HR office & detainees

OK, I've been getting requests for pictures of my office & apartment, so I brought my camera to school today. Here's a start! The apartment pictures will have to wait until we don't have laundry drying all over the place... the joys of no dryers! You can check out some of our salon (living room) in my roommates picture under the August archives.

A la prochaine!

HR Office -
with my full morning sun window...

HR Detainees -
me, Wendi & Ernie

Gift to the Sea

It's funny the things that seem to become part of you - things that you can't bear to lose even if they're really not intrinsically valuable. Trinkets like a toe-ring for instance. I got a toe ring kind of by accident before they were the rage and everybody started wearing them. I was wandering through downtown Boston with Alicia and Anthony and found a $5 silver ring at a street vendor's cart that I wanted for a pinky ring. I was wearing a couple of gold rings, so I reached down impulsively and put it on my toe, and there it remained until today. It's been through a summer of running around camp, tubing, canoeing, swimming, learning to waterski, learning to wakeboard, and has been complimented by a million different colors of toenailpolish without complaints. Every summer when I visit my dad, he catches me walking around barefoot and inevitably asks, "when did you start wearing that thing on your foot?" It makes me laugh that he asks about it every summer (although I think he forgot this year - or maybe I should say he remembered). It makes me smile that he noticed such a little unimportant detail about me. But today my toering became my gift to the sea. Surfing wasn't easy today. The waves were bigger than they were a couple of weeks ago. Our surfing instructors said they'll keep getting bigger throughout the fall & winter. Being little is a disadvantage when it comes to surfing. I'm not heavy enough to duck dive under the waves with a long board and it takes a lot of energy to turtle roll and then get back up on the board and paddle only to turtle roll again a few seconds later to avoid being picked up and propelled yards backwards. But I'm up for the challenge :) Apparently my toe-ring was not as determined as I was today. Several times I pushed it back up my toe, but didn't really worry about it - it's never left me before! It wasn't until I was walking along the boardwalk trying to catch a taxi back home that I looked down and realized it was missing. So the sea has claimed a little treasure, and I'm left to wonder whether some small girl playing in the sand will find it with delight and treasure it...

Feeling Better

I am really feeling like myself again – YAY! I started on the antibiotics on Friday after visiting the Dr, and finally began to feel like I was turning around. I went back to work on Monday and have spent the past couple of days catching up. Thank you for all your thoughts over the past week.

Last night I ran into our neighbor Moustafa (the one whose house I was eating at when I got sick last Sunday) as I was coming home from work. He was really glad to see that I was finally doing much better. Last week he kept asking my roommates how I was doing and they kept telling him I was still sick. Then on Friday when I was going out to the doctor I passed him and he asked how I was and I told him I was going to the doctor, so he got really worried. So, it was great to be able to reassure him that I was finally well. He asked me to come and say hello to his wife and have tea with them. I stopped by their apartment, wanting to reassure Fatima that I was OK. Their daughter Khadija and a couple of her friends came home right about then, so we all had tea together. Tea here means green tea steeped with fresh mint leaves and lots of sugar. It’s delicious! We had a good visit too. Fatima and one of Khadija’s friends were fasting in preparation for Ramadan, so I was there for the breaking of the fast marked by the sunset call to prayer. The fast is traditionally broken with dates – yum! We also sampled some of Fatima’s home-made fig jam on bread. The next round of food was a plate full of sweet bread that was rolled in the form of cinnamon rolls. It was full of raisins in some type of syrup mixed with crushed peanuts. The name sounds something like “bekhilia”. It was delicious! We drank some more tea, and then a chocolate cake was brought out… they weren’t too worried about spoiling my supper! They told me about all sorts of delicious things that are made for Ramadan which starts in approximately 2 weeks.

Thanks again for all your notes & well wishes last week!
I miss you all!

Happy 1st Birthday Piper Joy!!!

The King is passing by...

After six days of being sick I am finally feeling better! YAY for medicine! I guess I should have kept my Tuesday Dr’s appointment. Oh well. Next time I will know better…

So today I ventured down to the shopping district with my roommates who needed some last minute teacher supplies. It didn’t take us long to catch a red “petit taxi” for the quick trip to the next neighborhood. We piled in and started off on our merry way – a trip which should take about 5 minutes. We got to the light at a main 5 or 6 point intersection. Just as we got there officers in very official looking blue uniforms were tooting their whistles at our direction of traffic and holding up hands to stop anyone from venturing out as the light turned green. The honking that ensued was horrific! I was sitting in the front of the taxi and could see the big round point in the middle of the intersection. Cars from the left and one of the boulevards on the right were allowed to pass while another one of the boulevards on the right & the continuation of our own straight ahead were blocked to traffic. Our light stayed red for about 10 minutes and off and on the fleet of honkers blew their shrill chorus out at the officers of the “sureté national”. Across at the round point one of the officers who was directing traffic got a little uptight and started jumping up and down and wildly waving his arms at one SUV. He reminded me of Donald Duck the way he was jumping around hopping mad. I laughed out loud. I asked the taxi driver what was going on and he said that His Majesty the King was passing by. (I had heard that the King had come to town last week to pass out school supplies to some underprivileged children. Can you imagine getting school supplies from the King? As a little girl I would have wanted to save them forever instead of using them!) Pretty soon we heard a voice crying something again and again in Arabic over a loudspeaker. I imagine he was saying “Make way for the King!” but my Arabic wasn’t quite up to distinguishing the actual words. As we started hearing the voice every horn in the area started honking in support of His Majesty. I never did figure out which car he was in, and I wondered if he knew what happened to traffic patterns when he visited big cities.

Don't let the bedbugs bite!

Ever since my roommates arrived in August, they have been getting these little bites – especially on their legs. I haven’t shared the same misfortune, luckily! The strange thing is that they would get these bites even when they had jeans on in the middle of the day. Finally they went on-line and did a search on their symptoms to figure out what it could be. As it turns out they had all the symptoms of bedbugs. So they did search of their beds and sure enough – they found one of the nasty little creatures. They tell me that bed bugs look like big brown lice until they bite you, and then they turn red. Yucko-plucko! We had a guy come and fumigate our apartment, and take the beds away. For the past 3 nights we have been sleeping on the froshes in the living room (see the picture from Aug 19). Today our bed frames came, but we are still waiting for the mattresses. So we have one more night on the froshes. The living room, or salon, is the room where guests are received and it is lined with this type of furniture kind of like a couch – except they are really hard and uncomfortable. When guests come, the pillows along the backs of the froshes can be taken off to make temporary beds. I guess it is better than sleeping on the tiled floor!

I'm getting ready to head to bed..

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite!
And if they do, take your shoe and beat them til they're black and blue!

Surfing 123

During my first week here I met Collin, an American guy who is starting a surfing company. He and his partner are planning to open a surfing shop and also give surfing lessons. It didn't take long to peak my curiosity. Water skiing to wake-boarding to surfing just seems like a natural progression! So when his shipment of surfing equipment arrived a couple of weeks ago, some of the other teachers and I asked him when he was going to be ready to start lessons.

Bright & early on Saturday morning, Mary, Stacy & I caught a taxi down to the beach (about 10 minutes from our neighborhood) to meet up with the group. There were eight of us who showed up for the 8:45am lesson. Wow – that is early for a Saturday! We spread out the boards on the beach and got a quick rundown on how to jump up from laying down to standing up on the boards. We probably looked pretty funny all laying down on the boards on the sand and then at the count of three jumping up to a surfing stance! Collin and Gabe gave us a few warnings about what to do when waves are coming at you (like the turtle roll – that’s my personal favorite!). Finally, with our hearts pounding, we picked up the boards to head to the water. I was asking myself if I was crazy for trying this after all the trouble I’ve had with my neck this summer, but I didn’t have time to analyze that thought before Bethany popped out a camera – a brief reprieve for our pounding hearts as we stopped to get pictures before really heading down to the water.

We got the boards out into the water and Collin & Gabe helped us push them in to the waves and figure out when to stand up. I got up on my first try. I couldn’t believe it was that easy!

That was the first week…

Since then I have discovered that, no, it’s not that easy. It’s a lot more work when you are paddling yourself out to the big waves, figuring out which wave to catch, and getting turned around and paddling til the wave picks you up and then figuring out just when to stand up. But, it is a lot of fun!

First SatSurf!

OK - so now that I have surfing pictures I'm a little more motivated to write about it! Here are the pix & my impressions will be posted sometime in the near future...

Here we are wondering what exactly we signed up for!

Mary, Elissa, Victoria, me, Stacy & Bethany...

Little Surfer Girls (maybe eventually...)

Culture Stress Day

I had my first "I hate Africa" day this week. As I was walking to where I catch the taxi to go to work on Tuesday I found myself getting really annoyed by the fact that it's impossible to walk on the sidewalks here without feeling like you're in danger of breaking your neck because they are all uneven and broken up in odd places. When you do find an occasional well-tiled sidewalk, you also find they have planted palm trees right in the middle of the side walk forcing any pedestrians off into the street every five feet or so (which is especially annoying when the palm tree has a car parked next to it)... So on this particular morning I was taking the lead of the locals and walking in the middle of the street. I live on a one way street, so as an SUV came barrelling towards me (dodging the cars parked on either side of the street), I ducked in between a couple of cars parked on one side and waited for the SUV to rumble past. I didn't get annoyed until they had past and I started back down the street, only to hear them backing up behind me causing me to look for another space to duck into. That was when it hit me, "I hate Africa"! Immediately I recognized that emotion. I had experienced the same feeling living in Belgium and France. There were just days when I wanted to scream, "I HATE Belgium!!!" or I HATE France!!!" On those days all the little nuisances of life there became reasons to HATE the country. But looking back now I can say, "No, I didn't hate Beglium (or France), I loved it." It's funny to experience opposite emotions at the same time. So on Tuesday, when that "I hate Africa" thought popped into my head, I knew to recognize it as a combination of culture stress and lack of sleep. All day the little things bugged me - like being hot without airconditioning, and having to go for the THIRD day in a row to help someone buy a cell phone (that's a whole 'nother story!), and craving a Starbucks (or Liquid Highway!) Coconut Mocha Frappaccino all day... But I made a point to get a decent amount of sleep and felt much better about life & Africa on Wednesday.