Exploring Nautical Themes

I learned the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. The Netherlands is more like the region of the world (i.e. north) and the area brimming with canals and low land. So why are people and things from Holland called "Dutch?" The mystery remains.

My hostel receptionist sent me to find "The Library," which I assumed was like a big bar or tourist trap, but actually ended up being a library. The building is hyper-modern and very fabulous and they've filled it with 5 stories of books and contemporary technology, including chairs that follow you through the sitting room so you'll always have a place to sit. They also have computers that anyone may use whenever to surf the internet (they won't look at porn on them since it's not forbidden in their normal lives). The top floor is a good-priced restaurant where I will be having lunch. The Dutch word for "library"is "biblioteek." This should look familiar to any romance-languagers.

Last night I ate Indonesian food and drank whiskey while writing and looking again like the wacky foreigner, then met a Scottish guy who lives in Amsterdam and works as a debt collector and I asked him questions about Holland. Then someone stole two of my sweaters (sort of bizarre, actually. Like I know they were cute but come on.) and I went to sleep.

They have a bar in the library and a smoking terrace to be, you know, considerate of humans. I wish I weren't so hung up on Holland, but the whole damn city of Amsterdam is lined with canals and houseboats. This may become my new goal in life: houseboat in Amsterdam. It's sort of like a floating trailer, but totally charming.

Meeting my CS host tonight. She lives in the "hip neighborhood." I want to live there.

I still don't know what's going on with Tiger Woods and I've decided to completely stop following American politics since I'll be ex-pating any day now because of things like this: BEER BIKE.

Dutch Doors

One more thing! The Dutch believe in leaving their doors and windows open. This includes in winter. Every entrance to a building is something like a sliding door, an open archway, or some sort of inbetween lobby. It's fabulous.

The Hat

THIS HAT WAS 4 EUROS YES PLZ

Holland pt. Deux

Pretty much every single bar or cafe or "coffeeshop" here in Amsterdam has posted that no tobacco smoking is allowed by ordinance of the Europe-wide smoking ban beginning 1 July 2008. Then you wander off to the W.C. and notice an entire other room, either upstairs past a tiny ice cold black metal spiral staircase or perhaps down the tiny corridor to the sinks. This room will be full of chairs or couches and loud loud funky music, probably American hip hop or pop or minimalist electronica, and people will be sitting around smoking and watching crazy art videos or animated screensavers (of underwater scenes, matching the huge mural of mermaids and lionfish spraypainted over all four walls). This particular "coffeeshop" is called The Dolphins, so it's only appropriate. They have Wi-Fi, which is a plus for me since my hostel's WiFi doesn't work on my computer for whatever reason. It is necessary that I email my first and final CouchSurfing host, who I am to meet tomorrow. Her name is Maaike and she's very adorable and will hopefully like be there and answer her phone and not be insane.

I just went to go have a piercer change my septum ring and I asked him my standard questions: "Are you Dutch?" if yes, "Man I'd like to learn your language." If no, they proceeded to tell me why they moved here (world too corporate, bored at work, fascism, etc.) and I tell them that I don't blame them. The piercer practically spit when I mentioned France: "why don't they just fucking learn English like everybody else stuck-up bastards." I flinched only a little, mainly laughed since coming to Holland really proves that the French are really rude to every other European country by refusing to speak any language other than French to anyone. When they travel they speak French. How obnoxious is that.

On the other hand, I got stopped on the street today by this Dutch couple and they asked to take my picture for their fashion on the street assignment. !!! OK !!! I was wearing this new hat that I got at the flea market this morning. I will post a photo of it very soon.

I've been walking around all day feeling very positive and LOVING Amsterdam. It's FREEZING and everyone is SO FRIENDLY and cute and chill. I've decided it's a bit like Wilmington if it didn't have such a scene, plus Weaver Street and an independent movie theatre. Blend well, add winter. Voila! Amsterdam. People are friendly like in the South and open-minded like, well, the Dutch. They don't give a damn what you do, in fact they don't even have curtains in their huge Dutch windows in the apartments lining the canals. Because if you're doing something weird, everyone else is probably doing something else weird.

I just got myself really distracted by only being registered for 6 hours next semester until I realized that it doesn't matter at all since I'm going on the first days of the classes so duh. I hate week #1 and week #done the most out of every week of school since everyone is like ridiculously stressed and irritating. Luckily I still have 3 weeks before I have to go back to school. I still need a job, if anyone knows of anything I might like.

I'm almost done reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and am going to start a book of poems next, I think. Amsterdam is very cold and I walk everywhere, which is nice. I can't believe I'm going home on Tuesday and it's Friday what on Earth is happening? Christmas is in a week. Everyone is going to have to forgive me, I have run out of space in my suitcase to get more souvenirs for gifts, etc. I believe a dinner will have to be in order.

Anyway I'm about to read the news and make dinner. Maybe a sandwich of some kind...or soup from the sports bar, hmm.

Bisous.

Holland

So I might be sort of obsessed with the Dutch. The thing is that their design aesthetic is fabulously empty, with some black and some white and some beige. Everything from the amazing beige ones in the Van Gogh museum to the bar with a smoking ban, but only for tobacco.

Van Gogh and I bonded today in a way you wouldn't believe. I read about 200 pages of his letters in this fabulous English translation. My computer is nearly out of batteries and I'm busy watching football.

Bisous

Day of Marijuana Law Exploration

Holland: just weeks ago I did not know what the difference was between Holland and the Netherlands and so with great thanks to Wikipedia I learned. Holland is a part of the Netherlands, namely the northern part, which is where you will find one of many spectacularly cold and progressive Dutch cities called Amsterdam. The most famous aspects of the city are its canals, its chilled-out populace, its legalized prostitution, and, of course, its lax marijuana laws, making it possible for anyone over the age of 18 to purchase and smoke weed at one of the many many many "coffeeshops" scattered around the city. Now, native Amsterdammians (?) do not necessarily visit these coffeeshops, but the the population at large considers marijuana and even other soft, typically psychoactive, drugs to be perfectly acceptable options for intoxication. Like having a beer after work, you roll a spliff and cook dinner. It's pretty wonderful.

Anyway, during my little sejour at The Flying Pig Party Downtown Hostel last night, a hostel notorious for its extreme amounts of partying, I found that the Amsterdam international scene consists of the sort of "partying" that I did much more of in my high school days, including sitting in one room for hours and hours talking and smoking and drinking cheap beers and then staying up all night trying all sorts of psychoactives from the local herbologist and then passing out around 10am the next day. This to me for people ages 22+, not to mention 26+ is sort of desperate. I mean I of all people understand the need/want to party, but for instance one girl was relaying some adventures of hers in Italy etc. last year and bragging about having spent 800 Euros on piercings, tattoos, and hair dye on her trip. She was something like 29, but sounds remarkably like an 18-year-old to me. Congratulations that you did SO MUCH ECSTASY but, like, get a job. Also this self-righteous little brat from Israel was super-keen on trying to act discriminated against in every country in the Western World I was like are you kidding please get a job.

But I did meet some nice young people in their smoking room, a couple of kids from Colorado, another Canadian, another Australian. We chatted for a while, had some wine, smoked numerous spliffs. I went upstairs and watched half of 'The Dreamers,' more effecting since my Paris time has ended. Smoked a joint by myself in my room which I was sharing with three very tall Swiss-German boys and all their incomprehensible Swiss-German jokes. The weed that I bought was carefully selected after the "coffeeshop" owner across the street showed me every variety of weed that he had and taught me about pot law (not legal, but they always look the other way if you follows rules about amounts on the premises, under 18 statutes, cultivation, etc.), from the 2008 Cannabis Cup winner at 11.70 Euro per gram (a bit pricey, but just like back home really - Amsterdam weed is cheaper than you imagine) to the Royal Noir Afghani hash brick the color of tar and softness of leather. I chose "Blueberry Crush" since it reminded me of Ludacris and subsequently of Sunset Drive. Plus I found the buds, etc. to be quite fragrant and appetizing-looking. So, at the fairly good price of 7.90 Euro for a gram, I took one and proceeded to roll a little spliff with my new Dutch Drum tobacco and Dutch rolling papers.

Dutch is a hilarious language, kind of like English but harsher like German. The young men I met at the Marijuana Hemp and Hash Museum today who let me sample their vaporizer with crop from their huge grow operation on display behind them taught me some words in Dutch. One of the fellows was from Ohio and had moved to Amsterdam when W. got elected because he hated it so much. Now he manages a seed shop connected to the Museum selling these super-famous Dutch seeds made by Sensi Seeds. I asked the girl selling tickets how she liked her job and she said she loved it, and it wasn't just all the smoking, but the whole culture of pot in the Netherlands and their advocacy work for the utilization of hemp and their work with the crops. Jeezus. Sounds like a fun job to me. The museum itself was quite informative and interesting, with the Hemp Gallery down the street chronicling the history of hemp in the Netherlands, laid out in a super minimalistic and very Dutch sort of way with great electronica on the speakers. Got French and English translations of the signs around the museum and went through browsing lots of interesting history of Dutch "coffeeshops" and attitudes on the hemp plant.

Walking back to my hostel for a bit of relaxing and some supermarket searching (found one where the cashiers spoke English thank god; bought apples, clementines, loaf of crusty bread, CHEDDAR CHEESE, dried Dutch sausage (whatever, but it's delicious), some nuts, and pear juice), I unknowingly walked myself right into the middle of the infamous "Red Light District" where ladies of the night (or day) prance in windows along the street in tiny bikinis, wearing glasses or leather, but generally looking like normal ladies. I walked by and smiled at them, obviously not their desired customer. Got extremely lost looking for streetnames like Zeedijk and Sint Annenstraat (see, Dutch is kind of like English actually) and crept back into my Asian-owned hostel and sports bar The Globe Center (why "center?"). Now I'm posted up in the smoking room on my computer transferring money, blogging, drinking whiskey to combat the cold, and generally feeling like the wacky foreigner in the dark wooden bar in wintertime, here to overcome my crippling writer's block and find a Northern European lover. It's only half-incorrect.

Bisous for now.

The Dutch seem to value similar things to myself: casualness, general positivity, alternative forms of transit, making fun of themselves and everyone else, and beer. Also, they're really selling me on canals, which I am finding to be really lovely and full of ducks and swans even in the dead of winter.

"There's Like A Scene in My Hostel"

It’s five days in a row now that I’ve seen the sun come up, the most in succession since high school. Each day it’s to go somewhere new and as long as I can nap a bit on the way, I’m ready to go every morning by 7h30. This morning I found myself up at 5h30 off to Paris Gallieni international bus station to catch the 7h30 to Amsterdam. After printing my ticket at the 24-hour internet café near the Pantheon and after a few minutes freaking out that I hadn’t given myself enough time to switch metros 3 times AND because of the continuous strikes on the RER B I had to walk a few blocks to get on the 4 instead of just hopping on the train at Luxembourg like always.

So now I’m on the bus sitting next to two semi-bilingual Dutch boys, thinking about all of my international travel buddies and friends and that in one week I will be flying back to the States, back on my home soil for the first time in almost four months.

After all the madness that has been France, learning French, discovering that I like French, resenting French, being decent at French, etc., it has been really welcome to get out of Paris, dirty city of too many angry people, into places like Marrakech, dirty city of a lot of friendly people and too many tourists, and further into the real life of Morocco, albeit on a van full of tourists. However, our journeys to Ouarzazate, the Dadès Gorges, some villages in southeastern Morocco, and finally to the Sahara Desert allowed us a rare opportunity for Westerners to get to know even vaguely what life is like in a developing nation like Morocco. We learned to tie turbans and make mint tea, play Moroccan drums properly and say various curse words and questions in about 6 other languages.

Tuesday when I arrived at my hostel I met my Argentinean-living-in-London roommate Solé and the two of us went out to Moroccan dinner, as mentioned in my previous post. Our other roommate, a Finnish girl named Marina, was keen on napping through the evning and writing a letter to her 33-year-old girlfriend back in Finland. She had decided that she needed a vacation and up and left for Morocco for three weeks, including through Christmas, to the dismay of her girlfriend. She had also chosen to tell her mother that she was flying to South Africa to learn English for a few weeks, knowing that there was no way on earth her mother would let her come to Morocco by herself. These conflicting wishes along with a day of flying from extreme cold to actual sunlight must have been exhausting, so an evening sleeping in Marrakech, while typically a faux pas, was in this case well-deserved.

Upon our return back to our hostel there was a boy who had arrived and was chatting with the hostel owner (a very kind be-scarved woman) in French, much to my joy and delight. Yes! Someone to practice with! I proceeded to hop on the computer immediately, checking email, Facebook, and of course blogging a bit while Solé and Christian the Australian and French "bloke" on summer "holiday" from “uni” in Canberra (remember, the Southern Hemisphere’s seasons are reversed) chatted a bit about Morocco and their plans and consulted Christian’s copy of Lonely Planet: Morocco, which would become our bible over the next 5 days.

The four of us proceeded to get extremely lost, meet some locals and translate what they were saying in French into English for the non-French enthusiasts, learn about spices, visit various palaces, eat more tajines and couscous than you can possibly imagine, and generally enjoy one another’s company to the point that when Solé and Christian expressed interest in taking a weekend excursion to the desert and Marina followed suit, I didn’t have any interest in staying in Marrakech without them. Not to mention that Timothy “You Can Call Me Mister” Spencer had arrived at our hostel, swinging a Jack Daniels bottle and his misogynistic ways about. A former heroin trafficker and long-time traveler and wooer of women, Mr. Spencer took a liking to Christian and told him his entire life story while chain-smoking cigarettes in the night. After one too many stories of fucking Portuguese prostitutes on the beach and running from Interpol, along with other debaucherous activities, Mr. Spencer told Christian that he couldn’t believe that he was in bed with one of the girls, and Christian took this opportunity to get the hell out, saying that he might as well try to get with one of us, grabbing his sleeping bag, and coming to sleep in our room. Needless to say, Mr. Spencer was sure proud that he could bolster the sexual confidence of a strapping young fellow such as Christian, and proceeded to get drunk the entire next day, much to the terror and irritation of our Islamic hostel staff, and he was asked to leave the next night. In the meantime, the four of us went to a contemporary art museum in an ancient palace, ate more delicious tajines, planned our trip to the Sahara, discovered the only bar in town, and Marina and Solé tried Orangina for the first time.

Also we exchanged many a story, including family recipes, native cuisines, and breakfasts around the world.

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It’s really amazing how much cheaper everything is anywhere outside of Paris. Currently at a Shell station somewhere in Belgium (which is a super-weird language if you’ve never seen it before, such as “hot water” = “heet water.” Oh. OK.) and everyone is grabbing paninis and beers for the remaining hour and a half ride, including the two gorgeous Dutch boys next to me. I’ve been asleep almost the entire way, save trying to use the disgusting toilets on the bus (weirder than any toilets in Morocco) and having an Arabic man moo at me because of my septum ring. I replied politely in English, “sir I’m pretty sure you look much more like a cow than I ever could, what with being about 70 pounds overweight and all,” smiled, and sat back down. The joys of an American accent. I guess we’re near Antwerpen because I keep seeing it on signs everywhere. I suppose we’ll be in Amsterdam fairly soon, we’ve been driving about 5 hours and it keeps getting colder and there’s snow all over the ground except for when we go into cities to pick up other passengers, including a lot of French people all through Belgium. Though I guess they speak French here too now that I think about it. In fact, all Europeans speak more than one language since their equivalent of driving to Virginia requires knowledge of an entire new set of verb conjugations just to be able to read road signs (see: France to Germany). Inside the Shell station a Spanish boy was asking for a Belgian sandwich and upon realizing that he spoke no Belgian, the cashier immediately asked “Français? Espanol? English?” Of course by now we all know Tarantino’s joke from “Inglourious Basterds,” where the German actress exasperatedly interrogates Brad Pitt as to if he knows any other language than English, and when of course he doesn’t, it’s a given since he’s an American and none of us do. This is something we must remedy, and everyone should learn at least Spanish and maybe Canadian French and Arabic. This includes me actually.

The bus driver has put on te second film of our trip. The first was “Wild Hogs,” in which William H. Macy, Tim Allen, Cedric the Entertainer (?), and John Travolta have a midlife crisis and take a motorcycle trip. Or something inane like that. We watched it in French. Now we’re watching “Step Up” or one of those movies like that with dancing and bad hip hop and Channing Tatum that stupid actor who looks like a soldier in every film he’s ever done. Movies like this make American look bad, and as the only American on this bus, I resent the choice. On that note, one woman was speaking English to me to tell me what to do in like for the toilettes at the gas station so I just replied in French. If you insist on being a bitch to me, I will plead ignorance.

In Amsterdam, busy meeting strange people including my three massive German roommates.

Bisous.

International Players' Ball

Back in Paris in the flat of my lovely Danish girlfriend from CCF Sophie, where this evening we have made dinner (spicy vegetarian tomato pasta dish yummm with bread - obviously - and smoked salmon, and wine for the first time in too many days) and watched Harold & Maude (my perennial film of choice to share with fellow moviegoers such as myself), followed by watching of Palme d'Or winner trailers and Lady Gaga music videos. She lives on Rue Monge with an older Polish woman in a very French apartment with big windows and a Christmas tree. I am sleeping in the living room with the Christmas tree (frankly a nice change of pace from an Islamic country) and will be awakening in about 3 hours to catch a bus to Amsterdam. My strategy with early morning travel is as follows: stay up as late as you can with the people you love and then sleep en route in the morning. That was my M.O. staying up until 3 last night watching "Slumdog Millionaire" with my Morocco gang, and I subsequently slept the entire flight into CDG by pulling down my tray table and covering my head with my winter coat and passing out for 3.5 hours.

With regards to Morocco, it's going to take me a long time to write up all the joy and thrills of our time in the Kingdom, and I say "our" as opposed to "my" since, by the grace of Allah or perhaps just the travel gods, I stumbled upon the most wonderful group of people one can possibly find in an impossible-to-find, last-minute hostel one's first time in a developing nation. Much more to be said on them and our myriad adventures later. In the meantime, you may view said escapades via my Facebook album entitled "Morocco," filled with the glory and cold that is North African winter.

Bisous, and hopefully my 8-hour bus ride will provide sleep and a looong post au sujet de Maroc.

Souq On This!

Dinner last night consisted of walking through Jama’a el-Fna square through the enormous numbers of food stalls that they set up every night at sunset. There are around 100 and every stall sends out a bunch of men dressed in chef uniforms to track down hungry looking people and get then to eat at their stall. Each menu is in about 16 different languages from Japanese to Portuguese and further, and every single man speaks every single language. It was pretty incredible. The girl I met at my hostel speaks Spanish and Italian as well as English (she’s from Argentina but lives in London) and I speak French and English (the two most useful languages here other than Arabic – by far). I feel very accomplished lapsing from French to English and back again with everyone we meet. Every time we were stopped by another chef they asked where we were from and when I said America every single one said “That’s what I’m talking about!” or “Obama!” accompanied by a thumbs-up. Of course.

Our menu: 2 tomato salads, one filled with hot peppers, the other very light and fresh with just a bit of pepper, a large, thick, pita-type bread as a utensil, a tajine with various squashes, cabbage, chickpeas, and LAMB, an olive salad (which I actually ate some of, shockingly), a salad of rice, cucumber, potatoes, tomatoes, and beets, and delicious Moroccan mint tea, and of course Coke Light. Oh. My. God. So delicious and amazingly fresh. All of our chefs spoke French and English, as well as the other 14 languages, and insisted that we take photos with them wearing their chef hats and “working” i.e. scooping chickpeas onto a little saucer.

Came back to the hostel, got on the internet, and talked with our fellow travelers about Marrakech and how cold our hostel is at night, only to realize that it's because there is no roof, just a courtyard with rooms surrounding it and the ceiling open to the sky. A. Mazing.

Woke up at 11 this morning and prepared myself for a long day of getting supremely lost in the very hot sun, including layers, maps, camera, water bottle, tobacco, and sneakers. Since my 3 hour trip from sketchy CS host's house yesterday with 20 kilos of luggage, my feet are fucking torn up, as will always happen when you add 20 kilos to your weight and walk through a dusty-ass, rocky and very hot city in Africa searching for a place with no street signs or numbers. Sneakers were essential today. I had made plans with my roommates from Argentina and Finland to go exploring the markets north of Jama'a el-Fna square (very near our hostel) for jewelry, leather bags, dyed fabrics, meat, olives, and spices. We met a boy from Australia last night who is also traveling, meeting his family in Paris for Christmas, and speaks fluent French, and he joined us for an afternoon of exploration. First the girls and I had breakfast ('petit dejeuner,' of course) which consisted of mint tea (Moroccan tradition), fresh orange juice, chocolate croissants, and crepes (though a bit rougher than the traditional French) with honey and butter. This all cost us 18 dirham (1 Euro 80), which would have run about 9 Euros in Paris. Excellent.

We drank our tea, fended off a bunch of bees (it was around 80 degrees - ahh!!), and learned a bit of Arabic from our funny waiter. People here are extremely friendly and while most tourists seem to take this cheerful and helpful attitude as a scam to make money, it's actually just people being legitimately interested in where you're from and excited to hear about why you're visiting their country. They like to learn other languages and ask you questions, and once they start saying lewd things it's really easy to just laugh and walk off. I was telling Christian from Australia about how the whole experience of being in a place so outside of your zone of norms is making me feel much more confident about my abilities to figure things out. i.e. I keep thinking about how other girls from the Consortium program would have dealt with Jamal and the entire country. It makes me laugh and it keeps me sane when I feel totally lost and baffled.

We then proceeded to get ourselves lost in the souqs, or markets, in the Northern region of the city. These tiny stone alleyways wind and twist for what seems like ever, and our running joke was the impossibility of giving directions in a place like this: "Yeah, you go under the arched doorway, past the stall full of silver jewelry, then when you see a booth full to the brim of leather bags of every color, take a right. Then you'll see a bunch of tea pots and dinnerware on your left, pass the embroidered tunics and the leather sandals and the old Moroccan men drinking tea and fixing bikes and you're there. If you get to the chicken carcasses hanging from hooks next to the Mosque you've gone too far." The joke is that every single area of the general souqs can be described exactly like this. Over and over again. It's pretty amazing. So, we got extremely lost, decided to find our way to the Musee de Marrakech, near, yes, a mosque and some leather bags. The museum was gorgeous, with an astonishing contemporary art exhibit of collaged scrapbooks and paintings of various parts of the world, from India to the USSR. There were couches all over the place and the descriptions of things and history were all in French and Arabic so we translated for the non-French speakers among us, in the meantime learning a lot about the history of the Kingdom of Morocco.

Then we wound our way back to the square for a mint tea and a bit of a rest at the hostel before heading back out to brave the crowds for dinner at one of the many tents again.

Dinner menu: Lamb tajine (again), lamb couscous, fried shrimp (actually fried, not battered in flour and overcooked), bread, tomato salads, chicken & delicious frites, grilled aubergine, lentil and spice soup, and water. We chose a different stall than last night and shared everything in true Moroccan fashion, eating with our hands and licking our fingers unabashedly.

After dinner we decided to find a bar in this land where it is illegal to drink alcohol within sight of a mosque (i.e. everywhere, though that law is gratefully and largely unenforced). More on the search for beer later.

Bisous!

Africa Pt. 2

Better now, got internet. Got a hostel and some cool international roommates. Love how I figure things out for myself.

Africa Pt. 1

It’s a good thing I decided to come travel after being in Paris for three months considering that there is no way in hell I could get around Marrakech sans-Arabic unless I spoke French. All signs are bilingual in French and Arabic and no one at the airport spoke any English at all and just stared at me when my French failed and I would trail into oblivion.

It took me awhile to figure out that the best way to find my host, Jamal, would be to buy internet access at the airport and then call him from Skype, but once I did, I caught the bus to the central square of the city where the Annual International Film Festival is taking place and walked through a park of homeless people pissing on benches to find the POSTE MAROC (what Jamal told me was like a café, but is actually a post office). Luckily, he didn’t have any trouble recognizing me (I’m the only person for miles with blond hair and a septum ring) and we took a bus to his place, from where I am writing now. It’s pretty unbelievably different from Paris, the States, and any other place I’ve ever been in my life. Every woman wears a headscarf (obviously, since this is a Muslim country) and even the cats look African.

It’s super strange to be in Africa, and even though Jamal’s English is pretty good, I’m completely surrounded by a language that I cannot decipher a single word, or even letter of. It’s pretty beautiful to look and listen to but I’m at a total loss for comprehension. Jamal just went out to buy us something for dinner and some wine or beer to drink and relax with. I’ve had quite a long day of being forced to check my hand luggage and listening to children scream and cry on the plane the entire way here so it’s nice to be able to relax (even though his housemates were listening to Linkin Park upon my arrival. Help.). There’s obviously no WiFi here so I’ll be writing posts in advance and posting them when I get the chance to access the internet (which I’m kind of thinking will be a rarity here). I am very low on cash and therefore I will be living this sort of nomadic lifestyle (like a true CouchSurfer, hahaha!) with limited showering, purchasing, and internet accessing.

Also Marrakech is an hour behind Paris, which I didn’t realize at all, and after being on the plane for almost 4 hours I was really confused why we hadn’t landed. Duh. It’s extremely warm here (just like home) and there are shittons of palm trees and sand. Speaking of sand, from the plane window I could see the sun setting over the fucking Sahara Desert. It was pretty wild and unbelievably beautiful. I am in Africa, after all.

Tomorrow I’m going to learn how to prepare Moroccan tea and we’re going to smoke “water pipe” which is hookah. Gotta love the international words for smoking, haha.

Anyway, Jamal’s in college for “hospitality and tourism,” whatever that means, and he waits tables at a restaurant here in Marrakech, so he appreciates my obsession with food. Hopefully we’ll be able to spend some good times together over food and drink.

So the night continued and I watched music videos with Jamal’s roommates, laughing and belly dancing very badly. Jamal made dinner and then we went on a walk through his neighborhood, which was full of homeless dogs and mules grazing, along with millions of scooters and even more stares. I thought people looked at me a lot in Paris. It was really fun though and we talked the whole time and seemed to share a lot of similar interests, everything from cooking to Marxism (his parents are socialists too, haha!) and his resemblance to Barack Obama. Needless to say, I was really happy to have found such a cool host. Little did I know…

It’s a good thing also that I have such a healthy sense of humor and a high tolerance for pain, because it turned out that Jamal was, as most people in the world are, batshit insane. His extreme activity on CouchSurfing is apparently due to his inability to find a girlfriend and he meets as many people as he can in order to fill up the hole of emptiness inside or something. Last night we were drinking wine and eating the delicious dinner he made (tomatoes, onions, olives, and sardines, to be eaten with bread as utensils as is the Moroccan way) and all of a sudden in the middle of our hookah he starts telling me all about how sad he is all of the time and how lonely and how he’s so happy to have met someone as kind as me. And then he starts to cry and tell me how much he loves me. What. The. Fucking. Shit. So I just decided to go to sleep and worry about it today but as I was laying down he kept poking me and wanting to talk about his feelings. I was pretty much totally sick of the psychosis of humans after a day of flying and being in airports with them so I sat up and told him that he was being a fucking shitty CouchSurfing host and that if he wanted to use CS to find a psychiatrist and a girlfriend that he should go ahead and quit now because that was fucking ridiculous. Then I told him to respect my feelings and my exhaustion and to shut the fuck up. Politely, of course, since he was nice enough to host me.

But this morning he was just as annoying, wanting to talk about how wonderful I am etc etc and I was frankly just done dealing with it so I made him take me to an internet café where I looked up a hostel in centre-ville and told Jamal that I was going to meet my friends in the main square of the city. I walked with him to meet his Turkish CS friends, who I’m sure he’s had no trouble creeping out by now, and then back to his house to grab my heavy ass bags and leave. Then I walked about 5 miles from Jamal’s house to Jama’a el Fna square (which I will describe better once I am done with this insane story), having to stop 4 times to gasp for breath and drink water on this 80-degree day while carrying the bags that I wasn’t planning on picking up again until this weekend. My feet are basically bleeding and I’m hungry and my map of the city does not include where I am currently staying and the woman running the hostel speaks bad French and no English.

So obviously I’m a little upset. This was what I feared so much upon arriving here yesterday, having my CS host be insane and absolutely NOT conducive to a fun and interesting stay in Morocco, being lost, being confused, being hungry and tired and not being able to read any signs. And now, despite what HostelWorld dot com told me as I searched desperately for a place to stay with internet and a kitchen, this hostel whose name I still don’t know does not have internet access at all, wifi or otherwise. So not only am I now lost, hungry, confused, pissed, and broke, but I am lonely and unable to email my mother like I promised that I would. Nor blog about any of this horseshit. I understand that I am in Africa but all I really want is to check my email and go eat a tajine and watch snake charmers. And check my fucking email. I think that if I go out and take some pictures and buy myself some groceries that I will feel much better, not to mention that this hostel is GORGEOUS. I just wish that I could have started my sejour in Marrakech on a much better note than this. It wouldn’t have taken much.

Farewell CCF

Pre-exam morning: terror + tea = recipe for success. I have your number, indirect pronouns.

Je voudrais un croissant

Tales

Thanksgiving feast in action; Me and Sally in some kitchen action; Yo La Tengo; thing at a construction site in the 2e; door at l'Orange Mecanique; doors at the beach in Normandy; Abby looking for something in Cluny-La Sorbonne

Taking Stock - and I'm Not Talking Chicken

Upon re-packing a bit (sad) and doing some laundry, here's a list of what I should have done with regards to packing:

#1. Gotten lace-up boots before I left the states. In the meantime, my Toms got rained on, my French boots proved to suck badly, and I spent a LOT of time on eBay trying to win some lace-up boots until the good folks at Etsy proved much more reliable.

#2. Ix-nay on the heels, ladies. I brought a pair and have worn them once, cut my feet so badly that I wore my sneakers for a week, then once more to the Opera. Should have brought cute flats in order to run through the metro whenever necessary. Not black ones, but maybe red? Don't try to tell me you can't wear those with socks.

#3. Scarves. Girls in France wear big huge scarves and wrap them around their faces a million times, but not so high that they can't smoke cigarettes. By about late October, it's certainly chilly enough to want a scarf-situation but not necessarily a winter coat, so bring a huge knit scarf and wrap it around your neck until it's thick like an anaconda. The scarves I bought here, while cute and large, and therefore warm, tend to, um, leak dye all over my neck and chin and turn me, respectively, Kelly green or turquoise. Not the most attractive nor beneficial quality.

#4. Pants that, um, actually fit me. The belt-and-tucked-in-shirt thing can't work in every situation. Luckily, I was kindly informed of a discount store with a penchant for trousers, and subsequently found The France Pants. But the re-sewn black jeans have proved hopeless, the sweatshirt-material shorts to sleep in make my French family laugh more than anything else, and some mornings are too cold for just tights.

#5. Fancy bra, you do not belong in Paris. Well, not in the life a 20-year-old broke student anyway. You're nice, and I got you at Ross: Dress For Less, but I should have left you at home with my Dr. Dre blanket.

#6. Damn you summer. When I left you, I didn't think I would be essentially leaving you in Chapel Hill. And when I arrived it was quite warm still. That is, for about 2 weeks. Then all of the sleeveless tanks and short-sleeved cardigans were rendered useless, though my stunning lack of jorts is welcomed.

#7, Should have brought waaaayyy more books. Reading Russian poetry and my host dad's comic book collection, along with the last novel my parents sent me. Good thing I like to read travel guides so much.

#8. Should. Have. Brought. Toilettes edition: Q-Tips, um eyeshadow, um mascara, um lipstick, um what was I thinking. More Aleve.

Bisous.

It Helps to Clarify the Bizarre

Listening: Yo La Tengo - I Feel Like Going Home; Bon Iver - Blindsided; Beyonce - Upgrade U (ft. Jay-Z); Beach House - Home Again; St. Vincent - Save Me From What I Want

Reading: Quinn's Book - William Kennedy

Thanksgiving: Last Thursday, as most of you Americans know, was Thanksgiving (or, as I and the 21st century will be calling it, "Thxgiving"). Now, the French do not celebrate Thxgiving for obvious reasons, nor do they even know about that it is one of the most important American holidays, allowing for Christmas music to be played, family to be eaten with and despised secretly, and the capitalist glory of Holiday Shopping to commence with Black Friday. So, upon my packing a bag full of wine, spices, money, and other ingredients, my host dad, staying home with La Grippe A (aka Swine Flu) asked me what the big occasion was and I responded jovially, "Thxgiving!"

I don't really know how to translate this into French, so I then said..."Le jour de...remercier?" My dad laughed, said he understood, and to have a good time skipping class (how did he know?? Must have been all the wine...). So off I went to my last day of Cinema where M. Bondurand had promised us croissants since he had to cancel dinner because of La Grippe A and we discussed our last film, discussed the class, listened to certain people in the class with no social skills prove it again and again saying things like "well, I mean, I easily understood the concept but I'm sure no one else did." (Just one of many examples.) Then came our last conversation class, where we tried to explain Thxgiving to Bondurand and people were really eager to explain things like sweet potatoes with marshmallows (he was frightened, and that's putting it lightly) and some people still think you pronounce 3rd person plural "EELS," and after 3 months in France you should really know that the "S" is silent. I, however, was in a chipper mood thinking about grocery shopping and cooking and was super-chatty in Convo, then more chatty once Sally came to meet Abby & me to go to The Grand Epiceries for international grocery shopping.

This grocery store was basically my idea of heaven. About the size of an average Home Depot and filled to the brim with bulk spices, teas, and coffees, international goods (from America to Laos and beyond), fresh bread, an enormous liquor/beer/wine section (including a 5,000 Euro bottle of champagne!), fresh fish, meats, and (of course) cheeses. I could have stayed there for the rest of my stay in Paris and been quite happy. We bought all the ingredients necessary for our afternoon of cooking (and the alcohol to accompany said afternoon) and snuck off to Saint Lazare to take the super-weird suburban train to chez Sally.

Upon arrival, we put on Lady Gaga, I donned an apron, and we commenced.

Our menu:

Stuffed Mushrooms with Spinach, Onions, Feta, EVOO

Cranberry Sauce w/ Cointreau

Sweet Potato Casserole w/ Marshmallows & Bourbon

Hand-torn French Bread Dressing w/ Walnuts & Dried Cranberries

Lemon & Butter-Rubbed Chicken w/ Roasted Onions

Pecan Pie

The next four hours are a blur of alcohol, iTunes playlists, burning ourselves (and our poor pie), and stubborn sweet potatoes (not yams!). Dinner was overall a large success with no major casualties (even the pie was pretty good!) and Sally's wonderful host family was kind enough to compliment us profusely on the deliciousness of our weird American traditions (i.e. soggy hot bread with stuff in it and MARSHMALLOWS wtf).

Normandy: On Saturday afternoon after sleeping my typical 13 hours, I woke to make myself a sandwich and some tea, thinking that my host mom for sure forgot that she told me that we'd be going to Normandy this weekend, since it was already the afternoon and she wakes up at 5h30 every day to go do things while I and her sons sleep. But she returned from the boulanger with 14 loaves of bread for a week of family life and was ecstatic that I had awakened, asked if I would be ready to go in an hour. Sure! I said. I packed, we took the train and chatted about "fifi" girls and lots of fun things that girls get to talk about, like the difference between a boyfriend and a lover or if there is one. It was nice to get away from the boys for a weekend, and I think for her as well since her entire life is her three sons, her husband, her job with lots of dumb ladies her age that act my age. She doesn't really get to have any girl time except on the phone with her sister.

We arrived in Caen after 2 hours on the train from Saint Lazare (each train station in Paris departs for a different direction of France based on where it is in the city, i.e. Gare du Nord goes to North of France, Gare Montparnasse in the south sends trains South, etc.) and walked to Marie's brother's apartment in downtown. It was raining and cold but we were jolly and I could smell salt in the air since Caen is a port city (holla). Marie's brother got a head injury in an accident about ten years ago and is subsequently mentally and physically handicapped, usually walking with a cane and unable to think of words and so will just point and use the same basic phrases. Kind of like me in French, actually. He was really fun and sweet and has a great sense of humor about his predicament, laughing loudly with Marie whenever he says the wrong word or she has no idea what he's talking about.

She and I walked around downtown, she showed me where her father had opened his first boulangerie, we smoked cigarettes and took pictures of city hall, saw some churches, a chateau, got pizza, watched a French game show, and "went to sleep" aka she coughed for three hours and I couldn't fall asleep. But the next day we went to the Caen Market and bought a big-ass fresh chicken, 2 dozen oysters, clementines, bread, and more bread. I lied to Marie and said that I had shucked an oyster before. I've seen them do it on Top Chef, does that count? But I reeaaaaallly wanted her to let me do it. So she did, and I did awesome. Shucked oysters like it was my job. I could have that be my job, actually.

We ate them raw for lunch with some potatoes and carrots and of course bread and butter and alcohol, as the French do on Sundays. Then we had a coffee, drove to the beach with her their 85-year-old father, had a beer and some brioche, came back to Caen and caught the train home, chatting like girls all the way.

It was nice to see a part of France outside of Paris and outside of the horror that is the group trip. Luckily, our last group event will be Saturday night in Montparnasse, and in between noon when my French exam finishes and 19h30 when we meet our group, I will be drinking, which will make everything about that situation more tolerable.

Saw Yo La Tengo with Abby on Monday night in Oberkampf. It was fun, we were pretty drunk, I met a cute British girl

This morning we took our "Promenades" test, upon which I'm pretty sure I knew not a single answer. Something about architects and intellectual movements of chateaus. All and all it was fucking stupid just like the fucking program construction so I basically didn't give a shit at all and made up a bunch of answers and laughed at them while everyone else in the room freaked out heavily. Pass/fail, bitches. Then we had to fill out an evaluation form on our host families (glowing reviews from me) and Sally, Abby, and I walked around until 12h when we could get some lunch somewhere. Then I came home, watched some movies, napped, went grocery shopping (brain food, y'all, i.e. French dark chocolate cookies, apples, some kind of crunchy thing, juice to ward off La Grippe), and now I am wondering what I should eat for dinner, what movie I should watch next as part of my studying for Cinema tomorrow morning, and responding to my CouchSurfing hosts in Marrakech & Amsterdam. All in all, thrilled.

Bisous!