500 days

500 days ago, I was in America. It's been a while.

So what's my day-to-day like now?

Wake up
Read
Study Arabic
Make lunch
Prepare grad school applications/play on the internet
Exercise
Either make dinner or go to someone's house to break fast (I am not fasting)
Watch the West Wing

It's Ramadan. It's 102 with 30% humidity. And there's no running water. Nor have I done anything remotely close to 'work' in about 6 weeks. But I'm doing okay. I have another week of mercilessly killing time before an English-language summer camp on the Atlantic coast and I think I'm going to survive.

Maybe two weeks ago I returned from vacation with Krista. It's always hard coming back from Europe- the other two times I've done it, I had a distinct case of the blues for a long time. This time we pre-empted the doldrums by hanging at a nearby beach for a couple days with some other volunteers. Cost of the hotel on the beach: six dollars a night.

Of course, some things about coming back in summer are tough. The enormous, disgusting flying cockroaches that crawl out of our hole-in-the-ground toilet being one of them. Another is the lack of distraction. But the biggest problem is that it's Ramadan. People are hangry. It's hard to leave the house because everybody's wandering around like zombies, and few businesses are open. And some people crack.

I was standing on the corner for about an hour and a half waiting for a bus that might go to the beach. It was about 8 in the morning and I saw a group of guys laughing and doing what looked like gambling, on a bench across this sort of open plaza in the middle of downtown. Somebody must of drawn a lucky (or unlucky) hand and everything changed. Two of the guys started this silly dance that could be called public fighting. The way it works is, you maybe make one swing at another man and then all your buddies hold you back, and all his buddies hold him back, but they still let them yell in each other's faces, and then one is pulled away, but then his buddies let him rush back, but then hold him again and they yell in each other's faces again. This was all normal, so I wasn't particularly worried. But then the swords came out.

Yup, sword fight. Maybe they were technically knives, but they were probably 18 inches long and these guys were trying to hack each other apart. It was like Aladdin, but without music. Somehow their friends still managed to drag them away and they both looked ok (other than being certifiable psycho-whackjobs). I saw no police, nor did any show up.

So that made me miss Ireland and Italy a little bit. Didn't see many sword fights at the gelatterias. Before jetting off to Europe, my parents and grandmother came to Morocco and we toured around. It was wonderful, but as this blog is primarily for them, I won't go into details. But here are some pictures.