a beautiful weekend

so this has been a ridiculously packed weekend.

yesterday, a group of us met up for an early breakfast and a day trip into fes. after trekking down to the grand taxi stand on the backside of the marche, piling into said grand taxi, and staring out of the window for an hour as the landscape of morocco whizzed by, we found ourselves on the side of a bustling fassi street, surrounded by heaps of people all extremely confident of their destination and the appropriate directions. we, on the other hand, gathered together to pore over our lonely planet guides and sort out the way to fes-el-bali, the old city whose walls contain the world-famous medina. needless to say, after a few moments time, everything was mzien (good), and off we went!

there are countless stories i could tell from my day there - like how we ended up in the middle of a residential neighborhood and took to a little bit of moutain-climbing to make our way back to bab bou j'loud or what the medina was like or about the pickpocket we encountered (and walked away with all of our possessions) - but the truth is, it's more than a little daunting to try to record all of that her. simply said, you must experience it for yourself - the winding corridors of vendor stalls with their propietors hanging out in the path eager to catch your eye and lure you inside - the way the adobe walls change colors with the shifting sun - the families who begin to come out at dusk to slowly walk the plaza and have a sit on the steps - the smells of roasted meat, candied nuts, and mint tea...it was truly wonderful in many respects.

today, again, was a bit of an adventure. a small group of us - tony, eva, stiv, ghassan, sanae, and myself - set out before the crack of dawn to walk the 20 or so kilometers from aui to azrou, the town next door. we had bought fruit and cheese and peanut butter and all sorts of things the evening before on our way back from fez, and armed with these things, our water, some money, and our cameras - we embarked on our walking adventure. we wandered through the countryside, stopping here and there for some breathtaking photos (check out my online album: http://picasaweb.google.com/lauren.fadely). all told, it took us about five hours, and worth every second of it.

now back in my room, and looking forward to the beginning of the week, one thing that stands out to me from both days of adventuring are the kids that i encountered. i really love kids, and they are easily my favorite part of any place that i go. there's something universal about children and their willingness to simply be themselves and accept others as themselves. i encountered some really wonderful kids in fes yesterday - like the group of thirty or so first graders who suddenly appeared out of nowhere and filled the little allyway i was walking in, surrounding me and those around me with their smiling and open faces. "bonjour!" "asalaam!" rang out in a chorus of voices as little hands raised themselves for high-fives and handshakes. or like the little girl, mounia, who i met today on the walk.

we came upon a group of boys of all ages playing football in a little pitch on the side of the road. stiv and tony stopped off to play for a while, and i found myself next to this little girl - not more than seven or eight - the only girl amongst this swarm of boys and delegated to the sidelines as the rest of them played with their makeshift football. i offered her a clementine from my bag, and she returned the favor with a wonderful smile. je m'appelle elle, i said. nothing - french was out. siimtii elle, i tried instead with the help of sanae. there - that was it. mounia, she replied. zwiin, i said in return - pretty. she flashed me her little white smile once again, and then one last time again as i waved b'asalaama when we later continued on our journey.

i would trade all of the silver and gold of fes for that beautiful little girl in a heartbeat. lets just say she made my weekend...

classes started and mosques visited

yesterday was my first day of classes, and here's the brief run-down:

8.00 - islamic civilisation - started off with a bang of sorts. time rolled around, and i was in class and then so was the professor...but no one else. we waited (and stared at each other or, actually tried not to stare at each other) for a few minutes before he threw a tantrum of sorts and cancelled class. extra hour and a half to run over to the library and check emails...

11.00 - arabic i for beginners - in a nutshell: the most fun i've had in class in a very long time. i have a little moroccan professor named abrihim, and he's the cutest, most adorable little old man i have ever met. in our first class we covered some basic greetings and learned to read and write the six vowel sounds and the three basic consonants. at the end of the lesson, we has our first complete word: bab which means "door" in english - practical, huh? i have to say, though, there's nothing more exhilerating than to see so clearly knowledge enter and take root in your mind.

14.00 - political anthropology - a relatively intense professor, but not anything out of the norm for bc. the class will be relatively easy work-wise, only five short papers, and a mandatory field trip to volubilis, the ancient roman city in morocco - how cool is that? what is political anthropology, you ask? it's apparently the study of the development of political structures, and particularly the aspects of the communities out of which they were born. i think it will be a really enlightening class...

15.30 - history and culture of the berber people - oh my goodness...professor peyron, of this class, might actually be in a dead heat race for my favorite professor, and it's a tough match. a lovely, ramblingly loquacious english chap whose provencal french father gave him that...whatever it is that makes french things french. the opening lecture consisted of eighty or so black and white photographs of his early travels in the middle and high atlas in the 1960's and his encounters with the amazigh (berber) people there that would spark a life-long process of learning berber language, studying and documenting their history and culture, and translating and commenting on berber epic poetry. my kind of guy, for sure. who else would say, "ah, here we are. some bucolic scenes of a similar vein..."

and i'm done with class! i rush over to the morocco-guinea football match, only to be tortured to death by the lack of the lead player from tuesday's match, soufiane alloudi. we could barely hold it together against the guinean defensive players who made me think i was watching american football by the way they rampaged the field. a painfully close 3-2 loss...

and today? today i spent the morning sorting out my silly bankcard who had frozen itself because it forgot that i had told it (the bank, actually, not the card itself) that i was going to be in morocco and that i was planning to use it from time to time. i mixed a little of my homework into the process, and then met up with eva and a moroccan student, sara, who had offered to host us for friday prayer at the mosque on campus.

i won't go into detail this time around, but let me just say that it was a beautiful, peaceful, enlightening experience. i sat silently in the back of the women's section, listening to the droning sound of the imam's arabic voice exhorting the students to a good and proper life, and watched the scarved and silent figures around me. there was no doubt of the devotion evident in their faces, and i was moved to see the love i feel for my lord and savior echoed in these women and their prayerful attendence to allah. as i have said to many people many times before, i do not ascribe to the thought that there is really only one mountain and many paths to the top - that seems to me to devalue, in a way, everyone's journey. but in the same breath, i acknowledge the reality that my finiteness does not allow me to possibly comprehend the mysterious designs of my heavenly father, and therefore i will not dare to assume a throne of judgement lest i be placed in front of it myself. what does all of this mean, exactly? i'm not even sure i know, but i do know that i had a really wonderful lunch (couscous and vegetable tajine) with this gracious student afterward in which we were both exceedingly open about our own faiths and our own prejudices, and it was a beautiful thing.

the afternoon brought a trip to neighboring azrou and my first taste of what morocco may actually be like once one leaves the european-villa-ed hamlet of ifrane, and that little amuse bouche puts me in a very good place for the experience of fes tomorrow...

football matches and footsore

i saw my first moroccan football match the other day. the africa cup of nations is currently underway, and the day before yesterday the campus was abuzz with red and green as the moroccan team geared up to face namibia at the stadium in ghana. one of the academic buildings (where many of the orientation lectures were held) was opened up, and the large screen and projector were put to good use as over a hundred students crammed in to the auditorium to cheer on their team. i've never experienced anything like it, and let's just say i absolutely cannot wait until the next football match in a few days' time. i'm not sure who we'll (because obviously i'm rooting for morocco) be playing - but it's bound to be an intensely energetic experience. from everyone jumping up and cheering wildly at every goal, to yelling shuk-pa (essentially "in the net" or "goal") repeatedly as the players neared their target. i'll definitely have to get in on all of the various songs for each of the players, most definitely upheld as prominent social figures - today i even saw a young student here whose hair had been cut to mimic one of the more prominent players, chamarkh. get excited...

last night, the orientation leaders had organized a sort of treasure hunt that would let the new students not only mix and mingle but also learn their way around campus. a hint given by one of the leaders would take you to a building where you would have to answer a questions about the university correctly before receiving another hint that would take you to another location, twelve steps in all. two other international students and myself joined up with three moroccan freshman girls: selma, nahjwa, and sahfa. what basically ensued was about an hour of running pell-mell all over campus, becoming completely winded on more than one occasion, and me really regretting my choice of black flats for shoes. but it really was so much fun, and although we missed winning by legitimately five seconds, it was well worth it.

today there was a group outing organized to take all the new students to michlifen, a ski area about an hour or so away from her, higher up in the middle atlas. it hasn't snowed here in a few weeks, so there was basically only a few patches of ice - probably not the best conditions for me to learn downhill skiing for the first time! i opted for a nice hike instead - heading up one of the dry ski slopes with a few of the international students. really gorgeous views. not having spent a whole lot of time in mountainous areas before, i still can't get over how absolutely clear the sky is, and the air in general, for that matter.

i've put the first of my pictures (all essentially from the trip today) up on picasa. the link is:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lauren.fadely in the album titled asalaam alaykum - check it out!

looking forward to the next few days, and my first travel adventure this weekend...

first adjustments and a reflection on growth

well, this is different.
i opened my web-browser and everything's in arabic. earlier today i got a new sim card for my phone, and now it is all in french. i don't know how to change either of them back, so i suppose the learning has begun!
so i have arrived, safe, sound, in one piece, with all my luggage.
things i have adjusted well to so far: the time difference (6 hours later than home), the altitude (5000 feet above sea level), the new faces (i think i have all the names of the other international students down), and the food (had a fantastic lunch during my excursion into downtown ifrane earlier today).
things still on my list of adjustments: language (the french here is much more difficult to understand and i'm completely lost in arabic), my room (i havne't quite figured out how to turn the heater on, so last night i slept in three layers of clothes, two blankets, and my sleeping bag), the culture (infinitely more complex than french and arabic put together!).
but, all in all, i must say i've had a really lovely day. i just have to shake myself every once in a while and remind myself that i'm actually doing this - that i'll be here for the next four months. that by the end of the semester that guy at the lunch counter in town will probably know my name and we might actually have a conversation without the facilitation of hatim or any of the other moroccan students. more than anything, with the well-coordinated orientation throwing me flashbacks of freshman year, i have to keep reminding myself that this is my experience for the taking, that god has placed me here for a purpose, and that i'm actually an adult in the middle of all of this, not some seventeen-year-old kid wandering on the bc campus full of dreamy fantasies of college, my own abilities, and life in general. now - a few years older - those fantasies haven't necessarily gone away, i still love to get mentally lost among the labarynthine choices and options and opportunities that lay in front of me. but i feel much...deeper - much more grounded, and while my head, to some extent, may find its way into the clouds from time to time, my feet are more than on the ground, they are oak tree-like, rooted, deeply and thickly. firmly attached and balanced by a foundation of faith, family, and friends.
i know that i will need that foundation, that rooting, as i stretch tall and grow wide in morocco; hopefully bearing fruit and blessing those here. i'm very much on the 'honeymoon' high of this relationship with morocco, its people, culture, and language, and i know there will be times of hardship and discontent, but i also look forward to that time of harmony which is in store with faithful persistence.

oh, and if you're reading this, then i guess you know i figured out which arabic button means 'post' :)

a flat tire, wal-mart, and love

i spent a good part of the day on friday out and about with shanna. we stopped first at rockwell’s, a local coffee shop, which perhaps isn’t so spectacular in the grand scheme of things but has won a special place in my heart with its free wireless, friendly staff, and generally quiet environment. being virtually internet-less at home has only succeeded in elevating the status of rockwell’s in my mind.

we decided to leave rockwell’s after some time in order to grab a bite to eat for a late lunch. after getting into the car, however, shanna realized that her left front tire had gone somewhat flat – or was at least lower than normal. so we made our next stop at the wal-mart service station next door. it was there that we met the couple.

they had pulled into the service station after us, and i only vaguely saw them through the semi-tinted windshield of their extra wide nineteen ninety-something oldsmobile. they appeared in the waiting room shortly after we had sat down, and i was completely struck by them.

for starters, neither of them looked particularly well. the husband was obviously suffering the ravages of some significant illness. surgical scars had altered his face, the skin of which was unnaturally reddened and peeling. blinded in his right eye by a milky-blue opacity, he kept his face lowered, revealing the thin mousy, brownish grey hair which had fallen out in patches. his wife was aged as well, worn by years of work and worry, but still with a round, friendly face. her silver hair was carefully curled and coifed, and she looked the picture of east texas in her flowery button down shirt and khaki pleated pants rising well above her navel.

looking up when they entered, i was naturally drawn to the man – torn between a deep curiosity to determine his condition, scanning his physical appearance from head to toe, making a quick assessment, and rifling through the roladex of possible diagnoses drilled into my head from semesters of nursing classes. in the tug-of-war which often characterizes human thought, i was also acutely aware that my stare might easily be misunderstood, and in the end i averted my gaze to the contents of the purse i held in my lap. not, however, before i saw this little old man bend over to speak and wave to a little blond darling of a girl, bouncing through her adventure of a day in pink and pigtails.

needless to say, both husband and wife ended up sitting only a few seats away in the generally cramped wal-mart service center waiting room. and, in typical east texas fashion, the four of us soon fell into conversation. we started off discussing the merits of the serviceman who had taken our keys and driven our cars away in a rather concerning manner, took a turn around the weather, and passed through stories from the holidays. after a few minutes of companionable silence (when once again the contents of my purse became objects of my intense interest), the woman’s voice once again broke into my train of thought.

“we’ll have been married forty-six years tomorrow,” she stated, with a glowing hint of pride in her voice – like the golden glow that remains after the sun has just dipped below the horizon.

“congratulations,” i replied, and once again i fell into my bad habit of staring. as i heard her describing their wedding day those many years ago, i saw them transformed into and young girl and her beau – healthy, dashing, and strong, a product of the iron-red earth. barely adults, they rushed headlong into marriage, intoxicated by love in all of its glory. married by a minister that almost didn’t make it to the church, they spent their wedding night in a freezing motel.

“i think you turned off the heat,” the husband had interjected, with his crooked half-smile, which i imagine had been broad and full in better days. “i think you just wanted to cuddle more.”

his wife had just replied with a girlish laugh, and i saw in her eyes the man her husband used to be and the overwhelming love for who he still is – the man she married all those years ago. it was beautiful, and in that moment, they were beautiful, too.

our names were called shortly thereafter, and shanna and i continued on to a late lunch and then to the rest of our day. i don’t know what happened to that couple, or how they celebrated their forty-six years of marriage on saturday, but i would like to think that it was a lovely day for both of them and that, more than anything, they were able to confirm the deep and everlasting love which bound them in marriage – the most intoxicating of foretastes of the unconditional and indescribable love that is our father god...