transitioning, etc.

so i'm rounding up on three weeks being here in sunny los angeles - although to be perfectly honest, i've pretty much stuck to the west side of the city (westwood, santa monica, venice...), and i've just finished up my neonatal intensive care unit rotation. next week i start in pediatrics.

sometimes, when i think about just how much my life has changed in the last month, i almost have to laugh. a month ago, i had just left morocco - it's beautifully complicated culture that challenged me to step up every single day and embrace the differences in life that make humanity the beautiful conglomeration that it is. i was in paris with my roommate lauren sharing gorgeous days wandering the city of light and love, experiencing it from the ground level - walking everywhere, people watching, and just living without really a care in the world. and now i'm here, smack in the middle of westwood - that ucla bubble right next to beverly hills and the sunset strip - how did that happen?

my apartment is insanely nice completely furnished including a large kitchenette, a super comfy bed, and a leather couch. upstairs, on the roof, one can easily find the little pool and deck chairs for relatively private sunning any time of the day surrounded by high rises and the constant honking and beeping of traffic.

the hospital is only a five minute walk away making the morning commute ideal, and i wonder if i'm being spoiled for anything else after graduation...

work itself has been amazing. the ucla staff definitely deserve their ranking as the third best in the nation, and as a student, i have felt almost instantly welcomed on to the healthcare team - a sensation relatively lacking in my east-coast hospital experiences on clinical days. i've shared tender and intimate moments with my patients and their families. i've cried - at the birth of one infant and the tragic death of another. i've jumped into this experience with both feet, and i don't regret it for one moment.

but that same longing for something, somewhere else is still there. as i sit in the middle of this concrete jungle, surrounded by all of the cute little coffee shops and restaurants i could ever ask for, i long for something...something else.

it's hard to put it into words. part of it is the community from which i have been separated for quite some time. the last time i really felt this kind of loneliness (the kind when you're surrounded by heaps of people, but just not really known by anyone) was my freshman year at university. part of it is just a chafing at my environment. in a neighborhood that exists mainly to serve the ucla student population, the streets are full of people single-mindedly going about their days. i don't really know how to explain it, and at the risk of sounding like a huge hippie, i miss the earth. after spending the semester in rural morocco, whiling away spare time hiking across the countryside, overwhelmed by the grandeur of rugged mountains and stony desert plains and expansive fields of tender, green wheat, i feel constrained by the man-made structures around me. the few green spaces i have found seem all too engineered, carefully plotted and planned to be both economical and aesthetically pleasing.

in a place which prides itself on a freedom of mind and spirit, a liberality that extends to all areas of life, i feel oddly boxed-in - as if that freedom really looks like this and acts like that and everything else just doesn't quite fit in.

in the end, all of this essentially leaves with this odd sense of yearning, but for what, i haven't quite figured out. for friends? family? freedom? faith? i'm not exactly sure. but i'm looking forward, in some ways, to the journey i'm on to figure it out.

something i've been learning...

here's a brief synopsis of what i've been learning about these past few days - hopefully will find time for more of a concrete update sometime in here soon...

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just who i have called you to be

the one inside you
waiting to wake,
and be freed from these fears
and dream

the one whose thoughts i know,
whose heartstrings play my song
with echoes
of a soul-wrenching beauty

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just the one i've created you to be

your highest dreams
birds soaring 'cross the seas
your darkest fears
buried sheol deep
are known
you're mine and me

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just the love i know you to be

then you shall be radiant
at what you see;
your heart shall throb and overflow -
come, rest in me

leaving on a jet plane redux

from yesterday:

i had every intention of writing an entry about home sometime after my plane touched down here at dallas-fort worth international airport six days ago. but somehow, as it has a tendency to do, time went on, and now i’m here again – gate e37 – waiting for the plane that will carry me to los angeles and the next chapter of my life.

this morning when i woke up, the weight of leaving immediately settled on my shoulders, like the misty fog which shrouded our little house, a holdover from the heavy grey thunderclouds which dumped inches of rain on east texas yesterday. i spent the morning semi-frantically stuffing items of clothing and papers forgotten until the last minute into the one bag which i am allowed under the new baggage policy. some things have changed since i left the united states in january. all of my clothes, neatly rolled, were laid into my blue hiker’s pack, and i was amazed once again how well everything fit – some things haven’t changed.

before i knew it, though, it was time to leave, and i took one last good look around the home i was so excited to get to less than a week ago. when my plane from london touched down, i had jumped from my seat, jockeying for a space in the aisle before power-walking through the carpeted hallways of dfw, waiting fifteen or twenty foot-tapping minutes in agonizing anticipation, and finally throwing myself into the arms of my awaiting family.

an hour and a half later, over a series of massive texas highways, we arrived at that same house which i found myself leaving so quickly: the open kitchen, exhorting its inhabitants to “live well, laugh often, love much,” before blending seamlessly into our living room and my bedroom beyond, where it is neatly tucked next to the bathroom, with it’s green towels and red bicycles, and my parents bedroom in soothing lavender and deep purples. i’ve never been one to associate “home” with a specific place, and yet this little country house on the corner of mulberry and michigan has carved a little hole in my heart. maybe more because of the memories that we have made as a family there. maybe because it’s the first house, in the traditional sense of the word, that i have real memories of. regardless of the particulars, this space of peace and tranquility is also a place where i am deeply and truly known, and after a semester of wandering half a world away, that’s a really lovely feeling.

so here we are. all of that is to be left until i have another four or five days at the other end of my summer, in august, and i find myself wondering what in the world possessed me to accept this internship at ucla medical center. but even in the time it takes to write that sentence, i remember again my love of adventure, the exhilaration of change, and the promise of something new. my independent streak wells up within me, and i smile...

waking up

after crashing late last night, i was awoken (far too early) to my roommate's frenzied packing efforts. over the course of yesterday, boxes and bins and bags had appeared out of nowhere, been filled with something, laid in a somewhat scattered fashion around our room, forming a sort of low fort-like wall around my roommate's bed and unpacked possessions. this morning the last of it was thrown in. the shifting and slamming of boxes on our bare linoleum tile floor was my first sound for the day, and it spelled out an ominous reminder.

i remember when i came home from sierra leone, i felt as though i had passed from a sort of dream back into reality, or perhaps fallen from reality into sleep. whichever the case may be, my life in van, texas, boston, massachusetts, or wherever seemed completely disconnected from the two and a half months i had spent living in the little house on a hill in freetown, sierra leone.

as i sit now, surrounded by my packed bags and the last, sad-looking vestiges of my life here in morocco, i can't help but brace for the same feeling. but how does that work, exactly? the roots i have put down here are larger and stronger. five months worth of shared homework headaches and cultural fumbles and travelling adventures aren't as easily shifted to the side. modern technologies like email, skype, blogging, and facebook definitely make the separation easier - but you and i both know that however convenient, those forms of communication are nothing compared to the real face-to-face contact and experience of living life with any one particular person.

to be perfectly honest, the chances of seeing any of the other foreign exchange students is relatively high. concentrated, for the most, on the highly academic northeast corner of the country, travels for long weekends or big events is entirely feasible. but for the girls here, the moroccan students, with whom i have found a special connection...i feel helpless in predicting the future. and while i am so excited looking forward to the crazy, rootless life i have ahead of me in 2008, i can't help but yearn for that security of knowing that things can just stay the way they are.

i've also written before about the sucking, popping sensation of breaking bonds with people, pulling up roots, and saying goodbye, and i can't help but feel that again, so strongly, now.

friendly faces and countless adventures await me, as well as that long and beautiful process of unpacking this experience and realizing the fullness of how these past five months have wrought in me a unique change. i cannot complain, and yet...

i guess i just don't want to wake up.

home in essouira

so it's been a little while since i last wrote, and as i sit down to my computer once again, i realize that my two or three week absence is related to a few different things. first, after returning from spring break, i literally buried myself under a pile of books and worked on final projects and papers - a tactic which came in quite handy as finals approach and i actually have very little work left to do. second, i think i've hit a little bit of that dry spell. let me explain.

if you've made any change in your life (in this case, my location) for an extended period of time, you get to a point where the things that were so new and exciting and different and exhilerating and overwhelming at first have calmly blended into everyday life. it's a wonderful moment when you realize that seeing women in the hijab or taking a grand taxi ride or the crumbling medina of a city doesn't really register on your radar. so despite life perhaps feeling a little less exciting and despite the sensation that there really isn't anything to write about, i rejoice in reaching this point in my time here in morocco - it's become normal. it's almost become home.

this past week especially emphasized that fact for me. with a long weekend beginning on thursday, eva and i weighed our options and decided that, having faithfully attended all of our classes thus far, we could take the first half of the week off, relatively guilt-free, and explore more of morocco's south. a series of misadventures (including miscommunication over bus times and 42/105 degree heat) brought us to essaouira several days earlier than we had anticipated. it's been the happiest mistake of my time here thus far.

a unesco world heritage site and the backdrop for orson well's othello, the medina of essaouira is, like most medinas in morocco, a beautiful mix of crumbling decrepitness blended with functional livability. the upswing of european tourism has led to the refurbishment of many of the medina's riads, and we (for much cheaper than we ever imagined) found ourselves in a beautiful little apartment tucked away between the sea wall and the twisting allys and hanuts (corner shops) of a functional residential community.

i awoke every morning this past week to a veritable symphony of sound. the steady bass line of the crashing surf overlaid with the chatter of childrens' voices punctuated by birdsong and the occasional moto roaring down the narrow lanes. this was the morocco i had dreamed of experiencing and, suddenly, the idea of life here didn't seem so far away.

by the end of the week, i had developed little connections with the people in our community, little tendrils of relationship that - if given time and attention - could easily have turned into roots. the green grocer whose fair prices and smiles had drawn us to his stall in the first place. the ancient spice man whose hunched back and pristine white prayer cap placed precariously on his head made a distinguished and almost sacred space out of his heaps of brightly colored spices and herbs, delicately meteing out one dirham worths of cumin, ginger, cinnamon, and so forth. the corner bakery where a dirham bought you a round, rough loaf fresh from the oven. and the hanut owner who was the only store open early enough to pick up some breakfast eggs but who won my heart with his patient indulgence of my broken arabic.

rolling out on the grumbling ctm bus on saturday evening was definitely a sad moment, but i left with the calm assurance that i will make it back to 'souira some day. hopefully not too far away...

as i got back to the university and began the long and arduous process of sifting through a week's worth of emails and facebook messages and world news - i realized that there is an important part of home that i have been missing, too. it's the connections that i already have; those roots tying my heart with those of the one's i love that have been stretched almost to the breaking by distance and difference and non-existent communication. my brother graduated high school on saturday, and all i could manage was a quick message on his cell phone answering machine. maybe i'm ready to go after all.

whatever the case may be, i'm happy to have the memory of essouira fresh on my heart and mind as i get ready to leave this country that has so patiently and graciously hosted me these past few months (one bag is packed already), and i'm happy, too, to have something worth talking about to share with all of you...

tarmilat

so after having this blog for several years now, and using picasa for my pictures for almost a year, the two worlds have finally combined! here's a picture from my recent excursion to the little town of tarmilat, which lies just beyond the freshly painted roads and neatly manicured lawns of ifrane.

here, the community survives in houses built of stones, wrestled from the earth, and neatly stacked, one on the other, with rusted sheets of corrugated tin weighted down by used tires for a roof.

as the sun set and the cold, icy wind began to whip up from the north, i ruefully re-wrapped my arms around myself, and wondered why i had decided against that second sweater, now obliviously enjoying its snug home at the end of my bed. but then i look around me once again, and i see the weather-beated faces of the men, women, and children of tarmilat that never really get to leave the cold and who may not have the luxury of a second sweater they can choose to leave at home.

laughter rings out from somewhere, and we are ushered down to one of the stone buildings at the base of the rocky outcrop of a hill where we had been watching the sun set. before it gets too late, the women want to show us their looms, the ancient set-ups which produce the lifeblood of this small but stubbornly thriving community. a dimly lit room, warmed by a charcoal brazier - the workshop smells of sheep and sheeps' wool, and one look at the works in progress there tells the story of the hurculean effort that goes into a single rug or carpet.

stepping out again into the growing dusk, i stop for a moment and watch the daily happenings which continue around me, the work that has to be done whether or not twelve or so white foreigners have descended upon tarmilat. cows appear out of nowhere, and grudgingly - with much protestation - make their way into their byre for the night. minutes later, a crowd of sheep follow suit. as the last light fades, the women around me, with their multi-colored aprons and veils, seem more like hardy desert flowers, buffetted by the breeze, rather than young mothers and old grandmothers whose lives have been marked by the tell-tale pain and suffering that are the cousins of poverty.

but things are looking up for this little village. a relationship with the little church community at al akhawayn and other support has given them a market for their beautiful handiwork, and as we sat, eating our ftour meal of spiced coffee, dates, boiled eggs, shbekia (a honeyed pastry-like knot of deliciousness), and harira (a thick chickpea, tomato, lentil soup), we were told that the lights overhead (which were flickering a bit toward the end) were powered by the solar panel that the community bought together with their first proceeds. a small school has also been built, and there are plans galore of future uses for their growing profits.

at the end of the evening, as we navigated our way down the rocky hill under the light of a nearly full moon, i was relieved to see the university van and it's promise of warmth. climbing quickly inside, i said a quick "thank you and goodbye" to our gracious hosts and set about getting feeling back into my toes. a few minutes later, after arriving back to the university and making my way to my room, i sat on my bed with my second sweater around my shoulders, more than a little bit aware of my many blessings, and more than a little bit guilty to have allowed myself to forget them before.

finding the limit in fes

i've hit a bit of a wall; i'm not going to lie. i've reached that point where i'm beginning to become quite fatigued of handing over this life of mine to the grand "intercultural experience" otherwise known as "studying abroad," or, for me, "morocco." particularly as i sit in this tiny dorm room on this tiny campus in this tiny town so far removed from morocco proper, feeling a little more than queasy again from the cafeteria food.

i feel as though i'm suffocating under this culture a little bit, too. this past weekend after spending friday night glorying in the beauty of moroccan nature, camping in a sort of open-mouthed cave on a nearby hillside, and enjoying the scrubbing, steaming, exfoliating goodness of the hammam in fes, i was really on a high. i felt cleaner than i ever had in my life and a brief stop at a nearby patisserie to indulge in a raspberry-passion fruit tart with a hint of dark chocolate left me in legitimate feminine ecstasy.

we turned to the old medina to meet up with some guy friends, and that blissful moment suddently came crashing down around my ears - the pristine, crystalline beauty shattered about my feet. and perhaps i still haven't quite recovered...

all entrances to the medina, except for one small side gate, had been blocked off because of a festival that night celebrating the 1200th anniversary of the city of fes. getting separated from the other three girls in our group, shadea and i found ourselves suddenly in the midst of a writhing, tumultuous mass of warm, sweating bodies all pushing in opposite directions - some trying to get out, others trying to get in, and us - caught in the middle, simply trying to stay standing and in one piece. the story of the people crushed to death when the crowd rushed the football stadium somewhere in europe, i clung to shadea's hand and the swarm of people pushed from behind - somehow thinking that would be the most effective means of moving forward despite the fact that those in front weren't going anywhere.

and then the guy popped up behind me - the embodiement of all that i hate about morocco. without warning he was standing there, plying offers of "berber massage" in his high, accented voice dripping with inuendo and physical desire. in the next moment his hand was on my wrist, and then he was stroking my hand. without even thinking, i tore my arm from his grasp and responded with a blow to his chest (rather weak, i'm afraid) and a warning to "go away" sounding awfully high and sharp to my own ears - all my arabic, of course, choosing that exact moment to flee my mind.

and in the next moment he was gone, some kind angel of a man intervening and placing himself between myself and him - i don't even remember much of the rest, except that we managed to escape the worst of the crowd in the next few minutes. as the adrenaline faded from my veins, my heart beat slowed, but i was still shaking when we finally made it to the guys' hotel terrace ten minutes later - that moment of feminine ecstasy long gone, stolen away by the assault of a society still in the throes of the gender struggle.

i never have really considered myself a feminist, but since coming to this place i have begun to question my own perspective, and to be thankful for my own country. for my independence there, especially. the worst part about it, though, is that i'm getting tired of fighting, of having those conversations with my moroccan friends here, of having to arm myself everytime i walk out of the door. as i look at the women in the streets in the towns i visit, i wonder if i have any right, then, to judge them for failing to stand up to the system so long ago.

and yet there are still so many things that i love about this country, and when i say i've hit the wall in some ways, i can say in the same breath that i know i will miss this country, i will miss its people, i will miss those deeply challenging conversations and the constant invitation to abandon your plans and embrace the grace and beauty of flexibility and all of the unknown adventures that she offers.

so i take a deep breath. find that center of love and peace. and choose to bring that to the world i'm living in. because, the truth is, i'm a bit ashamed that i hit that man - that i responded to his negativity with anger, hatred, loathing, and violence. i shouldn't have given him the time of day. and maybe that's the thought of moroccan women. maybe they're just biding their time until that day when the mantle of oppression has cracked enough that they can throw it off in one fell swoop and stand victorious, celebrating the success of their patience, their endurance, and their silent protest.

i really hope so...

today

interesting event of the day: buying chicken. from a butcher. in another language. let's just say there was a lot of gesturing, broken arabic, broken french, smiling, and nodding involved. i really think the guy must have thought that i, ally, and eva were all fairly comical, especially when we all jumped when he whacked off the chicken's head with a meat cleaver. oh morocco...

frustration

i am frustrated. inside and out. you know the kind: that gnawing, eating-at-your-soul that makes you want to scream at the top of your lungs, jump up and down, and shake someone.

hard.

it has grown inside of me this whole semester as i push and pull and tug at my english conversation group members, practically begging them to talk, to engage, to have an opinion, to think. and the response is always the same: blank - that blank stare reflecting a blank mind that's so depressing i want to call the whole thing off.

this week, ally and i prepared a collection of protest music: billie holiday, bob marley, U2, the beatles, ani difranco, the decemberists...music crossing time and theme and genre; music inspired by an event, a social concern, or an idea like redemption. i've thrown racism, politics, religion, foreign affairs, abortion, stem cell research, family, gender roles, relationships at them.

blank.

i don't know how much more of this i can take...

food: body, heart, mind, and soul

i'm back in my room once again after a weekend of travelling, staring at this little blinking cursor - starkly black against the bright white screen - wondering what exactly to say.

it's not writer's block, per se...it's just that there are so many little facets to this past weekend that i'm not exactly sure where to start.

this past weekend i travelled with shadea (an exchange student from last semester) to chefchaouen, a picturesque town of blue and white nestled in the hillside of the rif mountains and more generally known the world over for its excellent hash and weed. it also happens to be the hometown of one of my good friends here, sarrah. it also happens to be shadea's favorite town in morocco, so when i heard that she was going there and that she was staying with the elmomoudis (or something like that), i tagged along.

to put it simply - this weekend was food. for every part of me, really.

the (many) amazing meals put together by sarrah's mom and their nanny/friend/household help/older sister, khalisa were incredible. from the fresh strawberries just coming into season to the addictive jben, a sort of fresh country cheese, to the perfectly cooked fish served with lentils and newly baked bread - it was all so wonderful, and a delightful escape from the tastebud-tiring fare of the on-campus restaurant.

sarrah's three younger sisters, hagar, marawa, and rema, were food for my heart. i didn't even realize how much i miss my little cousins until i entered the apartment and heard the girlish banter so typical of two little girls, aged eight and nine. hagar, a distant fifteen and extremely studious, provided a sort of calm in the middle of the storming younger ones who incessantly demanded shadea and i come up with all sorts of new gymnastic games which we could play in the family salon. that is, when we didn't have the television tuned to the music stations and were all dancing to the latest tunes out of egypt and lebanon.

needless to say, the non-stop arabic that flew around me, mixed with a heavy helping of french and spanish was definitely food for my mind. my little notebook is slowly expanding as pages and pages are filled with my new arabic words. like: jlbana (peas), aHsan (better), guli (eat!), and tawezzan (balance).

my travel time with shadea, from the long bus ride from fez to chaouen (pronounced shaowin) to the final taxi ride back to ifrane from fez today, was a series of twisting conversations. some of those beautifully deep ones where mind and mind, heart and heart meet and just are, laid bare before each other. a common practice with my friends and college community back home, i had been sorely lacking that same level of engagement here at al akhawayn where i find, more often than not, a crowd of young people too concerned with how best to make it from day to day by doing the smallest amount of work rather than a body of students hungering after truth and ready to embrace the tough questions that are blatantly staring them in the face amidst the poverty and dejection of the very neighborhoods of ifrane if only they would open their eyes. our conversations and that fundamental connection between two people which only serves to underscore your shared humanity was food for my soul - one i didn't even realize i was hungry for.

not to mention the beauty of chefchaouen itself, which is definitely beyond description. something about how the light of the setting sun is captured in the blue-washed walls of the buildings which crowd the old medina...

well, let's just say i'm already dreaming of going back.