Going to Morocco Today!

Tagines in the Main Square of Meknes

From a 1986 NY Times Article:

"It is only across a narrow strait from Spain, but it feels as
remote as a place in the ''Thousand and One Nights.'' Its medieval cities
survive, intact, unchanged and quite as lively as ever, but in the course of a
50-year French protectorate its people learned a second language so that someone
unfamiliar with Arabic can still manage. It is one of the oldest kingdoms in the
world and remains, despite its constitution, a well-nigh absolute monarchy. But
even those ancient customs seem young compared to the span of the country's
history: Morocco, today, offers a fascinating blend of cultures placed in a
variety of beautiful landscapes."

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Still Alive

So working at a Euro Summer camp is the most relevant example of overworked and underpaid since slavery, but I´m loving it nonetheless... especially after a few months of pure vacation. The site at Santi Pietri is beautiful, and in the few moments you´re not listening to screaming children and color war chants, it actually feels like a very nice vacation. That said, I´m averaging about 4 hours of sleep per night between lesson planning and all other crap, but the perks are amazing new friends and most recently, a whale watching trip on the Strait of Gibraltar, where you could see the coast of Africa. Most of the kids got seasick and slept below deck for the majority of the boat ride, which left us a few unexpected hours of peace and quiet to just enjoy.

We just sent our first round of campers home, and tomorrow come the second round. Today we had a few hours free time and went to a beautiful beach town called Conil on the Mediterranean. We had some much needed cocktails, which feel that much better when you´ve really earned them.

Headed out for the night but hopefully back to write soon (sometime during my 0 hours per day free time)

Sunny in the South of Spain

So I made it to the South of Spain, and.... DAMN it´s hot. Or maybe I´m just not used to doing everything without Air conditioning. Yes, that´s probably it. Washington D.C. I´m sure is much hotter than this.

I have been in training week before my summer camp which starts on Sunday, and have been busy from 9 a.m. - 10:30 p.m. learning the ropes and preparing my teaching materials, after which we all go out for drinks all night in El Puerto de Santa Maria, a little town near the Strait of Gibraltar. I will be teaching the same 10-15 Spanish students every day for 2 weeks and my age group is the 12-13 yr olds.

Our camp site (40 mins away) in Santi Pietri is in an old Monastery made of sun-washed white stucco with yellow and blue tiles, with beautiful courtyards on the inside filled with flowers and palm trees. There is a huge swimming pool and a beach within 30 mins walking distance.

The one problem is, there´s no internet... and days are long, and we are not near a city. So if I go MIA for a while, that´s why. Just know I´ll be spending my action-packed days in the hot sun of the South of Spain having fun :)

Something tells me...

I´m not in South America anymore...

That something is: the Euro

My wallet hurts. But after a free week of red wine, good Spanish food, Jamon Iberico, and good times with new people, I can´t complain.

I´ve only been in the Madrid for the weekend and leave tomorrow to head south to where I will be working for the rest of the summer. One of the Spaniards on my Pueblo Ingles program told me told me that El Puerto de Santa Maria is a very posh area in the summer so we´ll see!

I´m off to enjoy my last night in Madrid (hopefully on the cheap)!

At it Again

I didn´t really tell anyone I was leaving. I guess I hadn´t made it very public that I was back at home for a time there, either. My year wasn´t complete yet. I still had Spain.

And now I´m here!

After one of the more uncomfortable plane rides in my repertoire, complete with seats that would not recline, 4 full hours of 2 crying babies, a delayed connection out of London, and the ensuing delayed arrival of my brand new Mountainsmith Scarlet backpack, made completely out of recycled materials (very green of me!)... I´m in Madrid.

And just when I had broken down and bought a new shirt because I could no longer stand the building-up grime on my clothing, my backpack arrived to the hostel.

So we´re off to a good start.

It´s nice to be back in Europe. Last night I had tapas and Sangria for dinner with 5 other people who are doing my first program with me, Pueblo Ingles at La Alberca. The week-long program is an English immersion for 20 Spaniards and a "free" week of accomodations, meals and fun experiences for 20 English-speakers, just for speaking all day in English.

I´m off to a flamenco performance now, hosted by the program, wearing my kind of geeky, but very practical Sprigs Banjees wrist wallet from REI and money belt. Europe is no South America in terms of danger... but I swear I am not going to get robbed again!

Now I´ve cursed myself :)

Rain, Rain, Go Away…

This weekend's unrelenting April showers that have overstayed their welcome into May, take me back to some fond...and some not-so-fond memories of Patagonia, which—as my host Mom described it best—has such unpredictable weather that the "Meteorologists can go ahead and wipe their asses with their weather maps because they'll be more useful that way."

So I don't miss the guarantee of at least a few hours of precipitation per day, more days than not, out of a week, but I did always love the hollow sound of the rain hitting hard against the tin roof of the corrugated peach-colored home where I lived, as I listened from my dimly lit bedroom, planning lessons for the next day.

During those times, I could imagine the Antarctic, Pacific and Atlantic winds all clashing at the southern tip of the continent, fighting to bring the next erratic burst of weather tearing through Punta Arenas-- a downpour, snowstorm, howling winds or cool fresh air and sunshine with clouds moving quickly in the sky. During those times, I could, in a very real way, feel my physical location on the Earth—or at the "ends" of it, to be exact.

Yes, the rugged Patagonia climate has left its indelible imprint on me। It is true that when it rains, it pours—but in Patagonia, chances of seeing a rainbow afterwards, or a few rainbows at the same time, even, are common. And of course, the one that came to mind today, chances of Sopaipillas on a rainy day are just as high.


A traditional Chilean rainy day comfort food, I remember Sopaipillas as if they were a childhood memory: only I was a teacher, not a student, coming home from school to find a heaping bowl of warm, fried doughy delights sprinkled with powdered sugar, made from scratch by the weathered old hands of the family nanny.

Not that sugary fried dough was good for my diet- or lack thereof- as I accepted without question the pure red meat and white carb diet that my host family was kind to offer me. But now that I've been home, I've forged a solid, if ineffective, friendship with the gym.

So when it started raining in Baltimore, I faced a choice. Wishing away the rain as well as the pounds I'd set out to drop, the Sopaipillas won. And everyone loved them.

Here is a quick and easy recipe:

Sopaipillas with Honey and Cinnamon Sugar

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups flour
1 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Salt
1tsp. Sugar
2 tbsp. Vegetable oil
2 tbsp. Heavy cream
1/2 cup warm water
Cinnamon and Sugar
Honey

PREPARATION:

In a large mixing bowl add flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Stir to blend. Add oil, cream and water. Knead to make a dough. Turn out dough mixture on a floured surface and knead. Let dough mixture sit for 30 mins.

Heat 3 in of oil in a saucepan or deep fryer at 375 degrees. Roll dough into an approx. 12x9 rectangle at 1/8 in thick. Cut into 3 in squares. Add squares to hot oil 2-3 at a time. Allow them to puff, then fry to a golden brown. Drain well and serve sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and drizzled with honey.

Makes about 2 dozen Sopaipillas.

Momentum...

has....slowed...to a....HALT! Once an erratic blip on the radar, beaming red, traversing miles, intersecting frequently with other beeping, buzzing noisy blips on their own trajectories, I have arrived to a central location, dissolving from the screen, an explorer finally forced to explore a place far more overwhelming and menacing than the beautifully chaotic and uncertain great-big-world.

Reality.

People often wonder how I have no fear when it comes to hopping on a plane and heading off to some faraway place where I don't know a soul, my fate reliant on the kindness of strangers.

Truth is, that kind of not knowing is exciting, fun, character-building - preferable to the kind that breaks me down: the very real, looming fact of not knowing what to do with myself.

So what AM I doing with myself? I'll bite off anyone's head who asks me.





But really, my news is that in the immediate future I am going to work at a summer camp in Spain in June; my last Hurrah in my complete "year of travel". I will have temporarily satisfied my desire to see the world (although let's never forget there's much, much more of it for me to see), but I won't have accomplished my other quest to find answers. With all the traveling I've done, you think I'd learn something about direction.

Well I haven't, so come September, I'll likely go crawling back to DC and continue to search for answers from within the walls of a small cubicle, which, I've determined, is actually slightly better than doing a whole-lotta-nothing here in Baltimore. Maybe that's the answer for right now...the slap in the face I've needed all along - that doing something, even if it's not exactly what you want to be doing, is better than doing nothing at all!

Either way, don't lose hope on me just yet. There's one more trip in the works, one more burst of momentum, excitement... and then maybe... just maybe, I'll be ready to settle.



And then there's always old photos and videos:



Enjoy. I know its kinda cheesy, but this is what you get when living in a sparsely decorated, single-lightbulb bedroom at the ends of the earth with no TV, phone or internet and basic Mac programs for entertainment. Man, do I miss it!