Oh, Morocco

     A friend told me once that it doesn’t matter where you are, it is the people you’re with who define your experience.  I think this has certainly been the case in Morocco.  While we all know that there are bad apples and good apples everywhere, I have been pretty blessed to have the opportunity to meet some of Morocco’s best apples.  When strangers halfway across the world make one feel at home it certainly inspires some sort of renewed confidence in humanity.  While they would say that they didn’t do anything extraordinary, I would say their kindness and hospitality have made all the difference in the world to me.  If I ever have a home (chances of that are looking pretty grim), I hope I can pay it forward.  

When I leave Morocco tomorrow I will have been here for 8 days.  When I arrived, seeing as though my phone doesn’t work, a nice young gentleman who sat next to me on the plane offered me his phone to call my friend who was picking me up.  When we arrived it was off to Casablanca.  I spent the weekend with three Moroccan tennis players--two of them brothers.  They all went to Lindenwood.  They were quite the entertaining bunch, and though I had never met them in person before, hanging out with them was effortless.  They reminded me of swarthier versions of my brother, Harley, which is a good thing most of the time--big goofballs who like to make fun of people.  We spent a couple nights at a resort in Marrakech, where they took me to a couple of really nice night spots.  Marrakech is the Vegas of Morocco, as Karim described it.  We went to a place called So, which was a swanky lounge/hotel thing with hookas and outdoor couches--I felt like I was in Ocean’s 12 for some reason.  There was a Canadian band who sang all the best American music--Eminem and Rihanna, Michael Jackson, etc.  I got to see some Moroccan dancing, which I didn’t wholeheartedly participate in mostly because my dress was really short and I was afraid of having a Tara Reid-esque moment in a conservative Muslim country.

Karim knew someone who had the hook up in the area, so we hopped around to a couple other spots so I could see what else Moroccan nightlife had to offer.  The clubs looked super fun and one of them looked like a legit palace.  Pretty different from Fat Moe’s in Paducah.  I had a chocolatini that was amazing.  Surprisingly just one.

After heading back to Casablanca and watching Real Madrid get tore up by Levante, we went to the brothers’ parents’ house in Casablanca for dinner.  I ate some sort of traditional meal of beef with a delicious red sauce on it.  Their dad was a hoot.  He informed me that Morocco was the first country to formally recognize the U.S. as an independent state.  A fact that I didn’t know prior to coming here.  So our ties go way back.  The brothers’ dad told me all about how he studied to be an oral surgeon (I think that’s what he said--meaning may have gotten lost in translation) in Germany, and he wants to go to the States, but he needs to improve his English.  He was absolutely charming--showing me pictures of his dad who was an Imam in Paris during the occupation of WWII.  Evidently he sheltered Jews in the Mosque there.  Pretty interesting stories.  

On Monday we headed to Karim’s family’s house in Meknes.  Again, the house seemed palatial to me.  Huge carpets and 10 foot wide hallways.  It was quite comfortable.  At dinner (or afternoon tea maybe? I can’t tell which is which since I’m used to eating dinner at 5 and they don’t eat dinner until 9:30 or something) I mentioned wanting a silver teapot I had seen in the square in Marrakech and Karim’s mom gave me one of hers as a gift.  I am in love with it.  It is beautiful and is my favorite thing I have acquired on my trip thus far.  At dinner we had some turkey dish with cheese in the middle.  YUM.  And just as an interesting side note, they eat fries with everything here.  It’s like in Puerto Rico when you order Chinese food and get fries as a side every time.  I guess they co opted french fries, which I said is an American specialty---co opting, not french fries.  Karim’s brothers are quite the gentlemen.  I told his mom she was brave living with 5 males, but she said she enjoyed being the only female because she has prestige.  Smart lady.  

In Meknes I was up to my eyeballs in existential angst trying to decide what to do with my life.  My quarter life crisis is kicking hard core right now.  There is a TEFL class in Marrakech the month of October, and I was signed up and ready to go, but I couldn’t really decide.  It would mean I have the proper certification to teach English, but it doesn’t guarantee a job.  So the question is, do I take the course, drop 2,000 USD to maybe get a job afterward?  Or do I keep traveling, keep applying to jobs and hoping something comes up?  Applying to jobs online seems like a pretty colossal waste of time since the unfortunate truth is that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  This I learned from my esteemed colleagues at the prestigious PNC Bank.  I decided not to take the course.  Basically I will be broke if I take the course, and it doesn’t necessarily mean a job.  So while I would love to take it, I don’t have 2,000 dollars worth of desire.  So I am back to just traveling...tomorrow to Madrid, then Barcelona, then Prague, Budapest, etc...

I am seriously considering doing an MATESOL now.  Which is just plain annoying, since I considered this 2 years ago when I finished undergrad, but I wasn’t 100% sure that I wanted to teach English, so I didn’t do it.  Nowadays English is the only consistent interest in my life, which is saying something because I change my mind 800 times a day about everything else.  To me, a nice recreational session diagramming sentences or reading poetry is fulfilling.  Mildly lame, but hey, to each his own.  So now I have to commit to some sort of plan...applying to schools again, staying in Europe a while longer, going home, getting a job in the mean time, bleh, who knows.  We all know what happens when I try to make plans.  They literally NEVER work out.  That’s why I’m so indecisive I think.  Because I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a plan through to fruition. I just wing it. So I’m gun shy about committing to something. I’m short term goal oriented.  Like China and their five year plans.  Once my short term plan is up (or falls through, which is more often the case) I’m stuck thinking, oh hell, what now? UofL, changing majors 7 times, changing my career goals, relationships, law school, moving cities, grad school...all of these impulsive decisions I make that don’t really follow any overarching theme.  It’s as though I’m playing a high stakes connect-the-dots game and just hoping I like the picture it makes at the end.  

Even though I wish I could be one of these people who says at 18, “I want to be a lawyer” and then they major in Poli Sci and marry their college boyfriend, go to law school and practice law for their remaining days, and have their stuff together, a major part of me is completely bored by that.  When I Freud myself I think that maybe I purposefully act flighty and impulsive out of some deep seated urge for romanticism and fantastical awesomeness in my life. Again, I blame movies and novels for this.  Namely, Casablanca and Pride and Prejudice.    

Okay, I’m done. I really need to get out of my head.  Tomorrow I go to Spain to see Cathy, an old friend I met Puerto Rico.  Perhaps this will bring a fresh dose of perspective.  

I feel as though the true essence of my Morocco experience would be missed if I didn’t share this quick little anecdote.  One day I was eating in a cafe in Marrakech and I met a young gentlemen who was very, very pretty.  We struck up a conversation and he seemed very nice and well put together.  Turns out he plays soccer here in Morocco for the second tier or something like that.  He did play in France but ended up coming back to Morocco for whatever reason.  We sat and chatted over a couple beers for a while, speaking some awkward combination of English, Spanish, and French.  He said he was going for “musculation” which I took to mean working out, and then we would meet up to watch Real Madrid suck and Barcelona tie.  

We went to a cafe where I was the only white person and the only female, but no one seemed to really notice as they were concentrating on the game.  The guy, we’ll call him Pete, proceeds to pull out a little Moroccan Surfboard (aka pressed hash) and smoke it.  Everyone around me was smoking it. In broad daylight outside at a cafe.  I was like, oh my god, great! This is super fun! 

After the game we decided to take a walk.  By this time his eyes had glazed over and he completely stopped talking, which was not really a problem for me.  We went to McDonald’s--awesome right? I can’t escape it--where he ate 4 chicken sandwiches and I sat on my computer in silence chatting with friends and writing.  On the walk home it got weird.  I guess he was over his silent phase because he started talking about how beautiful I am, my eyes are dangerous, he can’t read me because I hide my feelings behind my eyes, blah blah blah...he said he liked me sooo much because he is happy around me, blah blah, so I told him I wasn’t feelin’ it.  He should just not try to get at me.  At this point he says he doesn’t understand why I don’t feel the same way and he starts singing to me at the top of his lungs in Arabic in the middle of the street.  People were staring and driving by on scooters honking and pointing. Not a great moment for me.  I started booking it back toward the square because this dude is obviously crazier than a betsy bug.  It figures, right? An attractive, polyglot soccer player who is interested in me, and whaddya know--bat shit crazy.  Anyway, he caught up with me, I told him I was tired and wanted to go home, so I agreed to meet him the next day when he got off work.  Of course I didn’t show up. I have avoided that area like the plague ever since.  So that was quite the night. Lesson learned--hopefully.       

   Just a couple general observations in Morocco:

Among the population here that doesn’t appear to be very ethnically or racially diverse, there is a wide variety of styles.  There are women here who dress like a typical American or European, those who wear a veil and skinny jeans, some who wear a veil and the more traditional long sleeved colorful dress thing, and there are those who are completely covered, with a mesh thing over their eyes and their hands completely covered.  It was an interesting moment when I sat on a bus next to a woman covered head to toe, including her eyes, in black.  I was chillin in a floral tube dress (it’s hot here) and next to her I was painfully aware of my hair and my skin and my tattoos and my makeup. I felt vain and arrogant for some reason, and at the same time it was like a nice little moment of female camaraderie--that we could both peacefully coexist, sitting next to each other, with vastly different beliefs (I assume we have different beliefs--I guess I didn’t really ask her what she believes). I smiled at her and I’m choosing to believe she smiled back. 

This picture is disgusting.  I was not a happy camper at first.

Brittany, Karim

My new teapot!

I accidentally ordered entirely too much food. 

Another observation--when I was walking around with the boys I was not really bothered.  However, when I am by myself it’s like shark bait.  I got a henna tattoo completely against my will after some lady just walked up and grabbed my arm and did it without asking.  She then immediately demanded 250 dirhams, and I complied because I didn’t have the remaining life force necessary to argue with her.  Walking down the street men and little boys are constantly shouting rude things to me.  One kid threw rocks and a soccer ball at my head.  Mean little ankle biters. 

Amazing cheese

Venus De Milo

Napoleon's dining room

Moulin Rouge...

The artsy district

Paris, je t'aime

9/13/2011

Ah, the Louvre.  So this day is set aside for the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe.  I originally went to the museum on a Tuesday and in true scatterbrained, Brittany fashion,  didn’t even check to see if it was open.  Indeed it wasn’t.  So I walked around for a couple hours just exploring.  Saw some touristy areas that were annoying and some not so touristy areas that were nice.  However, I parked it for most of the day in the gardens adjacent to the Louvre.  Incredible.  There are cute little fountains, statues, perfectly manicured bushes, and chairs and benches galore. So I sat and read for a few hours.  And I watched a couple episodes of 30 Rock.  And I people watched.  Holy cow, there is some good people watching to be done in Paris parks.  

Speaking of 30 Rock, I stole the title of this blog from Tracy Morgan’s character...well the “Musings” part anyway.  He writes a column called Musings (this is in the episode where Liz and Jenna think he is illiterate because he never reads from the cue cards and goes out the emergency exit).  “Wild Nights” I stole from Emily Dickinson.  I’m not sure if it is considered blasphemous to have a title simultaneously inspired by Dickinson and Tracy Morgan, but it’s pretty representative of my character, so there you have it. 

Back to the Louvre.  I enjoyed the Louvre.  The Venus de Milo was impressive and Napoleon’s apartments were insane.  However, the Mona Lisa?  Kind of lame.  I hope the art gods don’t strike me down for saying that...but you can’t get close to it, and there were a million other paintings that I found infinitely more interesting. Like the one of the sisters taking a bath together while one of them is pinching the other’s nipple.  Weird, but interesting nonetheless. So, Mona, get over yourself. You got lucky, girl. 

After I perused the Louvre, I went outside to take a nap on the lawn.  This is where it got weird.  Before I begin, I’ll say that most people over here do not guess me as American.  They mostly guess Australian and a few times people have thought I was Dutch.  As I’m laying on the lawn outside the museum napping on a beautiful day under a pristine sky, a French guy walks up and says in heavily accented English, “are you Australian?” “No, American, sorry.” was my reply.  He sits down next to me explaining that he used to live in Australia so he was excited to talk to someone from there and I look like I’m from there for some reason.  He proceeds to take off his shirt and sunbathe.  My puritanical American self is embarrassed at this, and I start to get nervous, and he strikes up a friendly conversation.  At this point I have a death grip on my bag, because I think he is creating some sort of diversion so I can be burgled by his partner hiding in the bushes.  That didn’t happen, but he did notice my tongue ring and proceed to tell me that he heard it was nice to kiss someone with a tongue ring.  My reply was “I wouldn’t know.”  Then he grabbed my face and kissed me.  I was so taken aback, because at this point I felt sure there was some maniacal plot behind this all and cameras or crime was involved somehow.  I shoved him away, sputtered some choice words, and I’ll be darned if he didn’t look completely shocked that I hadn’t just swooned over his little stunt.  Sporting little more than a bruised ego and feeling affronted, he told me all about how I don’t know how to enjoy life.  I need to learn to live in the moment, I’m in the city of romance, I don’t know how to have fun, I need to appreciate the fact that a handsome man (if he does say so himself) wants to kiss me in beautiful Paris in beautiful weather.  At this point I was disgusted by his arrogance and his patronizing attitude as if I should be on my knees thanking him for kissing me.  What a moron.  So I agreed to meet him the next day in that spot.  Of course I didn’t go.  And as soon as he left I checked my bag to make sure I had all my stuff.  So, it’s possible I missed out on my future husband by being paranoid in a Paris park.  But if that was him, I’d rather be single.  City of Romance, my ass.  The little boy that Sam looks after loudly proclaimed as I was walking through the living room one day, "T'as des grands lolos, toi," which loosely translates to "You have big boobs."  This came from a 3 year old.  God bless French men. 

     Sam was amazing throughout my whole trip though.  Between taking me dancing until 3 AM to Questlove, cooking an amazing Ratatouille, and having quintessentially French picnics with delicious moldy cheese and wine, and introducing me to pastries galore, she made Paris awesome.  I will have to go back to take her on a movie date to see Wuthering Heights, fa sho.  

God bless protesters :)

Notre Dame at night--my new happy place

Hemingway's old stompin' grounds--good enough for me.

In the Beginning

     Ahh, here goes. I have put off blogging about myself despite the encouragement I’ve received from my family and friends because it seems insanely self-worshipping to me.  The idea that people, be they family, friends, or especially strangers, would want to read my journal about all the crap in my life and in my head seems mighty presumptuous. And yet, I do love to read the clever blogs of others. Part of my issue is pegging down my target audience...I have stockpiled some journal entries to publish here that I wrote for myself.  Obviously I think I am hilarious, but I seriously doubt anyone besides my mother and grandmothers do as well.  So is this for myself? For my family? For my friends? What genre is it? Should I make it a self deprecating comedy? No one likes someone who takes themselves too seriously.  Should it be a satire? I do enjoy sarcasm.  Maybe it’s a rom-com.  Or a tragic comedy.  Or a drama.  I suppose it will be a hodgepodge of all these things.  I anticipate it to appear as a pale imitation of Bridget Jones/Eat, Pray, Love/Pride and Prejudice. In the end I have endured much worse (read: undergraduate poetry workshop where my positive criticism amounted to “good title”).  So, mama, here are some of my adventures. Don’t judge. 

9/10/11

I took a bus from London to Paris. This was very exciting to me considering the fact that I didn’t know how a bus would cross a body of water such as exists between the UK and continental Europe.  Turns out it goes in a big metal box and floats across.  I’m not sure exactly how since I was in the box when that went down.  But the countryside in southern England and Northern France was super cute.  In France I felt for a minute like I was in the little provincial town in Beauty and the Beast.  There were little chapels in the middle of the town and little French houses all around it.  Probably a baker, and a library, and a little inventor’s shop. Just sayin’.  

London was pretty cool, but it was expensive. Turns out the American dollar sucks--I felt like I would have been better of with Monopoly money, but whatev.  So that’s why I saw a few things I really wanted to see and then peaced out.  Westminster Abbey was cool.  Poet’s corner was crazy.  I teared up a little because I felt so surrounded by brilliant dead guys.  It was like a weird and amazing literary pilgrimage.  Some of the people buried here are Robert Browning, Chaucer, Dickens, Tennyson, Spencer, Kipling, Thomas Hardy ugh!....they have these superhuman legacies because of their ability to craft words into beautiful,  influential works of art.  It makes me feel completely insignificant.  Like, the best I can do is read someone else’s work and talk about it.  Maybe imitate it, but I will never be able to create the way they could. Snaps for JK Rowling, she did a pretty good job.  Anyway, It felt sacrilegious to walk on top of their graves! Great men, reduced to dust...So it goes.  

Interestingly, in the customs line in Heathrow I met a nice young Canadian girl about my age who lives in Tanzania.  She and I had a very interesting conversation about the war in Libya.  She is a music teacher/activist in Tanzania, where she researches the role of music in protest. And she was very sympathetic toward Gaddafi.  Grad school introduced me to some pretty diverse opinions and philosophies, but having been immersed in Western media’s depiction of Gaddafi and the situation in Libya, it is an eyebrow raiser to converse with a Gaddafi sympathizer.  Quite refreshing actually.  And according to this girl she is not alone in Tanzania.  There are many there who deplore the acts of repression carried out by Gaddafi’s regime, but they also appreciate what he did for the country.  France’s chomping at the bit to bomb the daylights out of Libya is not unnoticed by their African neighbors, naturally.  Speaking to this girl who exists in a different reality than my own is a healthy dose of perspective and a nice reminder that things are never black and white, there are two sides to every story, and any other cliche you want to add here.  Scrutinizing the motives of the powers that be can make for a pretty paranoid conspiracy theorist.  But the evidence is hard to ignore, right? The business deals between the rebels and the Western world were rolled out a few days after the no fly zone was passed....hmm...just lettin’ that marinate.  Shame on me for being so arrogant as to think about politics.  Out of my realm of expertise.     

09/12/2011

     Today has been a good day.  I woke up early after about 3 hours of sleep and went with Sam to the underground where she told me how to go to Notre Dame.  The Paris Underground, by the way, is infinitely easier to navigate than the tube.  Also, when one asks the information desk how to get somewhere, instead of pointing in a general direction and grunting, they give clear, concise directions on how to get there.  

     Notre Dame is insanely stunning. I’m in love with it.  If I were going to be homeless I would make sure that the moment I ran out of money I would be standing in front of Notre Dame so that I could live the rest of my vagrant life staring at it. It’s 850 years old (I think) and I am extremely curious as to how in tarnation they built the thing.  It’s incredibly intricate, and without having any knowledge of architecture to speak of. I would venture to say it is a marvel.  It is, at the very least, beautiful.  I sat in front of it for about 30 minutes staring at it trying to decide if I think it is masculine or feminine.  Depending on what side you look at changes its gender I believe.  One side has pointy tower things and a pretty garden--that’s the feminine side.  The other side is rather square--that’s the masculine side.  Sorry, guys. 

Inside they play really creepy music...I felt like a stigmata was going to happen any minute (but definitely not to me).  Sam told me that during the Revolution someone climbed up on the outside and cut the heads off the statues, and they were later restored.  We can’t for the life of us figure out 1) How they got up there 2) What did they use to cut the heads of off giant stone statues? I’m picturing Wizard’s Chess and a bunch of French Revolutionary hooligans with swords.  Anyway. 

After Seeing Notre Dame I took a stroll along the Seine.  I basically spent the whole time Americanly (new word) gawking at how old everything is.  Never ceases to amaze me.  Then I went on a quest for Shakespeare and Company. 

It is super cute.  The Paris literary scene post WWI was, as everyone knows, as good as it gets.  Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Hemingway, James Joyce, Sylvia Breach, and all their cohorts hung out at the book store that Breach opened right across from Notre Dame.  I read that at the time it was one of the only places, if not the only place, to get English books in Paris, so all the writers of the lost generation hung out there, and I’m sure argued about world affairs and literary devices as we English wonks are so inclined to do.  So, I went in the bookstore to try to feel some inspiration from literary spirits lingering about.  This didn’t really happen because it was super crowded with doggone tourists, however it turns out that Bobbie Ann Mason is going to be there doing a book signing for her new book on September 19th.  I may have to return for this little event, since, for those of you who don’t know, Bobbie Ann Mason is a quite successful writer from, of all places, Mayfield, Kentucky--about 20 minutes from the good ole hometown, Paducah.  The only thing of hers I have ever read was her short story Shiloh, which I loved.  It’s always nice to see a successful woman writer from my parts.  I’m pretty sure she won the Booker Prize, and her new novel is about Nazis in Europe--rather a vague description I realize, but I don’t remember really.  

So after I hung out at Shakespeare and Company for a bit I bought a second hand copy of Faulkner’s Sanctuary because I do love me some Faulkner and it was only 5 Euros.  I started reading it in the park today, and in true Faulkner fashion, God bless him, it’s weird as hell (pardon my French).  

I went for some breakfast at Ben and Jerry’s because they have free wifi and plugs.  This may not sound like a big deal, but I am one who truly appreciates free wifi and a plug.  That is the main criteria on which I base my airport ranking system--the number of readily available outlets.  Nashville is awesome, Chicago is not. Anyway, I digress.  For whatever reason my debit card didn’t work when I went to pay for my ham and cheese omelette and orange juice (with a spoon in it?), so I had to hoof it across the street to an ATM. Pretty embarrassing. Whoopsie.  

After this I began my walking tour of the Latin Quarter which consisted of me just taking off in the direction of it and getting lost.  That’s okay, though because I saw some cool stuff.  The fountain of San Michel depicting someone slaying a dragon, bunch of shops, la Sorbonne, and the Pantheon.  La Sorbonne was cool because I know some people who go to school there and a bunch of famous people have come through there.  From what I read it is France’s most prestigious or famous university or something.  I had to go to the Pantheon to pay my respects to those crazy revolutionary guys Voltaire, Hugo, and Rousseau.  They are entombed there.  They had such profound ideas that changed the world and now they’re just some dust in an old box that people pay 8 euros to take a picture of.  It made me feel very mortal.  So that was pretty cool.  

I saw videos of the Pantheon during WWII when there were soldiers marching all over it, which was bizarre.  WWII legacies are so real here, which may sound like an incredibly obvious statement, but I feel very much removed from it back home.  To stand in spots where it happened brings it home a little bit.  

Perhaps the most interesting event of the day happened when I was leaving the Pantheon walking back toward la Sorbonne.  It’s pretty obvious that traffic in Paris is just silly, so much so that I saw a man get run over in the street.  It scared the daylights out of me.  I’m waiting for the light to turn so I can cross the road (I’m way too scared to jay-walk and now I feel completely justified) and a woman turning the corner didn’t see a man crossing the street and she hit him. Just like in Superbad when Seth gets rammed by that weirdo in the liquor store parking lot.  I heard her scream, he fell down and rolled a few feet.  I was a bit taken aback and said “Oh my God.”  Upon hearing English, the people standing next to me who were from Alberta, Canada, struck up a conversation.  The guy noted that witnessing this completed the Paris experience.  Wow.  The poor guy ended up limping away, but it was still unsettling.  I felt like Lucy in A Room With A View when she sees the man get murdered in Italy.  Except no one has fallen in love with me and I don’t have a Baedeker.  

I walked back to Notre Dame and sat in the park reading and people watching for a solid hour.  It feels extremely nice to not worry about having to be anywhere.  

I decided to head back to Sam’s quarter to meet her at her job. I navigated the RER by myself successfully, and seeing as though I was early I went to a cute little bakery to get myself a treat.  I got the most delicious little pastry with chocolate creme in it, which was delish.  That is the picture at the top of the page.  This continent knows their pastries, man.  As I sat on a bench eating the heck out of my pastry I felt like Emily Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love when she eats the spaghetti.  I was painfully aware of my muffin top, but not so much so that I actually stopped eating this two tiered chocolate beauty.  I mean, I already paid for it.

Au Revoir.