Vacation

This blog service is really terrible with photos, but hopefully I'll find the patience to put up some photos of Paris. Which is, without a doubt, the nicest place in the entire world.

If you are a peace corps volunteer, I highly recommend visiting terrible, ugly places. It's the philosophy of the dad in Calvin and Hobbes: you have terrible vacations so work seems nice. What other time in life can you visit South Sudan or Eastern Europe and think: "Well, that wasn't too bad at all?"  Unfortunately, the less-glamorous neighbor destinations for PC morocco, Algeria, Western Sahara, Mauritania, are all closed off to us and everywhere else in Africa costs at least 600 bucks to get to. So (poor us), have to go to Europe.

Ah, Europe. A beautiful place. Parks, drinking chocolate, art/museums, diversity, restaurants, no trash, things you would actually want to buy, cheese, cheese, good bread, cheese, beer, beer, beer, beer, wine, restaurants, indoor heating, hot water, working infrastructure, and not getting stared at. And seeing my parents for the first time in 8 months. Wow. It was all I imagined and much more. So much more, in fact, that it's a little bit tough to come back.

Given that I went to Paris for 6 days, I thought I could go a week without being asked if I was Muslim. No chance. Made it 20 minutes after landing. I just interrupted writing this to kill half a dozen flies before they drive me absolutely insane (the dripping water in the bathroom isn't helping).

But, there's nothing I can do about it. Just got to grit my teeth and get through the next few days- hope to even back out. Thank God I've got Krista with me or I'd really go nuts- start screaming at people in the street.


Today, while trying to buy some thick blankets (85 dirhams a piece), we met an interesting man at a shoe-repair shack. He wanted to talk about Morocco and America's long history of friendship. This is actually true, and fairly common knowledge here: Morocco (or at least the king of the area at the time) was the first to recognize the United States. He was telling this to us while smoking hashish and holding a closed bottle of some sort of alcohol. Then he played the flute for us and gave us some tea. Typically weird experience.