SUNSHINE DAY

This is a great title, because I'm in a good mood. Also it's really sunny outside and I think I lost ten pounds sweating today. Do you see how there are two meanings there? Because I could flesh it out a little more.

See, the word "sunshine" evokes a feeling of carefree bliss. But in the literal sense, "sunshine day" simply describes a hot, sunny day.

It also recalls memories of the Brady Kids singing "Sunshine Day" in colorful, fringed costumes. This was most likely both a happy and sweaty event for them. Do you see how many levels this title works on? It's really just ridiculous.

Now that we are all on the same page...

When I was really stressed out and overwhelmed this past spring, I longed for the lazy days of summer. I'd heard past volunteers talk about how much time they had to read, watch tv, spend time with their host families, cultivate hobbies. I thought to myself, "I WANT THAT. Where is this free time you speak of?"

Then summer came. You may remember I made a list of goals to accomplish for the summer. I realize I could just look back at that blog, but for the sake of drama I am going to tell you that I ALREADY FORGOT ALL THOSE GOALS. Except the one about Single Ladies, but honestly I don't even plan to carry that out. I've moved on. I'm obsessed with Ciara's video, "Ride" now.

More to the point. This summer has so far been an incredible rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows.

I'll pause momentarily while you let the poetry of that last sentence wash over you.

One day I am so happy to be in Morocco, the next I want to get the fuck out and pretend like this 10 month blip never happened. Sure, I have good and bad days no matter what the season, but something about summer has made everything feel more intense.

Then I realized it's all linked to my productivity level. I've always been a to-do list girl. Checking things off my list feels like ... well my mom reads this so I won't get too detailed here. Anyway, in the summer work really slows down and a week may go by where I don't really NEED to leave my house. Then out of the blue a fun opportunity pops up and I couldn't be more excited.

This is bad for me. I don't handle downtime very well at all. I am either running around like Sarah Goldfarb cleaning her apartment on uppers in Requiem for a Dream or utterly useless, pantsless, and directionless. Just look at this graph I drew up for the occasion:



As you can see, the more stuff I'm doing, the more of a happy maniac I am. Yesterday all I did was watch How I Met Your Mother and drink iced coffee. In other words I was depressed AND tweaked out at the same time. Today, I got up early, visited a bunch of families, and did my laundry and bam, I'm a happy camper again.

I think I'm becoming one of those people that can't stand to be alone with her thoughts. Am I that annoying?

Things I Care About This Week

Podcasts.

Recently I was trying to log into my iTunes account to buy music but couldn't remember my password. After a series of very unfortunate events I locked myself out of my account indefinitely. Because I don't have a ton of money I figured it was a blessing in disguise and left it that.

Then, a revelation. UNTIL YESTERDAY I DIDN'T HAVE THE MICHAEL JACKSON CLASSIC "PYT" IN MY ITUNES LIBRARY. If there was ever a reason to open a new iTunes account, this is it. I mean, that used to be the song I'd get drunk and request at dive bars. Whenever it played, Candice, Emma and I would totally freak out. After MJ died, there was a karaoke night dedicated to him. My sister and I went, and I was devastated to see that PYT was not an option.

Since buying PYT, I started dabbling in podcasts. Things You Missed in History Class? My AP History teacher doubled as the JV basketball coach and didn't realize that AP students were expected to take a special exam until halfway through the semester, so yes please. This American Life? Why yes, I did used to work at Lisner Auditorium.

Also, podcasts are F-R-E-E.

How I Met Your Mother.

I have to admit, I was not a fan after the pilot episode. Ted is a pretentious douchebag, Lily is a bad actress and self-consciously cute and small and Robin is a terrible person. But then I kept watching. And watching. And watching. And there was that episode where Marshall was obsessed with charts and graphs. I'M obsessed with charts and graphs! It all fits! Plus, NPH. Just the fact that NPH is connected to the show makes it worth watching.

Harcha.

Oh harcha. Harcha, for those who do not dwell in Morocco, is kind of like cornbread. Warm and crunchy with a slightly sweet taste. I can't get enough. I ate 5 dirham worth in one sitting yesterday. That's a lot, and no I'm not ashamed to admit it. The only downside to this is that now people in my town are figuring out how much I like it, meaning I will probably get gifts of harcha to the point where I can't stand the sight of it anymore.

Banana-coffee smoothies.

I'm obsessed with these smoothies, made in Rabat, that I sometimes consider takng a day trip jsut to indulge in one. Of course, I never ACTUALLY do that. I do make a point of having lunch at the smoothie place every time I'm in Rabat, however. I tried to make the smoothie at home and, while tasty, it just wasn't the same.

Jello Shots.

All I need is for someone to send me Jello from America. It's going to be awesome.

I'm American again

Hamdullah. After a muggy, cramped, hour-long cab ride in 101 degree heat I arrived in my province capitol to see what's what about my carte sejour.

Flashback: Before "Eastern Roadtrip 2010: That Time I Almost Died" I brought my typo-riddled carte sejour to the province police to get it fixed. The biggest problem was that it said I was a French citizen, but there were also a couple issues with the spelling on the Arabic half of it. Instead of saying "mutataw3a" which means volunteer under the occupation part, it said "muMtataw3a." Honestly, what the hell is a mumtataw3a?!

The guy that handles foreigners took my carte (and my 100 dh) and, all smiles, said he'd call me in a week with the fixed carte. It would take a week for processing. No big deal! I left his office feeling good about the transaction.

Flashforward: That was 15 days ago, and I now realize I never took down his phone numnber. I just gave him mine.

Since I'm not exactly drowning in work right now, I took it upon myself to go back out to the police station and check on progress. Turns out the guy left for vacation and either forgot to call me or figured it could wait til he got back. I'm actually not that annoyed, stuff like this happens all the time in every country when processing people's paperwork. The important thing is I have a NEW carte and it even says I'm American! I'm one passport away from being a whole person again.

Weird, wild stuff

I've been traveling a bit. My itinerary was something like this:



As you can probably imagine, lots of stuff happened and I took notes on the important things. Let's go to the scribble pad!

Fourth of July in my province capitol: awesome. Two volunteers live there, giving us ample space to prepare the feast and eat it, too. Lots of merry was made, bubbles were blown, pictures taken. We even made s'mores, because I am lucky enough to have an incredibly talented cook in my province who made graham crackers and marshmallows from scratch. I didn't even know you could make marshmallows, I thought there was a special Jiffy cloud in the sky and NASA had a top secret multi-billion dollar program that sent shuttles to and from. I guess the marshmallow recipe makes more sense.

I hung around the capitol on Monday morning with David because we both had some business to see to. I still have an issue with my carte sejour (I'm still not French) and he needed to open a post office box because the post office in his actual town is a small room that never seems to open. The man I talked to about my carte sejour was very nice, but I still had to pay 100 dirham to get it fixed. And I still don't have the fixed carte in my possession, so it may not be over yet.

After TCOB in the capitol, David and I procured transport to Fes, where we'd be reuniting briefly with our dear friend Pete. Fun points about Fes:

-I started having ridiculous hot flashes and was walking around the city dripping in sweat. I think this was related to the 102 fever I woke up with later that week, but at the time it was just gross and weird.

-Speaking of sweat, the hostel David and I stayed in was really humid and when we woke up in the morning the first thing he said was "your hair is either really sweaty or really oily. Either way....hot." Watch out, Andy, we have a charmer.

-Pete has a girlfriend in Fes. She's an American student doing research with Fulbright money. Our second night in Fes, we stayed at her house and OH MY GOD. It's right in the old medina, three stories, skylight, the works. Absolutely gorgeous. I wanted to take pictures of it but felt like it would be weird.

Moving on...I got a train out to Oujda on Wednesday morning and spent six hours sandwiched in between a group of lively Moroccans who had never met each other before, but all became fast friends on the train. I think they are planning to go into the Biz (that's show business) together. Some sort of family-style variety show, but with less singing and dancing and more tired, over-acted skits about marriage, weddings, disrespectful children, lazy husbands etc.

After that gem of a train ride, I was denied a bus ticket to Erika's town. I was two hours early! The man said it was completely full. I pleaded that I didn't mind standing the whole time but got completely shut down.

Plan B! Taxied to a closer town where one of the newbie Environment volunteers lives and basically invited myself to his house for the night, until I could make moves to Erika the next day. He was very welcoming, hamdullah.

Interesting plot twist: I woke up the next morning running a really high fever. OUT OF NOWHERE. I had been totally fine, and all of a sudden I can't move without searing pains shooting through my head. Great day for traveling, yek?

After chugging water and feasting on ibuprofen, I started on my way to Erika. I just kept thinking, "as soon as I get to Erika's house I can take my pants off and go to sleep." (More or less what actually happened). Hamdullah travel was much easier this time around. I would have had an issue in one random town midway between Joe (Environment volunteer) and Erika, but there was luckily a stressed-out man trying to get to the same place I was. I just followed him around until he solved both our problems by finagling a taxi going directly to Erika's town.

The next two days at Erika's were kind of uneventful. I was too sick to leave her house so I only really saw one block of her entire town. The only thing worth blogging about is this:

I was sprawled out in my underwear, fast asleep, when I heard banging on Erika's door. Half-conscious, I figured Erika would handle it, but then I realized that the shouts accompanying the banging were coming FROM Erika. She locked herself out, I guess? With unexpected vigor I leapt up and ran to open the door. As I pulled it open I started thinking "you're not wearing pants you're not wearing pants you're not wearing pants" but it was too late to do anything about that. Erika--and her young (thank heaven, female) Moroccan friend were standing there, gazing at me in all my pantsless, slightly delirious glory.

I answered SOMEONE ELSE'S door without pants on. That's not even okay in America. It's even taboo to answer your own door without pants on. Just think of that time on the Simpsons when Homer answered the door wearing a grocery bag.

So anyway, the ensuing conversation with the Moroccan girl was just a barrel of awkward. I have a lot of trouble understanding people out East when I'm healthy, and in this situation I was totally sick. I came off pretty rude, but I mostly just wanted her to leave me alone (she kept suggesting things to make me better).

After a day and a half or so of being a really gracious houseguest at Erika's (ie, barely talking to her and sleeping the whole time) I started to rally and by the evening of the last day I was there we were back to normal Erika/Alli shenanigans. We baked a cake, talked in weird accents, bitched about Morocco and binge-watched "Weeds." We got down to Melanie the next day, did more or less the same thing with her (insert cookies for cake and "Eastern Promises" for "Weeds") then got back up to Oujda.

Transport continues to be a bitch and we got, literally, the LAST three tickets out of Oujda on the sleeper train to Rabat.

Possibly the best part of the trip: we were killing time at a hotel cafe near the train station and they had a pool. After about an hour, Melanie and I couldn't stand it anymore and went swimming. I think the pool employee got in trouble for letting us swim since we weren't staying at the hotel, but I kind of don't care.

The train, once we figured out what compartment we were in (a seemingly simple task that came very close to being catastrophic) was really nice and AIR-CONDITIONED. We went to sleep almost immediately, but I have to admit I laid awake for a bit, wistfully imagining myself in the train with my sister. Having just screwed Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye out of their room, we decided to go down to the club car to keep them compnay and sing borderline creepy tunes about washing our hands, feet and hair with snow.

Not much interesting happened after that. We arrived in Rabat around 6:30 am, got breakfast, then parted ways. Melanie and Erika were traveling to summer camp and I was going home, finally. I got back to town just in time to watch some of my kids compete in a ping png tournament.

Well-played, ants.

Today, in an attempt to get rid of the ants that have infested my kitchen, I managed to spill copious amounts of honey in my sink and drip it all over my floor while cleaning it up. After that, I knocked over my little container of brown sugar.

Minstrels will write songs about this.