make Americans understand that I'm more used to seeing sheep, donkeys, and pedestrians on roads than cars.

I still swoon over all the vegetation in America. I'm in the San Francisco area now, and I can't get over all the flowers and flowering trees. The air smells like perfume. The good kind of perfume. I'm breathing flower-laden, sea-level air...after two years living above 7000 feet, in near-desert conditions, this much oxygen (and *freshly*generated* oxygen, at that) kinda makes me permanently ... high. Happy and loopy, anyway. :)

I'm still bedazzled by how fast internet is in this country. I can upload photos in no time flat. I can watch streaming videos (which never worked for me in Morocco - they'd spool a few seconds, then get caught in a buffering loop they'd never emerge from). Ooh, hey, I bet Hulu will work for me now! I gotta get on that...

I'm still hopelessly out of touch with pop culture. Thanks to Facebook and PlanWorld, I've *heard* of shows like Glee and Dexter and all those vampire teen shows, but I've never seen a single episode, or even a preview for one. I've watched (far too much) downloaded movies and TV shows, but since I haven't watched American TV in 28 months, I really have no idea what's been popular. Who's Megan Fox, and why is everybody raving over her?

I don't trust my sense of style. I've spent two years trying to look like a potato. (It's far and away the easiest way to disguise the actual shape of my body: lots of layers of bulky clothes.) I've also spent two years in a different fashion culture, where women wear nightgowns as outfits, bathrobes as coats, and sequined capes as attention-getters. I think sequins are pretty, now. I know when I first got to Morocco, I found them tacky, but now they're just so shiny and zween!, which is why I no longer trust my own taste.

Alarm clocks. Unless I had a transit/bus/train/plane to catch, I haven't set alarms for two years. I tend to wake up when the sun makes it up over the mountains, around 7am in the summer, 9am in the winter. That's early enough for anything I needed to do. This whole obnoxious-noise-wrenching-me-from-sleep thing has GOTTA GO.

I'm still a little afraid of the dark, but more willing to recognize it for what it is, laugh at myself, and head out into the shadows anyway.

So, yeah, I'm adjusting. Bit by bit, day by day... Shweeya b shweeya.

*I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but there are no dark greens or leafy greens in Morocco. The closest substitute is beet tops, and only if your veggie guy doesn't cut them off before putting the beets out for sale. There's no spinach. No broccoli. No kale. No collard greens. None of the frilly, nutritional kinds of lettuce. No lettuce at all, except for iceberg lettuce in the most expensive tourist restaurants. I'm hereby adding dark green veggies to the list of Stuff I Didn't Know I'd Missed.

When I was in Morocco, I didn't miss too much *stuff* from America. I've never been particularly materialistic (which drives people nuts when they want to know what to buy me for Christmas), and whenever people offered to send me care packages, I'd draw a blank as to what I wanted from the USA.

But now that I'm here, I keep seeing things and remembering how much I like them. I'm delighted to be reacquainted with things I didn't know I'd missed.

Like pretty cars. Most cars in Morocco look ... weathered. They're the rugged old cowboys of cars, the ones whose leathery, lined faces tell stories of thousands and thousands of hard, sun-drenched days. Replace sun damage with dents and dings, and you get the idea. But here in America, I keep seeing shiny MiniCoopers and classic Corvettes and VW Bugs (new and old, but all shiny and well-maintained). Cars that just make me happy.

And root beer. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed root beer until a year ago, when I was in the home of our Country Director, and he had a bowl of American sodas on the table (courtesy of the Embassy Commisary), and the root beer made my eyes bug out of my head and I found myself bouncing with excitement at the very idea of drinking some.

And bookstores. OK, I did kinda know how much I missed bookstores, but it wasn't till I walked into the Barnes & Noble on M St. in Georgetown - a store where I've spent many, many a happy hour - that I realized just how much. Smelling that unique scent of paper and ink, faintly overlain by odors wafting down from the upstairs cafe...hmmm... I felt positively lightheaded with glee. I spent hours wandering among the shelves, reacquainting myself with the printed English word, discovering what Americans are (apparently) buying these days, and rolling my eyes at the enormous Twilight exhibits. Bookstores make me happy.

And TREES!!!!!

I love my Berber village, from its scrubby prickly ifsi bushes to the top of its brown mountains, so I hadn't let myself dwell too much on what it lacks. Because while we do have poplars lining the stream/river banks, and a handful of apple orchards, Berberville is otherwise naked of trees. And nearly naked of grass. But here in America, trees are EVERYWHERE. So's grass. I'm getting drunk off all the fresh oxygen, and reveling in the profusion of green everywhere. These aren't carefully cultivated and irrigated lawns, or lovingly transplanted and handwatered trees...America's hillsides burst with a wild explosion of vegetation. (Well, eastern America. The great West is different, but I haven't gotten back out there yet.) I just can't get tired of it. I hope I never take it for granted, this profligate profusion of photosynthesis...

So, yeah, it's fun to rediscover all this. I think it's part of my generally positive disposition that I tend not to miss things when they're gone, but I'm still sooooo grateful to have them in my life again! :D

Some RPCVs have told me that re-entry to America is the hardest (or at least *one* of the hardest) part(s) of their service.

So far, my return has been smooth, but maybe it'll get harder as I get more settled in a routine so different from anything I've lived for two years. For now, I still feel like I'm on vacation. I've lived out of two backpacks for the past three weeks, and have traveled at least once every 2-3 days.

A few things surprise me - these plastic flat things y'all call phones (dude, what happened to the buttons!), the speed of cars on the roads, the willingness of folks to drink alcohol *in*public* - but I know those will seem normal soon enough.

But I do keep having moments of cross-cultural ... surprise? disorientation? confusion?

Little things, only lasting a split second.

Like when I hear a voice 5-10 feet away, speaking in American-accented English, and my head snaps up in excitement. ("Ooh, somebody I can talk to! From **America**!") And then I remember that oh, yeah, that's not extraordinary anymore. I'm *in* America.

Or when I see some long-inaccessible treat, like root beer, and get all excited, and feel that I have to buy it immediately. The other day, I wasn't hungry or thirsty, but I felt like I didn't buy the a can and stash it in my bag, I might not see another can of root beer for months or years. And once I'd convinced myself that yes, I can buy root beer *whenever*I*want*to*, I felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer availability of everything.

Or when I was halfway to the coffee shop where I'd said I'd meet a friend, and thought, "Oh, no, I didn't bring any tissues with me!" ...and then realized, Oh, wait, they'll *have* toilet paper in their bathrooms.

Or when I talk about the Moroccan city you know as "Marrakesh", and it takes me three tries to come up with the American-accented version of the name. (My Peace Corps buddies and I call it Kesh, which is how I think of it, but if I'm talking to a non-PCV, it's MarrrROKsh, and here I have to remember that it's MARE-uh-kesh.)

Let alone all the times I drop Arabic and Tam words into conversation, and then can't figure out how to translate them. For two years, everyone I've spoken English to can understand these handy little words, and now I get blank stares. Safi. Baraka. Inshallah. Marhaba. These words are *useful*, precisely because they don't have a direct translation. Their idiomatic connotation is the thing I mean to express...and I end up communicating nothing. Sigh.

So, yeah, there are a few bumps upon re-entry. But so far, I'm mostly just thrilled to get to see so many friends and loved ones again. :)

Morocco is drowning in loiterers. If they hung "No loitering" signs, they'd half to arrest half the youth in the country. The male half.

While girls are expected to stay in the home, cooking and cleaning and doing various household chores whenever they're not in school, young men really have *no* demands on their time, apart from school. (Assuming they live in a place that offers school for people of their age, and further assuming that they haven't dropped out.)

Some percentage of young men are working, earning money to support their families. But in my experience, that's the exception. The rule is young men with nothing to do but hang around.

Thanks to the legacy of the French school calendar, school demands something less than six hours per day.

Some young men fill their leisure hours (and hours) with soccer, but most just ... hang out. Loiter. Linger over coffee and tea for hours. (This particular habit starts in the teenage years and lasts through adulthood and old age.) Lean on doorframes. Sit on curbs or front stoops. Gather around ... well, anything of interest, really. And then watch the world go by.

The cost in general productivity is nearly incalculable. Thousands of man-hours wasted in sheer idleness. The cost societally is that it's impossible to do *anything* in public without being observed (and, usually, commented upon) by this peanut gallery. And I mean anything. Walk down the street. Eat. Shop. Apply chapstick.

But sometimes there's an upside.

These loiterers always know what's going on. They're the human version of Wikipedia, at least as it applies to recent local events.

Today, May 20th, as I strolled out of Morocco (across the border into Melilla, a quasi-independent town controlled by Spain), the loiterers repeatedly protected me from my own ignorance, preventing me from making mistakes. They pointed the way through the bewildering array of checkpoints, half-finished walls, and idling law enforcement / customs officials.

And when I sauntered past the completely unmarked Border Control, the loiterers collectively shouted at me, "Al shtampa!".

My linguistically crowded brain replied with, "La timbre? Fin? Donde?" (The stamp? Where? Where? in French, Arabic, and Spanish, respectively.)

And they pointed and said, "Alli." (Ayi? As I've said before, I can speak some Spanish, but I can't write it *at*all*.)

A good 20 minutes later, on the bus from the border into downtown Melilla, I began dusting off my Spanish vocabulary. It was born in conversations in Middle School, when I compared notes from French class with buddies in Spanish class. My knowledge of the Spanish language was deepened, enhanced, and generally made useful by my years spent teaching in the Houston barrio. But it was from my own middle school days that I knew Aqui, Ayi, and Aya. (Or however they're spelled.)

The pieces clicked together.

I'd assumed they were saying some local variation on "Aji", which means "Come here!" in Darija. I figured that maybe since "Aji" meant come *here*, maybe "Ayi" meant go *there*.

But with my freshly reawakened Spanish making space for itself, I realized that these loiterers must have been Spanish-fluent kids who'd spent their lives loitering on both sides of the border. And they were telling me to go there - just as they pointed - to get my passport stamped.

Without their assistance, I'd probably have schlepped my 25 kilos of stuff a good half-kilometer beyond the border before finding an official who sent me back.

So for the first time in Morocco - and, I guess, the last time, since I was within moments of leaving the country - I found myself grateful for these loitering layabouts. There's a lot to be said for having knowledgeable folks with nothing better to do than help a stranger out. :)

[[Yes, there will be lots of posts about COSing. Most are written, and just need to be typed up. But I'm only getting 2 hours of sleep tonight as it is, so I'm not typing them now. Just some thoughts from today...]

I've been out of touch for 27 months.

Not out of communication. Thanks to the miracle of teh intarwebs - with its gifts of Skype and email and Facebook and oh, yeah, my blog! - I've stayed connected to my loved ones.

But I'm out of touch with developments in America.

I hear about the big stuff. I watched Election Night and the Inauguration. I've heard about the tea bagger movement and the various economic crises.

But I've missed the other stuff. Like what movies have come out, and who's the latest "It Girl", and other things that honestly, I didn't mind missing.

I've also missed the recent waves of technology.

How much can change in 27 months?

A lot, it turns out.

iPhones. Dude, people can check their email and surf the web with their PHONES now. What's up with that!? Sitting in a cafe in Holland Park, London, I can confirm my flight and figure out how to get to Gatwick at 5am. Plus, with their built-in GPS and Google Maps and Enhanced Reality, people may never be lost again.

Computer chips embedded in ATM cards. This one's a bugger. I've been spending the remnants of my Peace Corps stipend, transfered into local currencies...but in order to get more funds, I need to use the ATM card attached to my American bank account. Problem is, my cute little twenty-seven-month-old card doesn't have one of these chips...which means that 90% of ATM machines reject it. Whoops.

Kindles. Which are just SO COOL. ::drooling::

How much can change in 27 months...

And in non-technology changes:

* The host cousin who was a silly 15-year-old when I arrived in Berberville is now married. MARRIED. (She's 17, he's 18. She met him the day before the wedding.)* The host cousin who was a thoughtful 18-year-old is now married AND HAS A BABY BOY. (She's 20, he's 30. She met him TWO days before the wedding.)* My host mom had a baby.* My sitemate's host mom had a baby.* My host aunt had a baby.* My American nephews grew up from being a munchkin and an anklebiter to being a kid and a munchkin (respectively).* I learned enough Tam to carry on complex conversations with nearly anyone. Well, any one of the 50,000 or so people who speak it. =/* My American friends and cousins got married, had kids, graduated from their doctoral programs, and changed careers...without me being there.

Twenty-seven months.

In which I learned to walk down the middle of the street, how to eat *anything* with my hands, how to handwash anything, and other lessons that won't be terribly useful in the First World. (That first one has nearly killed me a few times already. Dude, you can't take me *anywhere*.)

Some cravings that have already been met: * Mexican food* Leafy green vegetables (including broccoli!)* Seeing a movie on a screen larger than my laptop* Lots and lots of cheese* Root beer (including a root beer float!)* Wearing a tanktop in public (and I have the sunburn to prove it - skin that hasn't seen sunlight in two years is *sensitive*, it turns out)

The "reverse culture shock" has begun. And will hopefully be of very short duration. :) 'Cause if I've learned nothing else from Peace Corps, it's how to deal with the unexpected with grace.

In its own, inimical style, Berberville has given me a goodbye present.

It snowed!

Yes, it's mid-May.

Yes, I had left laundry out overnight, since it was still damp after yesterday's clouds.

So, yes, snow piled up (about an inch deep) on every cranny of every recently cleaned garment.

But it's still the prettiest goodbye present it had to offer, and I'm taking it in that spirit.

And the sun came out this afternoon, so my clothes may yet dry before I have to pack them.

I'm leaving Berberville for the last time - for the foreseeable future, anyway, though I keep promising folks that I hope to return - in less than 24 hours.

This week has been filled with goodbyes - with PCVs and HCNs - and yet more giving away. Ama has a sister with eight children, so most of my clothes are going to them. (The thermals I'm not keeping are going to a newbie PCV, though.) I've made several dozen cookies, and have more to bake, 'cause that's part of the goodbyes, too....

Off for tea and cookies with yet another family!

When I was a child, I loved the book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day. Young Alexander starts by telling us:

"I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day."

Every once in a while, I know how he feels.

I went to sleep without doing the dishes and now they're all dried and crusty and when I woke up the water wasn't on yet, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up again, I made tea and yogurt with granola and sat down in the living room and then there was a knock on the door and I hadn't brushed my teeth or my hair or put on a scarf, so I put the dishes in the kitchen and opened the door and it was Ama.

And she reminded me I'd forgotten to do something and she tsk'd at me and she left while I sat down and took care of it. And when I finished I went to do the dishes but as soon as I'd put the gloves on there was another knock at the door and I still hadn't brushed my teeth or my hair or put on a scarf, so I pulled off the gloves and went down to the door and discovered that it was OPEN because Ama hadn't closed it.

And I showed her the work I'd finished and offered to make her tea but the teapot was still dirty 'cause I still hadn't done the dishes so she sat down while I started the dishes but then she said she'd go buy vegetables so she left while I washed dishes and then there was ANOTHER knock at the door and I STILL hadn't brushed my teeth or my hair or put on a scarf.

So I went down and my door was STILL open because Ama hadn't closed it AGAIN and there were two girls looking for Ama, who I sent towards the souq, but across the street was a truckful of men who saw my long blonde hair and my open door and got that look in their eyes that makes me want to break things.

And I knew it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

So I closed and latched and locked the door and went upstairs and brushed my hair and tied it back with a scarf and started to do the dishes so I could brush my teeth ('cause I only have the one sink) and there was ANOTHER knock at the door and I went back down and didn't look at the truckful of staring men while I let Ama in and we went up to the kitchen where the teapot was STILL dirty and I started to cry.

'Cause it was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

To be continued...

Like many words borrowed from Arabic, dwr has just three key letters. And it's related to dur, which is spelled the same in Arabic (where o, ou, u, and w are all varying transliterations of the same character, "wew").

Dur means turn. As in, "Taxi driver, please dur right here." But if you linger over the central oo sound, stretching it from dur to duu-wer, it shifts meaning. Dwr can be used to mean "turn all the way around in a circle", but it's most commonly used to mean "walk around" or "wander" or "go walkabout".

Today, my visiting friend and I dwr'd town all afternoon.

At noon, we headed up to Ama's house for lunch. (Bread, mashed potatoes, and tea.) We hung out there for a while, then came home just long enough to grab a drink of water and change shoes before going for a walk through the fields. We wandered behind the caid's palace (perched on a jutting outcrop in the middle of town), down by the river, over to a nearby village, and back. We passed clover patches (which we promptly paused in, to hunt for four-leaf clovers), buttercup-filled meadows, dandelion fields, poplars, weeping willows... The perfect spring weather simply iced the cake of our perfect spring walk. :)

We got back, grabbed more water and a mikka of baby clothes (and I changed out of my mud-spattered pants!), and headed up to see the world's cutest 3-month old, who lives up on top of the caid's outcrop.

NB: My little brother is 10 months old. They're not in competition.

His mom fed us bread, jam, and tea.

Then we walked back down, swung by the house again, I picked up yet more baby clothes, and headed off to see a newborn. (And his mommy, my cousin.) First, though, I swung by Ama's house, so we could go over together.

An hour in a room full of chattering women, and I was finally free to go home. After eating a pancake, and jam, and tea. And a plate of aHrir (Moroccan mac & cheese, aka the food always served when a baby is born).

As I kicked off my boots, I told my friend, "I'm ready to not leave my house for a year." Or ever eat again.

Dwr-ing is fun, but 7 straight hours of socializing? Whew.

Whenever I travel, I strike up the most interesting conversations. We might talk about dance, books, my marital status... Here are a few snippets from conversations I haven't recorded before:

"So why are you here in Morocco?""I'm a Volunteer with the Peace Corps."

"So what do you do?""I'm an environmental educator. I talk to children and adults about the environment.""Oh, teaching is good. You should be a full-time teacher. You could teach everything!""Yes, I could, but for now I'm working for the Peace Corps.""But you could teach Hsb, arabiya, aud lbiya...""Yes, but I'm not a math teacher or Arabic teacher.""But you could be!""Inshallah."

Another time, the jumper made me grin with a linguistic juxtaposition:"Montez-vous parlez francais?"At first I was saying "Montez-vous. Parlez francais.", which is French for Get into the transit already. Speak French. And that didn't make huge amounts of sense.But then I realized that he'd said, "Montez!", ie Get in, followed by "Vous parlez francais?" Do you speak French?'Cause if, unlike 90% of the foreigners he's ever seen, I don't speak French, I clearly won't have understood the first thing he said. Which makes it a better question to ask before, rather than after, he's ordering me around in that language...but better late than never, I guess. Of course, I denied all knowledge of the language, as I do most of the time, so he repeated the instruction in Tam - "Alli!" - and I promptly climbed aboard.

Another time, when in a bigger city, a taxi driver began speaking to me in Arabic. I'd greeted him in Arabic - the greetings are the same as in Tam - so when I protested that I don't speak the language, he gave me a funny look. In my survival Darija, I said, "I only speak Tamazight. Do you know Tamazight?" He laughed and said no, then gave me a look and said, "Voluntaire de la paix?" I laughed, too, and nodded. Volunteer of Peace? Not my official title, but I like it. Clearly, he's driven around PCVs before, and remembered that the only foreigners who speak the language so little-known that even he and most of his fellow countrymen don't speak it...are us. Les Volontaires de la Corps de la Paix. Aka Peace Volunteers. :)

When PCVs go to the Peace Corps office in Rabat, we're often there for the whole day, which means we run into that critical lunch question. Over in the center of town, there are millions of food options, but back in the office's neighborhood, pickings are slim.

My first trip to Rabat, most folks advised me to visit the Ministry of Transportation's cafeteria. It's cheap (10-15dh a plate), but only has about 4 options on the lunch menu, so gets repetitive awfully fast.

Fortunately, another ministry (I'm honestly not sure which, but it's across the street from the PC office) has opened a huge cafeteria, with about a dozen options. Every day, you can choose between shwarma, pizza, salads, tagine, roast chicken, and some daily special. If you don't get a drink, expect to spend about 20dh.

But if you walk out the back door, and head towards Agdal, a bunch of other options appear. There's the usual assortment of sandwich places, plus a sushi restaurant and a few other fancy spots. My personal favorite, though, is a pizza joint.

Run by an incredibly nice guy who lived in the US for 15 years, the pizza is the most authentically American-tasting I've found in Morocco. It's not cheap - about 40dh for a medium, which will fill you up if you're hungry, or two people can split a 65dh large - but it's delicious. He flies in the ingredients from America, for the most part, with a few coming from Europe. His pizzas have real mozzarella, real mushrooms, real... real everything.

I promised him I'd tell my friends, which I have, and now I'm telling the rest of you. Next time you're in Rabat-Agdal, stop in at L. Y. Pizza!

I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln and the men around him, Team of Rivals. On the back is one of the more famous portraits of Lincoln, flanked by portraits of the title rivals - Seward, Chase, Stanton, and Bates.

So I was reading in the transit one day, and the man next to me decided to strike up a conversation.

I'd paused in my reading, to think about what I'd read, and let the book fall closed (my place still marked with a finger). He pointed to the pictures on the back and said, "Who are they?"

I pointed to Lincoln and said, "Ibrahim Liin-kon. The president of America, a long time ago."

Of course, as soon as the conversation began, the two of us became the most interesting thing around.

The moment I'd responded to his question, the peanut gallery began chiming in.

"Hey, she speaks Tamazight!""Hey, she's reading about the president!""Yeah, she speaks Tamazight!""Do you think the book is in English or French?""Probably French. Look at the letters - those are French.""How long ago was he president?"

I answered the oh-hey-you-speak-our-language with a grin, and gave an actual answer to to the one about Lincoln. It took me a second to work out the numbers - I don't usually use numbers over a thousand. "He was president in one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one."

"Oh, eighteen-hundred sixty-one?"

Of course, they simplify the dates - silly me for forgetting. "Yes, eighteen-hundred sixty-one."

At this point, the peanut gallery began asking me the standard questions about my marital status, my age, how much I liked Morocco, whether I thought Berberville was too cold, etc, etc. When I got tired of fielding them, I reopened the book and continued reading.

A few minutes later, my neighbor poked at the page and asked, "Is that French or English?"

"English," I answered. "In America, we speak English."

"And this man was the president of America?"

"Yes."

"So who are these other people?" he asked, pointing to the gallery of faces on the back. [I tried to find an image of the back cover to post, but couldn't. You can see it here if you click on "Look Inside" and then "Back Cover".]

"They're his ... um ... ministers," I said, suddenly recalling the word from my trip to Rabat, when I spent the better part of a day taxiing between different ministry offices, looking for the secret trove of geological maps for sale (which I found! but that's another story).

I pointed to Seward. "This was his ... First Minister," I said, trying and failing to come up with a better translation for "Secretary of State." Then I thought of something. "You know how Hillary Clinton is the First Minister for Barack Obama? Kif-kif."

He still looked confused, so I tried again. "Seward was the same minister to Lincoln that Hillary Clinton is to Barack Obama. And remember how Hillary Clinton wanted to be president, but Obama won, so now she's the First Minister? It was the same with Seward. He wanted to be President - all these men [gesturing to the other faces on the page] wanted to be president, but Lincoln won, so they were his ministers, instead."

At that point, the peanut gallery began an involved discussion among themselves, in an incomprehensible mix of Arabic and Tamazight. When they'd reached a consensus, a designated spokesman explained the problem to me.

"But Hillary Clinton *isn't* the First Minister of America. We know who the First Minister is, and she's a black woman."

I blinked for a second, then figured out what he was talking about. "That was Condoleezza Rice. She *was* the First Minister, for President Bush."

The guy next to me put it together first. "You mean, when you get a new president, you get new ministers, too?"

"Yes! Exactly." A new president gets to pick a whole new Cabinet, I thought, but lacking the words for "pick" and "Cabinet", I let his explanation stand. And I really didn't want to get into the nuances, like Secretary Gates.

"So Hillary Clinton is not president, but she's the First Minister now? Like the black woman was?"

I felt a lot of muscles clenching at their repeated use of "the black woman" to refer to our former Secretary of State, but I took a deep breath and said, "Yes, Hillary Clinton is the First Minister, like Condoleezza Rice - the black woman - used to be." (By the way, the word for "president" in Arabic and Tam is raiis, a perfect homophone for Rice. So this was probably confusing.)

"Yeah," chimed in another voice, "America always has women for their First Minister. Before the black woman, it was the old woman."

More muscles clenched, but I calmly replied, "Yes, President Bill Clinton had Madeleine Albright - the old woman - as his First Minister. And then President Bush had Condoleezza Rice and now President Obama has Hillary Clinton." Then I thought of something else. "But it isn't always women. It can be a man or a woman. Yes, the past three First Ministers have been women, but it can be either."

At this point, the men wanted my opinions on the presidents, and tried to bait me into a discussion of the Gulf War. I dodged most of the bullets and returned to reading.

Just another day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer...

Yesterday afternoon, my family came to visit me. They don't do it often, and Ama gave me plenty of advance notice, so I'd be sure to have tea on hand. :)

I made zucchini muffins (using the pumpkin muffin recipe, and substituting one squash for another - they came out delicious, possibly because I quintupled the spices) and had hot water on the stove, so I could make the tea as soon as they arrived.

One of the local teachers came by, too.

I'd choreographed that.

He'd asked to come by to pick up some books I'd promised him, but I really don't like having men in my house - even really nice guys like him. So when I knew my host fam would be here, I invited him to come, too, so there'd be plenty of folks here.

They showed up, and began munching the muffins and drinking the tea.

He showed up, did the same, and waited for me to offer the books (being too polite to ask for them).

After a few more minutes of chatting, he went on his way.

I then brought out some of the things I'd found, in the course of packing, that I'm giving to my host family. Some stickers and sidewalk chalk I'd meant to give them before, some hats and jackets inherited from previous PCVs, stuff like that.

We continued munching and chatting for a bit before Ama said, "Would you like us to go, so you can get back to work?" I've learned something about Moroccan indirectness, so I answered, "I do have a lot of work, but you can stay as long as you like." She packed up the kids and off they went. :) When *both* parties understand the subtext, it's actually plenty direct.

Of two dozen muffins, I ate 3 and kept 3, and sent the rest off with them. (Well, the rest that we hadn't eaten already - three adults and four kids can go through a lot of muffins!)

Everybody left happy, which gives it points over my first (rather disastrous) tea party. :)

So yesterday, I happened to mention that I'm bummed not to get another Ramadan in Morocco. I know that might surprise some of you. Fasting all day isn't easy, and as it inches closer to the summer**, going without water (let alone food) all day will just get harder.

But I don't mind the sacrifice, and I do reeeeally love Ramadan's l-fdor food. L-fdor means "the breaking of the fast", aka "breakfast", and is the name for the morning meal, most of the year, and for the first meal eaten after the sunset call to prayer (aka l-Moghreb) during Ramadan.

L-fdor, during Ramadan, consists of olives, dates, aghrom n tadount (fatbread), harira (tomato and chickpea and lentil soup), milliwi (a sort of oily crepe, also known as lmsmn), fresh-squeezed orange juice, and peppermint tea. Plus lots of cookies. It's all delicious.

As Ama knows, my favorite part is the aghrom n tadount - literally bread of fat, commonly called fatbread by PCVs. I call it Moroccan pizza. Like a calzone, it's thick bread filled with deliciousness, in the form of herbs, minced vegetables, and tiny bits of sheep-fat that melt into the bread as it cooks. Mmmmm.

So yesterday, during our conversation, I mentioned that I'm going to have to find some Moroccan friends, and/or a Moroccan restaurant, and go there during Ramadan. 'Cause I'm gonna miss the food. :)

And then today, when I went up for lunch (an hour late, because I hadn't realized that Morocco has adopted Daylight Savings Time again this year - I thought they'd learned their lessons from the debacle of the past two years), Ama presented me with a giant loaf of fatbread. :D

Her kids had opted for her neighbor's couscous, so even though I was late, there was lots left for me. She and I both had a slice (you cut it into wedges, just like pizza), and then she urged another one on me...and who am I to say no to my Ama? :)

More munching, more playing with the baby, more hanging out with my brothers and sisters... I'm really going to miss these folks, and am just so grateful for every minute I get with them, in my final weeks.

** The lunar and solar calendars not aligning perfectly, the Muslim calendar shifts 11 days each year, with respect to the Gregorian calendar we all know and love. This means that my first Ramadan was the whole month of September (2008), my second was the end of August and most of September (2009), and this year it'll be most of the month of August. Could you go all of August without drinking water during daylight hours? In a country without air conditioning, where you work in the fields all day? Yeah, Ramadan is hard.

Due to an odd and unfortunate series of events, I ended up having a longer conversation with Ama than I usually get to.

The conversation rambled, as long talks tend to do. Here are some of my favorite bits:

Ama: You'll be in America so soon!Me: So soon.Ama: And then you'll find a man and get married and have a big wedding!Me: If God wills.Ama: Here, you can't find a man. Moroccan men suck. But in America, you'll find a good man.Me: [starting to protest her blanket condemnation of Moroccan men, then letting it go.] Inshallah.Ama: In America, you can dress all sexy.Me: [startled laughter]Ama: You'll go to parties and wear little dresses like this [pantomimes strapless dresses, like the one she saw me wearing in a photo from my one bridesmaid stint] and get a man fast.Me: [still laughing]Ama: Here in Morocco, you have to cover up all the time. But in America, you can be sexy.Me: [giving up on speech, falling over laughing]

A bit later, I thought of something.

Me: Oh, when Hassan comes, he might be embarrassed when you feed the baby. Ama: What? I don't understand.Me: In America, it's Hshuma to see a woman's breasts. They don't have to be covered very much [we laugh], but they have to be covered. Ama: Really?Me: Yes. It's very, very, very Hshuma to see a woman's breasts. So when you feed the baby, Hassan will look somewhere else. [I pantomime a series of evasive, embarrassed acts.] So if he looks down, or away, or suddenly starts talking to Baba - he's not crazy, he's just trying not to see your breasts.Ama: But it's no big deal. If my husband is here, if my dad is here, if a male cousin is here...Me: I know. Even on a transit, when strange men are around, a woman will pull out her breast to feed her baby. But it's strange for us. Because in America, that would never happen. When I was new here, I acted evasive around breastfeeding mothers, too. But then I got used to it. And Hassan will probably get used to it. But at first, he'll be awkward. Ama: OK, I understand. Different people have different Hshuma things.Me: Right.Ama: Like once, Baba brought a group of tourists, and they were all eating dinner. One of them farted really loudly, so the kids and I were all shocked, because that's really Hshuma. They noticed that we were startled, and asked Baba what was wrong. He explained, and they said that there's nothing embarrassing about farting - it's a compliment to the chef.Me: [laughing] Wow.Ama: And another time, we took the kids up to [a city 2 hours north]. There, it's really Hshuma to notice when the goats are screwing, but here, it's just normal. So Mohammed pointed out to his auntie that the goats were going at it, and everyone began Hshuma-ing him. He was confused, and his auntie explained that you aren't supposed to talk about it. He said, "But why? In Berberville, we can talk about it."Me: Right, different places have different customs.Ama: OK, I understand. So maybe I should cover up with a blanket when I'm nursing?Me: No, don't worry about it. He'll get used to it.

A little later...

Me: So you know how I told you that my friend Ali was coming to visit? Ama: Yeah. Shouldn't he be here by now?Me: I just heard from him - he's not coming. Ama: Why?Me: He spent all morning waiting for a taxi to fill up, and they kept asking him to buy out extra seats. They wanted him to pay for two seats, three seats...Ama: Shame on them!Me: I know! But he said, "No, I can't afford that, I'll wait for the taxi to fill up."Ama: Right. Because you volunteers don't have a lot of money.Me: Exactly! So they waited and waited. Finally, they had enough people - and the driver still insisted that Ali pay double!Ama: What!? He can't do that.Me: I know! Shame on him!Ama: Ali should report this to the Caid. Or the gendarmes. Or both. That's just wrong.Me: Yeah, he said he was going to tell his friend in the Caid's office.Ama: Good.

The conversation rambled all over the place, touching on her kids, my future plans, the apartment I rent from her and Baba, and pretty much everything else. I told her that my American mom wanted to thank her for taking such good care of me; she assured me that all moms worry, but that it'll be better when I'm back in America. Of course, that's when she'll start to worry about me.

See why I don't want to leave?

The ubiquitous mikka bags aren't *just* litter - they're also picked up and used for various purposes. For one, they're usually cleaner than the ground they're sitting on.

So if you're a Berber lady, and you want to cop a squat somewhere, you might reach for the nearest mikka and sit on that instead of the dirt.

Or, if you see a mikka sitting on the edge of somebody's front stoop, you might choose to sit there. Right there. Even if the mikka is suspiciously puffy looking. Like it might have something in it.

Like maybe a pan of muffins, fresh out of the oven, wrapped in 2 mikka bags to protect them for the coming hours of transit rides.

It was my fault; I'd wandered a few feet away, and was chatting with friends. And then I looked over and saw an aHandir-wrapped woman lowering herself onto my muffins. My freshly baked, still warm, delicious pumpkin muffins. I squawked a protest, but not before she'd sat on them and squished them flat.

In retrospect, I kicked myself for leaving a mikka right on the edge of the stoop like that. Of course it would look inviting. But silly me, I thought that a plastic bag, located next to a big pile of luggage (on the ground in front of the stoop), would look like it belonged to somebody.

::sigh::

Epilogue: The muffins still tasted as good, and they reinflated OK. Leaving them in the pan was definitely the right call - if I'd just dropped them into a bag, they'd never have survived the trip.

A while back, some PCVs were talking about relationships in Morocco.

Most of us hold the idea that getting romantically (let alone sexually) involved with a Moroccan is just A Really Bad Idea. Some hold differing opinions, and there are more than a few PCV-HCN relationships, but on the whole, most of us think that opening that door invites a host of problems.

Which means that, in the quest for romantic partners, we're pretty much looking at each other. (There are some Fullbright scholars around, and a few people working for European and American NGOs, and I know people who have dated them, but most of us stick to PCVs.)

Not counting trainees, there are around 220 PCVs serving in Morocco. It's a roughly 50/50 split, males and females, nationwide, but we aren't distributed evenly throughout the country. Down in the south, it's been entirely female for years. We call that province "The Convent". My province is famous for its sexual harassment of female Volunteers, so we have far more men than women. I haven't done a head-count in a while, but we have something like 20 PCVs, of whom, um ... six? ... are female. Four are taken. That leaves an awfully small pool for the guys around here.

PCV1: You know, it's not like I can't deal with being single. It's just ... it's nice to have someone to snuggle with. To keep you warm on our cold mountain nights. To go for walks and hikes with.PCV2: Yeah. ::sigh:: That's why I got a dog.

News reports indicate that there's a boil-water order in effect for the Boston area.

Many of my friends find this an aggravating, frustrating, annoying turn of events.

I urge you to see it as a "compassion-building exercise".

This is your chance to experience, for a day or two, what it's like to live in an area with undrinkable water. Consider it a two-day Peace Corps experience.

Alhumdulillah, Berberville treats its water, so I haven't had to spend the past two years boiling every drop before I can drink it, brush my teeth with it, do dishes with it, etc. On the other hand, I haven't had hot tap water for two years, and my taps only run for 3 hours a day. The rest of the time, I use water from the bottles I refill each morning.

But while Morocco has made tremendous strides with potable water, many of our southern neighbors are still struggling with that.

So here's your chance to take a moment to empathize with the difficulties of their lives. You still have central heat/AC, cars, and thousands of other amenities they could never dream of. But you'll get a taste (no pun intended) of the challenges that billions of people face every day.

When my family came to visit me in Morocco, we did a few of these "compassion-building exercises". They rode a transit with me. They used squat toilets. They sweltered in unairconditioned hotels. And they were champs about it. I was proud. :)

So here's your chance, Bostonians. Are you going to take this opportunity to widen your sphere of experience, to gain some perspective into the lives of those less fortunate? Or will you just whine about it?

A few nights ago (Friday night), my SouqTown buddies got together for a goodbye party. Like thegoing-away, giving-away party I threw 27 months ago, this was both to see loved ones and to get rid of my stuff.

Thanks to the generosity of friends and family, I've accumulated quite a stockpile of care package boxes. I distributed these around my living room, labeled with the names of the various guests coming to the party, and proceeded to fill them with whatever I found. Spices, uneaten foodstuffs, books, appliances, things I've bought, things I've been sent, things I've inherited from previous PCVs... They all got divvied up.

Altogether, I filled 3 giant souq bags, which are about a meter long, half a meter tall, and a foot wide. That's a lot of stuff.

All of which I'm now free of!

My replacement is inheriting the vast majority of my stuff - my bed, my furniture, my giant buta heater, my stove, my oven - but I wanted to share the largess, plus my house has felt crowded lately, and I want him to have room for his own stuff.

So I'm about 100 pounds lighter (which made for a beast of a walk to the transit station, lemme tell you) and that much closer to being ready to leave...

...which, honestly, isn't very close at all.

But it's a step.

When we got here, our mantra was shwiya-b-shwiya. (Take the first sound from Garth and Wayne's "shwing!", add "ee" and then "uh". Shw-ee-ya.) Little by little. Step by step. We learned Tamazight shwiya-b-shwiya. We adapted to the culture and food shwiya-b-shwiya. And now I'm getting ready to go...shwiya-b-shwiya.

Two weeks.

I'll make it.

::deep breath::

Wow.

After months of not-really-thinking-about-it, I can't hide from it anymore. It's May.

MAY.

I swear out on May 19th (inshallah).

I will be in America on May 25th (inshallah - and that's a big inshallah, because I have a stopover in Iceland).

I will be in America THIS MONTH.

I will finish Peace Corps THIS MONTH.

I need to figure out how cell phones in America work. (Those shiny credit-card sized things with a thousand apps? They freak me out. Moroccan cell phones are candy-bar sized hunks of plastic that are good for calling, texting, telling time, and if you're really lucky, playing two games. How on Earth can you access the internet, take photos, play music, and read a novel **all on the same little gizmo**??) Do I *have* to have a contract, or can I pay-as-I-go like I do here? Will my candybar phone work in America, if I buy a new SIM card, or am I stuck buying a new phone?

I need to finalize my travel plans. Most of it is locked in place, but there are still a few holes. (Like will I take a ferry from Tangiers to Algeceris or from Melilla to Malaga? Or give up my dreams of taking a ferry across the Mediterranean and just hop a flight from Fes to London?) Including what will I do with my final days of service? A lot of my friends are getting together to party...but I kinda want to be a homebody and play with my baby brother and chat with Ama. On the other hand, I've still never gotten down to the south, and I'd love to visit Agadir at least once. And then there are the PCV buddies I haven't seen in months - I'd love to visit them one last time.

One last time.

I have to be at 72-hour checkout in two weeks, which means everything is "the last time".

And while my service in Morocco hasn't been all sunshine and puppies, it's been a good two years. Full of love and laughter and joy. And while I know my next adventure will also be rewarding and fulfilling...it's hard to say goodbye to this one.

Very hard.

I've been meaning to write this blog for a looooooooong time. Almost a year.

Last May, I visited my PCV buddy "Ali". He's one of my very oldest PCV friends - we met in Philadelphia, and were hanging out even before we flew to Morocco. But this was the first time I'd made it out to his site.

His is a hike-in site, so after I'd taken the requisite buses and taxis and such to his nearest decent-sized town, he met me at a cafe and walked me the half-hour uphill walk to his house. (And this being a Moroccan town, as opposed to a city, my enthusiastic and warm greeting after 12 hours of traveling to see him consisted of ... a handshake. In a city I could hug him, but in a town, that would raise too many eyebrows.)

As we walked, we stopped to chat ... oh, must have been at least a dozen times. Ali is friendly and outgoing, plus he lives near a tourist town where half the folks speak English (and are always looking to practice it!), so he's developed warm friendships with ... everybody, apparently.

And every time we stopped, the first question he got, in either English or Tamazight, was, "Oh, is this your wife?"

Sometimes they'd address it to me: "So, are you Ali's wife?"

He's lived in this place for a year. Been chatting with these guys for a year. Don't you think they'd know if he had a wife?

And for that matter, I'm the third female PCV who's come to visit him. Do they think he's that big a philanderer? And that his American wife would have left him alone for a year?

I couldn't find any logic by which it would make sense that they'd think I was his wife.

This was before I'd fully understood the need of folks here to place people in family networks.

Whoever had gotten the question, we'd both laugh, and shake our heads. It wouldn't work to say "We're friends" - the concept of cross-gender friendship doesn't exist here, so they'd think we were confirming a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. So we tried other options. "We work together." "We've known each other a long time." "We're both Peace Corps Volunteers." Of course, none of these necessarily rule out being married, but they do present other relationships...none of which make as much sense as marriage.

But once folks had accepted that no, we're not married, they'd usually follow it up to Ali with, "So is this your sister?"

By the time we'd fielded these questions for the 5th time, I was ready to say "Yes" and let it go. If they seemed to want more, I'd say, "Just like his sister," or "He's just like a brother to me," but they were often happy to drop it once they had a familial category to drop me in.

We look enough alike to fool someone who doesn't see too many foreigners. We both have reddish hair and pale eyes (mine blue, his green). That's enough to be family, right? :)

I've said before that I'm a terrible liar, and it's true - but calling Ali my brother didn't feel like a lie. Cheezy though it may sound, I do see Peace Corps as one big family. Ali is like a brother to me.

But definitely not a husband.

As you may remember, mikka means plastic. In any context. Plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic chairs - I don't think it has the metaphorical meaning that "plastic" can in English, but otherwise, the words are identical.

If mikka is paired with another word, it's an adjective. But if it stands alone - Do you have a mikka? - it refers to a plastic grocery bag.

Mikkas are everywhere around here. They don't break down, don't burn well, and blow away with the faintest breeze. They're one of the commonest forms of litter in Morocco.

And people use them for everything. Every vegetable you buy comes home in a mikka. Everything from the dry-goods hanut. Flour and rice and spices are all sold in bulk, so they're put into small mikkas (plastic bags about the size of a ziplock sandwich bag), knotted, and put into your big mikka (grocery bag).

During the government's Earth Day extravaganza, they pledged to phase out / ban mikkas. I look forward to seeing this...

But what is The Law Of The Mikka?

Because they're so ubiquitous, they've developed uses beyond their original intent. In addition to bagging groceries, they're used to wrap henna'd hands, as emesis basins, and as seat-reservers. And that's what we're talking about today.

If you're planning to ride a transit, but it won't be leaving for a while, you can leave anything - anything - to reserve your seat. I usually leave a scarf or a book, but most folks leave a mikka. It's often filled with whatever they bought in souq that day, but even more often just empty. A regular empty plastic bag, sitting on a transit seat, is a universally-understood sign for This is my seat, so back off.

One day, I'd climbed aboard the transit early - like many women, I'd rather sit inside than wait at a nearby cafe, as most male passengers do - and I got to see this scene play out:

I'm sitting across from a bench seat with two clearly-laid-out mikkas. Obviously, both seats are claimed. A heavyset woman climbs aboard, moves one mikka to the side, and sits down - filling the whole seat. As she shifts around, I realize that some of her bulk is a small child strapped to her back, which she now moves to her lap.

I mentally shrug - apparently the two reserved seats were for her and her kid. Whatever. I go back to my book.

A few minutes later, a man walks up to the door of the transit, takes one look at this, and starts shouting. Though his Tam is too angry and rushed for me to pick out many words, it's clear from his gestures that the mikka she moved was reserving a seat for him. She tries to protest - she needs a seat, she has a baby, etc - but chivalry is not only dead, it never lived in Morocco, so he bullies her off the seat entirely.

His mikka was there first, and he therefore has immutable claim to the seat. A rumpled, crumpled plastic bag...and it gives him absolute dibs.

The Law of the Mikka.

(Don't worry - the jumper later found a seat for the woman and her baby. It turned out that she'd asked him to reserve them a seat, and he had, so when she moved the mikka, she thought it was from her own saved seat. She understands the Law of the Mikka, too.)

When an idea strikes for a blog entry, I like to jot it down so I don't forget about it. If I don't have paper and pen handy - as I often don't - I type it into my phone, as a "draft message". (Yes, I text enough that I can jot things down pretty quickly with just my thumbs and a candy-bar sized phone.) But when I'm sitting in front of my laptop, I'm usually thinking of other things, so the messages in my phone stay unwritten. The number of notes I've written myself has gotten so ridiculous that I'm running out of phone memory. So in order to clear some space in my phone, I'm transcribing the various blog ideas. Originally I was writing it just for myself, but then I realized that these little notes are kinda entertaining all on their own. (For one thing, it cracks me up that these notes are written in three languages. Yeah, my head is a linguistic stew...) A few I've already written, a few are so telegraphic that even I don't know what they mean any more, and hopefully the rest, now that they're publicized, I'll be prodded (not to say shamed) into writing. Y'know...soon.

Those that have already been written get hyperlinks. Hopefully, within a week or so, they'll all be linked to actual blogs. Inshallah...

The law of the mikka.So, are you Ali's wife?Squished muffins.WOTD tesarut.That's why I got a dog.Walnut bullies.Moroccan and American on my shoulder.I will zayd and return.Ama - you used to come all the time now wallu Kautar.Lincoln and Condy.COSers stamp out.Kitty transportation.Soyoun's service.Pizza place.Flat stomach = proofTeach Hsb arabiya lbiya.Zaka sadaka.Montez-vous parlez francais?Popcorn & 7passengers-like you said.Voluntaire de la paix?Makeup w AmaBarbarians 'betes'.Adxllsg' addug' - aud Rebha.On birth control.4am waiting.Narrow-bedded sandstones as grave markers so they can Point Due East! Of course!Buta tanks of milk line the road.Peanut butter and maple syrup.

If any sound especially intriguing to you, lemme know and I'll write those first. I do take requests. :)

In the same vein, during a chat-conversation, my sister recently asked me to write some posts reflecting on things I've learned over the past two years. Since that's an awfully big (and vague) request, I asked her to be more precise. Here's her list. Again, if there are any that you especially want to read, be in touch (via email or hitting the comments button), and I'll tackle those first.

Her: I think that covering up women is a sign of repression. I'll fight for a woman's right to dress as she sees fit, but I would prefer that women don't veil themselves at all.Me: I used to completely agree with you, but I see more layers to it now (no pun intended)Her: interesting. that sounds like it would make a good blog entry.Me: hmmHer: I know that you have a lot of finishing up stuff to do, but you might think about at least writing notes about stuff that you know now that you 'thought' you knew before and your new perspective is very differentMe: gimme ideasHer: madrassahs * veiling for women * sexual harassment - how it's different for foreign women - how it's different btw large cities and the bled * in general, the thousands of ways that the bled is different from the big cities * when folks visit Morocco, they usually never leave the big cities, so even though they might travel around the world, they'll just see the European front that Morocco shows Westerners. Morocco absolutely has European-like cities, but it has many more places that are totally unique * feral dogs and how 'pets' are treated, in general * how MANY women are totally deprived of schooling * and how that's slowly changing * what folks can do to help (if they're so inclined)* which NGOs are helping and which are not, & why

A How-To Guide for Mural Painting

Step One: Prepare the wallDecide which patch of wall you want to paint.Decide how big the final mural will be.Wash the wall.If you're scaling up from an existing image, figure out the dimensions, do the math, and calculate the precise size of the mural.With a tape measure and Sharpie marker (and ideally either a bubble level or a third partner who has a good eye for level), designate the boundaries of the mural.With a chalkline, ensure the boundaries are perfectly straight.

Step 2: Prime the WallDecide what color the background of the mural will be. (For world maps, it makes sense to prime the wall in light blue. That way, the oceans are done, without having to be hyper-careful around continent boundaries. You can just roller them on!)Mix your paint.

Roller in the bulk of the paint. (Is roller a verb? What else do you call applying paint with a paint roller?With a small brush, cut in the edges. Most Moroccan walls are thinly plastered and then whitewashed, so taping the edges isn't an option - you'll rip off half the wall. Hopefully you'll have someone as attentive to detail as we did.

If you're gridding your mural - ie, scaling it up, bit by bit, from a small image, using a grid system - you'll want to snap chalklines at even intervals, so you have a visible grid above your primed surface. To make a precise replica, you'll need to figure out the scale factor between the image in your hand and the mural on the wall. It's math you probably haven't thought about since 7th grade, but sit down with a ruler, tape measure, pencil, and calculator and you'll work it out. :)

Part 3: Draw the PictureEither freehanded or using a pre-existing image (with or without a grid), draw your picture onto the primed surface. Use a pencil. You can't really erase unless you have an art gum eraser, but you can smudge it pretty easily, so at least you'll know later that you didn't mean that particular line. Besides, you'll be painting over it all, right? :)

If necessary, go back over your penciled lines with a Sharpie. In bright, direct sunlight, our pencil lines were nearly invisible. We shaded them with our arms and redrew them in Sharpie, so they'd be easy to see later, when we had paint brushes in-hand.Color your own copy of the picture. (This step can be skipped if you have access to a color printer.) We used colored pencils and the black-and-white printouts of the map, and I got to regress to kindergarten. :) Also, we thought that a few of the colors on their map were too similar (like an orange and a peach that we had to squint hard at), so we changed them.

Choose your paint colors. If they match the colors from (3), your life will be a lot simpler. Then mix your paint colors. Our art guru did this for us, with gorgeous success.

Color-swatch your picture. (Especially if your image is complex, like a world map.) That is, daub paint in each little section, so that your mural becomes more or less paint-by-number. This prevents you frantically referencing the printout in your hand (that you hopefully remembered to bring!), trying to figure out if that little corner of Madagascar should be dark green or light green, while swarmed by eager children. Also, this allows children to paint all the sections of their color, without having to check back with you. (Yes, this does make your map look like it has technicolor smallpox, but that won't last long.)

Step 4: Paint the Mural!

Step 5: Bask in your accomplishment

Here are the 21 kids, some teachers, and the PCVs.

(L) Half of the world biome map (R) Half of the Water Cycle mural

Part Six (Optional): Touch Up the Mural

Go back the next day and clean up the edges, make sure there isn't any primed surface still showing through (a big problem on textured walls like these), fix any mistakes... The kids accidentally painted across the Red Sea, making the Sahara contiguous with the Arabian Peninsula. Little things like that.

Water Cycle Mural, End of Day 1 Water Cycle Mural, End of Day 2 The obvious differences are the appearance of the water cycle arrows (whose label words will be filled in soon), and the more obvious nature of the three-dimensional diagram. Also, a cloud shrunk. If you look more carefully, the snowflakes and raindrops were redone, and patchy paint was filled in to present a smooth surface.

World Biome Map, End of Day 1 World Biome Map, End of Day 2

The kids had done a good job, so the only obvious differences are the reappearance of the Red Sea, the biome key (which the Arabic teacher promised to fill in), and that the Kamchatka islands are not islands, and not a big streak of brown. There are also un-obvious differences, like the thickness of the paint (which shows up best in Antarctica, now white instead of whitish-blue) and the sharpness of the contacts between colors.

Heart-Healthy Foods Mural, End of Day 1 Heart-Healthy Foods Mural, End of Day 2

The fruit and heart got outlined, the frame completed.

Touching-up is optional, and depends on the skill level of your students. And how particular you are about the final product. :)

Step 7: Celebrate!

We went home and had delicious food. I highly recommend this. :)

So there you have it, friends: the seven-step guide to a fabulous mural day. Our Earth Day was a huge success, in my opinion. The kids had a great time, they learned good things, and now their school has trees and murals to embed the memories permanents.

And there was great rejoicing. :D

Happy Earth Day!

This year, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Morocco's capital city of Rabat was one of 6 cities worldwide that the Earth Day powers-that-be selected for ... I'm still not quite sure what, but something cool. So Morocco has gone *all*out* for Earth Day this year.

Every tree in every public nursery for hundreds of kilometers has been claimed for tree plantings. 400 were planted in SouqTown. 500 in Berberville. Some friends of mine, organizing an Earth Day celebration for their village, located in the heart of the Eastern High Atlas National Park, requested 50 trees and ended up with 12. Which we planted! Along with another 10 olive trees that they purchased from a private nursery.

Earth Day! So many happy memories and fond associations...

In my friends' village, they celebrated Earth Day at their local madrasa (elementary school) with a tree planting, mural painting, and an environmental presentation (originally to be given by our Water and Forestry partner, but when he had to cancel, a friend from SouqTown's English Club stepped in). They asked me to come, since I've helped paint my share of murals. They also invited up an art guru, a PCV who has years of experience as an artist and art teacher, and one of the newbies, here for site visit. (My newbie stayed in Berberville - his choice.)

In the morning, we planted trees with 75 kids - 33 girls and 42 boys.

After lunch, the 21 students from the two oldest classes came back to help us paint the murals.

Pictures and details to come! :D

You'd think a desert country would be filled with cold treats.

You'd be wrong.

If you want American-style ice cream, you're limited to the biggest cities. I've been to a Haagen-Daaz in Marrakesh, where I was so bedazzled by the *glass* *dish* and *spoon* and *napkin* and other amenities that I actually snapped a picture:

In the Jm3 al-Fnaa in Marrakesh, you can get ice cream cones that slide down deliciously, but which always make me feel thirsty. (Maybe extra rock salt was used to make the ice cream?) In Essaouira, you can find gelato by the harbor. In Rabat, a gelaterie is located across from the train station. (You can also get a cone or shake at McDonald's, found in every major city, but would you really want to? They taste just as plastic here as in America.)

There are also pseudo-ice cream dispensers in most of the moderate-sized cities, where for 1DH you can get a cone with a swirl of cold squishy stuff that *looks* like ice cream but tastes like dirty water. (COLD dirty water, though, so I've gotten it more than once, on blisteringly hot days.)

And then there are the ice cream bars. Remember ice cream sandwiches, and chocolate-coated ice cream on a popsicle stick (what are those things called again?), and push pops, and nutter butter cones? They all have analogues here in Morocco.

My personal favorite is the Magnum. Usually available (where you can find it!) in Double Chocolate or Double Caramel, this is the brass ring of Moroccan ice cream options. I've spent many an hour wandering a strange city, questing for a Double Caramel Magnum. Mmmmm. Imagine the usual chunk of ice-cream-on-a-stick, dipped in caramel, dipped in a hard-shell chocolate coating, then dipped *again* in caramel, and again shelled in chocolate. Mmmmmmmm.

When Magnums cannot be found (sadness!), I'll settle for a MaxiBon. This half-ice cream bar, half-ice cream sandwich combines my two favorite cold treats into one delicious snack. Tip: eat the bar half first, because it's easier to hold the sandwich half. Especially if it's *really* hot, and the whole thing will melt in something less than five minutes.

Oh, and be prepared to haggle. Smart hanut owners know that Magnums and MaxiBons make the world go 'round, and they charge accordingly. Don't be surprised if they ask for 20dh apiece. Never pay more than 18dh, and do your best to get the price down to 15dh. (I know the difference is less than 50 American cents, but it's the principle of the thing.)

Bon Appetit!

And now for the social side of Spring Camp.

When we weren't leading classes or clubs or otherwise responsible for something, the five PCVs could often be found in a cafe or one of our rooms or in the cafeteria, talking and laughing and playing cards. And most of the time, "playing cards" either meant Spoons or else ERS, dubbed "Double Jack Action" by RoRo and "Double Jack Slap" by me. 'Cause the easiest way to win? Slap a pair of jacks. Like this:

Alternatively, we might take a walk into Emerald City's town center, in search of note cards or art supplies or masking tape or ICE CREAM.

Note the remains of the MaxiBons we all got. Mmmm, MaxiBons...

And of course, we also socialized with the kids. Students. Young people attending the camp. Some we got quite close to over the week. On the last day, as they waited for their parents to come drive them home (and what does it tell you about the socioeconomic status of the campers that they all have parents with **cars**), several pulled out notebooks and asked us to write them farewell notes. Which we did, of course:

...So that was Spring Camp. L-mokhiam. English Language Immersion Camp. Call it what you will...I call it my favorite week every March. :)

Tezolt is the Tamazight name for what Arabic speakers (and ancient Egyptians) call(ed) kohl. It's used where most American girls would use eyeliner or mascara, ie to darken the eyelashes and/or the area immediately around the eyes.

Traditionally made from galena (PbS, aka lead sulfide), it's now usually made from charcoal or other carbon sources. Well, in countries that regulate health issues and lead poisoning.

Here in Morocco, it's still made from galena.

In souq, I've watched artisans grind up the shiny grey metal cubes, shredding them into a very fine black powder that's mixed with a secret liquid and poured into a small container shaped more or less like a perfume bottle. Check out the illustrations here (and, for that matter, the text, most of which is relevant to Morocco).

I'm on a one-Volunteer campaign to reduce tezolt use. I know it's a Sisyphean battle, given the power of tradition, but I'm working on it. Lead poisoning is serious, especially in children, and it's common here to put tezolt on babies' eyes. In their eyes! It's bad enough in the eyes of adult women, where its soft-tissue access gives it carte blanche into the bloodstream. But in babies?! In America, parents are required to strip and repaint entire houses that have old, lead-based paint in them, just in case your kid decides to lick the wall. And here, parents rub a 50% lead goo into their newborns' eyes.

With a stick.

About 50% longer than a toothpick, and about as big around as the bottom part of a golf tee, the tezolt applicator is a wooden stick that you coat with tezolt - lead - and then jab into your eye. With practice, women become adept at it, and learn to do it without making themselves cry. The lead still stings, of course, but they've accustomed themselves to that.

So I explain to my American friends that yes, tezolt is made from galena, which, yes, is 50% pure lead (Pb), and that's usually enough to keep *them* from using it. And we're all trying to explain it to the women in our communities, but... Tradition is a hard one to fight. People here still rub mud into babies' umbilical cords, to "help them heal". In a land where handwashing is ritualized to basically wetting the fingers, and where mud is viewed as antiseptic, yeah, we've got our work cut out for us. But this is one battle I'm not giving up.

Here in the heart of Amazigh culture, weddings haven't changed too much in thousands of years. The clothes have gotten a little fancier, but the music and dancing and feasting feel as old as these hills.

As I've mentioned, my cousin "Lucky" has been engaged for months now. At least half a year; the first time I asked when the wedding would be, I was told, "Probably after Ramadan." Since I wouldn't have asked if Ramadan had already begun, I must have heard about the engagement sometime in July or August.

And they never set a date.

The wedding has been "soon" for six months. And then, two days ago, I walked home from the transit stand, past my aunt and uncle's house, and they grabbed me. My 3tti and cousin were sitting on their front stoop, as they often are, and they told me that the wedding would be today, Sunday. So this morning, I brought a cone of sugar and my best Berber clothes over to Ama's house, and prepared to play dress-up. She (gently, graciously) vetoed my choice of dress (tejlabbit) and earrings. I'd brought a dozen pairs of earrings, but didn't have any other fancy-dress clothes, so she dressed me up in one of her takshitas (caftans).

My little sister's dress (takshita) was even fancier, being made out of satin:(Here, she's reading a comic book I'd brought her from Rabat. And yes, we got her to change out of her red turtleneck into one that matched the purple caftan.) I didn't ask why my little sister was so dressed up, but I must have looked a little puzzled, because Ama explained that the dress had been donated by a neighbor. A closer look revealed that it was a good six inches too long and five inches too wide, but a safety-pin across the back had pulled it tight enough to work. (The one-size-fits-all school of caftan design doesn't apply quite as well to little children, who come in a wider variety of sizes than adults.) She further explained that my little sis will get a custom-made, fitted, dress caftan of her own when her big sister gets married (whether that's me or our other sister, now 19 years old), but that for a cousin's wedding, a borrowed one will do.

The bride wore white, which isn't traditional but is becoming increasingly common, and was unveiled, which floored me:

(The other girl is Lucky's cousin, in her best golden-thread caftan/takshita.) Lucky's hair was pulled back in a gorgeous knot, pinned with flowered clips. Really, she could have worn the dress as a bride at the Plaza, and while it would have been clear she came from a different culture, she would have looked like a bride. (Well, I think so, but then, I've been here for 26 months. If I'm wrong, tell me.)

Note that both girls - like nearly every other female at the wedding - have their eyes rimmed intezolt, or kohl. They'd done their makeup before I got there, and I hadn't thought to talk to them about it in the days before (though in retrospect, I should have).

The feasting and dancing and merrymaking went on for hours...into the wee hours. I snuck out early, just after midnight. It helps that I live next door!

And then, in the morning, the 17-year-old bride and her 18-year-old groom - who she'd met for the first time the day before the wedding, despite having been engaged to him for over a year - were packed off to his town. A PCV buddy of mine lives in that town; I'll ask him to keep an eye out for her.

And inshallah, they'll live happily ever after.

I know, I know, I promised you pix from Spring Camp - aka Sprinks' Camp - a month ago. But tonight (April 25th) is the first time I've pulled the photocard out of my camera in well over a month, so now you get to see them. Enjoy!

As I mentioned, we spent some time locked *into* our room. Sprinks, our fearless leader (left), climbed out the window, around the column she's leaning next to, and over to the landing at the top of the stairs. She went for folks with tools, who began the process of breaking into our room. While they worked, we took a moment to bask in the coastal sun...

Once we got our housing squared away, we turned out attention to work. I was responsible for an English class - I got the Advanced section - and I worked with Zifi to organize an Environment Club.

For our club, Zifi and I arranged a nature walk, with environmental mini-lessons on cards placed throughout a nearby park. Here's one:

Placed near a half-acre of dumped trash, it talks about decomposition rates and asks the kids to think about the future of this mostly-lovely park.

A little farther on, we talked about photosynthesis and the ways by which trees help us. Shortly afterwards, a card asked the students to take a bark rubbing and hug a tree. They did both:

Here, in a non-littered space, you can see just how lovely the park could be, if it were left trash-free. Zifi is talking to the students about observing shades of green. How many different shades do you see?

So that was the club. For English class, each day's lesson was organized around the theme of the day. For Environment Day, my students created posters with concept maps linking environmental ideas:

On our last day of classes, we arranged an English Olympiad, with a series of word games so the students could show off their newly acquired language skills. For one, we had the students create thematic acrostic poems around certain key words from the week. This one was my favorite, so I took a picture of it:

So that's the work side of Spring Camp.

But let's not forget about the play side of Spring Camp.... (To be continued)

So now that my replacement, Hassan, is here, I've begun showing him around.

I should have anticipated the nearly inevitable reaction, but somehow I didn't. I've been so much in prepare-the-newbie mode that I didn't stop to think through how my - now our - community would react to the arrival of another foreigner. A male foreigner.

According to Ama, virtually every person she's run into in town has asked her, "Is this Kauthar's husband? Come to take her back to America?"

They've learned that Volunteers always stay two years. And they've remembered that yes, I've been around that long. So they very logically concluded that my husband has arrived to help me pack up and return to America. (Of course, I've always told everyone in Berberville that I'm single...but apparently they never really believed me. Or else figured that this fell into place as quickly as the arranged marriages here do.)

When Hassan wandered around town unaccompanied, this morning, everyone asked him, "Are you married?"

I reassured him that that's the first question everybody gets.

Here in Ait Hadidou, everyone is connected to everyone else, one way or another. If you trace somebody's family tree back far enough, they're probably related to you. Even if their family hasn't branched into yours for generations, there are other connections. Our grandfathers grazed sheep together. Our children go to school together. My cousin share-cropped the fields of your wife's cousin's husband's uncle.

And then the PCVs get dropped into the story. Like aliens dropped off by a spinning mothership, we're funny-looking, oddly-dressed folks whose mores will always be just a little bit insane. (Or maybe a lot insane, like living alone or jogging in the morning.)

We're not connected to anybody.

Of course, we're placed with a host family, which gives us a veneer of connectedness. But it's not fooling anybody. They know that, no matter how many generations back I reach, I won't find somebody who bought a sheep from their great-great-somebody. I've told people that my grandfather fought in Morocco during WWII, but that war didn't much penetrate the depths of the High Atlas Mountains, so people mostly nod vaguely and then bring up the war in Iraq. So I don't mention it much anymore.

Lacking any historical ties, they seek to place us in some sort of framework they can understand. So they immediately start asking what ties we do have. Marriage? Kids? How many? Genders? Siblings? How many? Parents still alive? Etc.

Here in Berberville, people are identified first by family, second by individuality. (Quite literally - like in China, the last name is given first.) Your family identity serves to place you in a context first, and you can tell your given name.

Given this family-driven culture, it's inevitable that folks would assume a connection between their foreigner - me - and this new foreigner that I'm walking around town with. Either husband or brother, gotta be. People are probably placing bets as to which it is. And most appear to be going for husband.

But then, I did say that I was single. Repeatedly. Loudly. In several languages. So maybe we aren't married yet. Maybe we're just engaged. Yeah, and that's why I kept insisting that, "I don't have a man." Because it's not official yet. But now that I've finished my Berberville term, it's time to go home and settle down with my man.

Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Well, to a Berbervill-ian, it does.

So when I told Hassan what Ama had reported to me (which she'd also told him, but which she wasn't sure if he'd understood, with his still-developing language skills), we got a good laugh out of it, and it became a running joke.

I've also told Hassan why he's the first male PCV in Berberville. Why I fought all the way up and down the chain of command to ensure that no woman would be placed in this town again. And being an all-around good guy, he's already looking for ways to improve the situation of women here. He's even mentioned opening up dialogues with the guys in town, but that'll need to wait till they know and respect him. But he's already making my life easier, just by walking around town with me. Whenever a man says something to me, he intercepts the comment and greets the guy. More than once, he's adjusted our positioning as we walk, to put himself between me and the guy. (I'm not sure if this is conscious or not, but it makes me smile.)

Mid-afternoon, we walked up a path, in sight of my - our - host family's house. Two men were coming towards us. I kept my eyes on the ground 10 feet in front of me. (I've learned the hard way that making eye contact is really never, ever a good idea. ::sigh::) Because I was watching the dirt, I heard Hassan exchange greetings with them, but didn't see any of the interaction. After we'd passed them, I heard him grumping, "Hey, don't look at my fiancee that way."

Yeah, I'm definitely leaving Berberville in good hands. :D

It's time.

After 26 months in-country, after 23 months of service, it's time for me to go...which means it's time for me to be replaced.

I'm on the cusp of my Berberville departure, which means Berberville will get a new Environment PCV to carry on my work and begin his own.

My replacement's term of service starts May 5th, which means we'll get 2 weeks of overlap before I swear out on May 19th (inshallah)...but he's here now, getting his "Site Visit", aka sneak peak.

I admit, I was a little apprehensive about my replacement. I knew he'd be male, since I'd insisted on that with my entire staff, all the way up and down the chain of command. But beyond that, I had no idea what to expect. I could anticipate a great person, simply Peace Corps is just about exclusively staffed by amazing human beings, but still...

What if he doesn't like Berberville?

What if my host family doesn't like him?

What if he alienates everyone I care about in town?

I admit, the first concern was probably the biggest. I could be almost positive that he'd be likeable, since, hey, he's a Peace Corps Volunteer. But what if he didn't like the town I've come to love? What if he took one look at my naked mountains and barren hillsides and recoiled?

This fear is well-grounded: my first stories of Berberville came from a CBT/stage friend, who came here on a field trip. She came back to us with stories of "the ugliest place in Morocco". She said something like, "If they put me there, I'll cry. And then I'll ET."

So when I got assigned this site, I thought, Oh, no, I'm going to the ugliest spot in Morocco!

But then I came here.

And I realized that there are many kinds of beauty. And while my friend didn't appreciate the sere beauty of my brown hillsides, I rejoice in the visible geology, with its sweeping folds and tearing faults and the vertical beds that rise like highways to heaven. I've taken hundreds of photos that I hope will be published in geological textbooks - this place is literally textbook geology. I've seen cross-cutting relationships that took my breath away, and complex folds that stir my heart.

Am I a geonerd? Abso-blimmin-lutely.

But I find my site truly, deeply beautiful...and I want others to, too.

The times I've shared my site with visitors, I wait with bated breath to hear them say something gently disparaging, like, "It must have been lovely when trees covered the hillsides," or "Well, at least the skyline is kind of dramatic."

So far, everyone has admitted only to liking it.

Alhumdulillah.

But still, what if my shoes were filled by someone who felt Berberville was a site to endure instead of a place to celebrate?

So his reaction mattered.

As we rode up on our four-hour journey from SouqTown, he kept asking me about the geology.

This encouraged me.

His field is biology, not geology, but he finds it interesting.

I felt hopeful.

When we got to the final 5 km of the trip - the most breathtaking geology I've ever seen (and yes, I've been to the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park and other gorgeous spots) - he let me revel in the beauty. He sounded appropriately appreciative, for which I was grateful. I told him how nervous I'd been that he might not like it.

His response: "Anyone who can come to the middle of beautiful nowhere and not appreciate it shouldn't even be in Peace Corps."

The middle of beautiful nowhere.

150 km from any decent-sized town.

12 hours from any city.

The cultural, historical, and geographical center of Morocco.

The middle of beautiful nowhere.

Oh, and my host family and everyone else? They like him.

Yeah, I'm leaving Berberville in good hands.

Alhumdulillah! :D