Becoming Moroccan

I fixed lasagna tonight for the family. I think it went over well, but then again they're quite good at humoring me, so who knows? In any case, it tasted good to me and it was fun to work in the kitchen with Souad. Last night, I served Pasta Stephanie for a group of students at Caroline and Neal's apartment, where we had more guests than plates and opted to serve Moroccan-style instead, with six forks in one bowl. The equally communal chocolate mousse disappeared even faster...

It's amazing how quickly life settles into routines. Last Thursday morning, I got up and took a full shower (my first in a week) before doing laundry - with a system of large plastic buckets in the same bathtub I had recently vacated. It wasn't until Hannan walked in and chuckled at my slow and somewhat clumsy pace that I remembered that this was indeed not precisely normal, that in some other world I threw my clothes into a machine and picked up a book.

Likewise, having Sarah visit made me realize how accustomed I'd become to being the foreigner in the street. With her blond hair, we received easily twice and possibly thrice the attention I merit, and she found herself sensitive to the number of young men who greeted us with outrageous compliments in stilted English. I don't know if it's that I'm at least brunette, or that I've begun wearing traditional clothes most of the time, or simply that I've learned not to make direct eye contact with others in the street, but fewer strangers have tried to speak with me lately, and I've become comfortable with these bizarre exchanges.

In short, I'm becoming more Moroccan bit by bit...though I can't change my pale skin and don't intend to abandon my faith, I'm learning to fit in otherwise in a place that isn't so different after all. Souad just poked her head in to see what I'm working on and sends greetings to my other friends and family, courtesy of my Moroccan family - this has become my home, in a way.

les enfants amusants :)

So I JUST got back from Morocco, and you will hear all about it later, but before I forget, here were two amusing incidents that happened on the voyages to and from:
ON the plane (important to note here), but still on the ground in Paris. The cutest little girl ever and her dad sit next to me,
"Salut! My name is Maria! I'm half french and half arab!"
Me, slightly amused: "Hello!"
"We're going to Morocco! Where are you going? Are you going to Morocco too?!" Hehe...

And on the way back, on the train I sat about 2 seats behind a dad, 2 little boys, and the grandfather I think. The dad was very patient with them and seemed to enjoy playing with/amusing them, hence they actually were very well behaved. An announcement came on,
"Next stop, Lyon Part-Dieu" (the name of the train station in Lyon, our destination)
Little boy, in a slightly shocked/horrified voice: "Lyon est perdu?"
Total hilarity among family members and all the people in the surrounding seats ensued. ('Perdu' means 'lost' :)

These are one of the many reasons I love kids. :)))

George says...

It's true: Korea has the best fried chicken in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/dining/07fried.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Normandie

Soooo...I went to Normandie last week. And Bretagne, or Brittany, the region directly west of Normandy. I had a mini-adventure right off the bat, missing my train in Paris due to snow, catching a different one to a slightly different city, and then frantically calling people back in Grenoble to ask them to search on the internet for a hotel for me in Caen. Other than the one moment of desperation/tears in Paris Gare St. Lazare, it was all right, and makes for a good story. I ended up staying in a Holiday Inn in France, which sounds slightly absurd to me, but there you go, now I've done it. There are apparently no hostels in the city of Caen which answer the phone in January...weird. Anyway, since I was in Caen, I decided I was going to see some of it, so I walked around in the morning and saw some churches, the Hotel de Ville, and William the Conqueror's Castle, the dude who won the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and made (at least part of) Britain part of France for a time.
After becoming slightly lost in Caen and actually running through the streets to make it to the hotel in time to check out (note: running in thermal underwear equals bad idea, it makes you smell rather delightful), I caught a train to Bayeux. It is a delightful little town, with typical Norman architecture, small buildings, different materials than in the south of France. I saw the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the Battle of Hastings, and is amazing and amazingly well preserved for being nearly a thousand years old! I also got to walk around in a British WWII cemetery for a time, which was sobering but good at the same time.
Then it was off to Mont St. Michel. I stayed in a very nice hostel, run by an old British couple (yaay for PG Tips!), and they even picked me up at the train station. I biked it to the abbey the next morning, the Normandy farmland is very pretty, if a bit cold in January. The abbey was amazing, walking around in the dark, heavy stone corridors I could almost imagine I was a monk 800 years ago, truly nothing has changed in there since then I don't think. I attended mass in french just for the experience, which I will remember forever as the coldest church service I have ever attended -- you could see the priest's breath!
At this point, my solitary journeying was at an end, I popped into Rennes that evening and joined the other Fulbright scholars for the midyear meeting. Although I was rather dreading it leading up to the experience, it actually was very enjoyable. It was good to hear about what other people are doing, the American accent was nice to hear for once, and the people were much less stuck-up than I remembered. I think everyone must have just been stressed during that first orientation; understandably so, everyone was newly into the country and still trying to adjust at that point. So, three days in Rennes, many galettes and nights out later, I headed back to Grenoble to find a synchrotron run staring me in the face on Thursday. But now I have been to an absolutely beautiful part of France, and I'm actually starting to be able to hear differences in the french accent from different parts of the country, which makes me happy. :)

The Tragicomedy of Youssef

Looking at a chart in the book:

Youssef -It's a present verb. I don't know what all this other stuff is.
Katy -It's conjugated.
Youssef - I don't know what that means.

It's time to give up, my friend.

Home Life

The 5:30 call to prayer reassures me that morning will dawn once again soon, but for the moment I burrow deeper into my blankets and drift back into dream-filled sleep. The decidedly profane beeping of my cell phone alarm irks me awake at 7:30, and I slowly gather the will to creep out into the cold. Once dressed, I join Omi in the kitchen for a cup of coffee (mostly milk), a bit of dense brown bread with jam, and her daily chronicle of maladies (the cataract in her left eye, her diabetes and the sore tailbone from the exercise bike appear without fail). I brush my teeth, throw on my jellabah, grab my backpack and slip out the door to catch the bus to class.

At noon, I make the return trek for dinner. In the living room, I complete the morning's assignments or watch incomprehensible television programs while Hannan embroiders and Omi nods along approvingly from her sickbed on the couch. At one, Sidi Mohammad wanders back in, followed shortly by Souad and Lubna, and Hannan moves into the kitchen to finish preparations for lunch. We all gather around the living-room table to eat from a shared dish while watching the midday news in French. Hannan prepares hot lentil stews, heavy mixtures of vegetables and couscous, dried-pea soup flavored with lamb: thick warm dishes to guard against the cold and nourish well, simple but delicious and entirely homemade.

I return to classes from four to six, then check my email and chat with friends at the student villa before squeezing onto a packed rush-hour bus for the final trip home. At eight, Souad and Lubna return from work and we gather in the kitchen for tea, brewed from whole leaves with lots of mint and sugar and served with dry nut cookies, homemade once again. Our 10 o'clock supper is a light meal, but an animated once. Souad lets her hair down both literally and figuratively (she is the only sister who observes the hijab), and Lubna begins her merry teasing. Hannan scolds her father for adding too much sugar, Lubna translates choice bits of conversation, and Sidi Mohammed always finds some small joke to amuse me. We eat grilled sausage and cheese sandwiches or fried eggs and lamb kebabs or my new favorite creamy sugar-cinnamon rice soup followed by fresh fruit and further conversation. The girls teach me the Arabic names for our food and tableware, while I offer the English term in reply. Amongst themselves, they often slip into darija, and I watch entire conversations without an inkling of their content. Finally, the table is cleared, the dishes are washed, and I bring out my pajamas to warm them against the small gas heater in the kitchen. In my room, I turn out the light and step out of my house slippers at the edge of the carpet. Tucked tightly into bed, I sleep calm and quiet until the neighboring mosque cries out morning's arrival once again.

America the Stupid?

I have a new roommate. That is, there is a french boy/man named Xavier who lives in Iga's room right next to mine in the flat, who no longer speaks to her Polish mum and dad, who no longer comes home at 10 o'clock from the lab and who no longer gives me polish vodka from the freezer. I have lived amicably enough with Xavier for the past several weeks, saying bonjour et bon nuit, ca va when we come home and how was your day...but that was about it so far. Tonight was something of a breakthrough as far as Xavier-old roommates relations go; we had about 5 hours of hilarity, probably instigated by the Belgian beer followed by french Bordeaux, but nonetheless we all had a good time flailing around the appartement, learning new verbs in french, english, and russian, making fun of each others' pronunciation, and railing at Sylvie. It turns out despite the French Connection, Xavier is indeed on our team as far as proprietaire-coloc relations go; he seems to think Sylvie is as bizarre as she is, which is refreshing somehow.

And somehow in all the talk tonight, we got onto jokes that Americans tell on the French, on the English, and vice versa in all the combinations, even Xavier laughed about the trees on the Champs-Elysees (I warned him several times about being offended before telling him...). And apparently, quite unwittingly, I have only recently come to serve as the foil for Lara against all American stereotypes she has lived with/become accustomed to/internalized in the past several years, since she semi-subconsciously decided to boycott the US and all things American... my intelligence surprised her?!? I think I knew that all English people don't agree with the US and its actions in the world recently, but I didn't realize to quite what extent of contempt the US people in general are held. Lara I guess is one of the few true-blue Brits I know; Andrew has lived in Atlanta and Estelle is originally from Gabon, Trevor from South Africa... and apparently she thought I would be a right-wing warmonger insensitive to others and redneckish in the extreme... It is very natural to lump all people belonging to a group together, but I guess I have a slight shocked feeling - I didn't have such a set expectation of British people. It will wear off...and I guess I better keep it up, being un-'American'...