New friends!

If you ask me, making a new friend as an adult is a feat worth celebrating. Long gone are the days when making friends was as easy as asking someone to play or showing up to hang out in a dorm room. Instead, it takes work and often a fair amount of awkwardness at first. On top of that, it's been hard for me to find like-minded people while living abroad. So though I may sound juvenile or cheesy, I'm really quite happy to have made a new friend, who happens to live in my neighborhood and also happens to have a gorgeous little baby! We met through a random chain of events, and soon I invited Brooke to stroll on over for tea. She brought along her little bundle of joy, much to my delight!

If you know me, you know I adore babies. So between bites of cookies and sips of tea and lots of great conversation, finding connections and sharing experiences, of course I couldn't help but snap some shots of little Jude!

I love this photo of mother and son! 

Thankful for friends, thankful for smiles, and thankful for the ability to record them! Stay tuned for an upcming family photoshoot!

Christmas makes its appearance

As we'll be going to France for the holidays, I decided to decorate a little early this year, to be able to be reminded of the Christmas season a little longer chez nous. Living in a Muslim country means holiday decorations are generally limited to the malls and some big department stores we rarely go to. In some ways this is more pleasant than the overwhelming inundation of all things holiday in the States, but it does feel pretty sparse. So we make our own holiday cheer!

I believe we'll to have to graduate to a bigger tree next year, with all the ornaments we have (these aren't all!) but I don't mind overloading this little one. Its branches are sparse and bare and rather sad otherwise.

Decorating the tree this morning gave me time to consider each ornament. They come from friends and Christmas markets...

garage sales and thrift stores... 

(I got this one especially for O. the car enthusiast this summer.)

"normal" stores...

and family!

They hail from the States, Morocco, and France, and each brings joy, comfort and warmth. 

Wishing you all a happy and peaceful holiday season!

Two gifted paintings

I love painting.

I also love giving gifts. So giving paintings as gifts is something I've done a lot in the past few years! (This blog contains 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 instances of that!) Just last week I completed two painting projects for two different friends. Each painting was specific to each friend and happily for me both were well received.

I paint the way I cook. When I have either the need or the desire to paint or cook something, my first stop is Google. Just like I search for recipes including the ingredients I have in my kitchen, I search for a project or an idea that matches the sort of thing I want to paint. In both instances I look at many models and my final product comes out as an amalgamation of what I saw and what comes from my own head.

While the main idea for this painting came from the internet, I did it in my own way with my own reasons. I was experimenting with the background as I went along and am happy it turned out as nice as it did! I gave it to a friend who had a birthday a few days ago, and whose native country has trees that lose their leaves in the fall, unlike here in Morocco. Thus the fall-colored cut up bits of wrapping paper "leaves" in her painting.

 I found a melted-crayon version of this painting online, whose idea I loved, but whose execution wasn't the kind of project I was going for. So I made this whimsical but evocative painting with my acrylics for a friend who appreciates the meaning behind it.

Since I found my love for painting a few years ago I've been developing my craft a lot, and with each new painting I explore new techniques and themes. Going through the "my paintings" tag on my blog to find the instances of gifted paintings above showed me how I've moved from very rigid or rather sloppy paintings to being able to have more control in recent projects! It's quite satisfying to see. One way or anther, painting is lots of fun and I'm already debating what my next project will be!

On gratitude

(Note: the beginning of this post may seem overly jaded or bitter, but I promise it's not— just keep reading.)

Most of my working life post-graduation has involved me getting jipped. 

What do I mean?

As part of the systems I've worked in, I've had colleagues doing exactly the same work as me, with equivalent or identical qualifications, who get a quite different package. Housing, flights, and shipping allowances, better healthcare. They travel around the world given the smallest vacation without a second thought. Simply put, they get more. Why? Because they were hired from overseas, and had to be lured over to Morocco. I, however, already live here. 

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These policies aren't fair, but are something I've had to accept. I have a few friends in similar situations, including the one who recommended me for my current job, and they've all suffered the same fate. This discrepancy is something that our logic understands but that our senses of fairness get pissed off at. It results in our pieces of our schools' grand puzzles looking little, stunted, and ugly. 

And I do get mad. sometimes There has been some confusion at school recently regarding the different contracts which has resulted in some discontentment. Our wonderful principal is doing her best to get it resolved, and it is all turning out okay, but the unfairness does still lay heavily on me.

But then I go home. 

As I look around my apartment complex, my puzzle piece, which seems so small at work, starts looking very different. Othman and I live in a huge complex many streets wide with a very high population density. We live among the Moroccan middle class; policemen, taxi drivers, hairdressers, teachers. These are people that can make the $250-300 rent each month, and can pay roughly the same amount to send each of their kids to private schools, and still have a little left over, with which they pay for their satellite dishes and buy their groceries, lugging them up to a fifth story apartment with a toddler or two in tow. They live on top of one another, families often squeezing five or more members into two tiny bedrooms, and have essentially no safety net.

The roof of our building, six stories up.

In this context, the one I return to and witness each day, my piece of the puzzle takes on gigantic proportions. How is it fair that I live among among these people but have working conditions they could only dream of? It isn't.

This dichotomy reminds me of two things. The first are my first few months as a freshman in college at Notre Dame. The amount and the quality of STUFF—and corresponding wealth—that my classmates displayed made me feel small and inadequate in a new and very uncomfortable way. But then Fall break, coming a bizarre two months after orientation, saw me traveling home on the Greyhound bus. The many 90s-era discmans in the seats around me made my previously-laughable ipod return to seeming like the luxury it was. The payphone users made me look at my simple cellphone in a new light. The beat-up shoes I saw prompted a double take at my own feet. My puzzle piece went from tiny to huge right before my eyes, and while that was again uncomfortable, it was an easier feeling to have.

Finally, I am online quite a bit and can't escape the ubiquitous memes and quotes all over the internet. While I rarely remember any specifically, this one has stuck with me, and has come to mind many times in the past couple weeks.

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Gratitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. One leads to the other, but first we have to choose them. A sure way to short-circuit that cycle is comparing our piece of the puzzle with those of others. They've followed a different road—one we can't ever really know—and the outcome is unique to them. A puzzle can't be made if every piece is the same, and were mine different, it would belong to a totally different puzzle. I do fit in, in my own way, and have to find contentment in that. And with some practice, it's getting easier and easier.

Sunrise at School

This morning Othman and I took a new route to get to my school, one which cut the travel time almost in half. This meant I got to school before the rest of my teaching team and was locked out of our shared office space. It only took about 2.5 minutes for someone with a key to arrive, during which I walked out onto the roof and took out my phone to photograph the sunrise over the silent and serene school grounds.

Only about 10 minutes later, hearing the clamor of children's voices, I went back out to photograph the difference.

The change was palpable as the silent and peaceful fields became what they are meant to be...

...places where children can run and play, laugh and cry, learn how to solve problems and develop into little global citizens! I have after-lunch recess duty almost everyday with the Kindergartners (called Pre-Firsters here) through Second Graders so trust me, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to giggles and tears.

I'm just so happy to be working at CAS and so grateful for the opportunity to work at school that is truly a well-oiled machine and makes good educating seem easy! Today, for example, I watched some of the fourth and fifth graders' Student Council speeches in the auditorium (they had to give it up on the big stage with a microphone in front of the entire two grades!) and it was such a lovely experience. The students were so full of enthusiasm and big ideas, and managed to be big-headed and humble at once while promoting themselves for the coveted spots. At the end of the day the voting is mostly a popularity contest, as it would be anywhere, but the process of running has some serious character building hoops to jump through, and all in all I was pretty impressed. Plus a fourth grade girl who is brand new even got elected as an alternate above at least eight other students. Clearly, something right is happening in our school.

Moroccan month

Once tomorrow comes, I'll have been back in Morocco for a month. And I can tell.


How can I tell? Well for instance the "sheep Eid" (see here) is next week, and because it's still pretty hot, their pungence pervades. Read: it reeks of sheep pretty much everywhere, down to INSIDE our apartment. 

BUT, can I complain of the heat that brings the reek when I see my family at my little sister's color guard performance bundled up because it was 40 degrees Fahrenheit? After all, the smell comes in on the cooling breeze through our open windows.

stinky...

vs

brrrr...

Nope.

Why does the smell bother me so much? Because I'm stuck on the couch, sick for the second time in a month. My allergies are at their worst since spring and my allergist even doubled my Zyrtec dosage yesterday.

BUT, can I complain when I have a lovely and attentive husband who is making me soup as I speak? And a fabulous, caring doctor? And new medical insurance that covers all costs 100%? 

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Nope. 

Why are my allergies so bad? Casablanca is on the sea, so it's humid, full of mold spores and pollen and pollution all throughout the year. Read: my closet is so humid that my folded, clean clothes get mildew on them if I leave them in there long enough. My allergies have been generally between unbearable and ugh since my arrival in 2011.

BUT, can I complain when I live in a country that allows my husband and I to book a place like this for 40 bucks a night for a weekend trip next week, to escape the city?

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Nope.

Why am I sick on top of being extremely allergic? Well, I have a new job working as the English Language Learning Specialist at an International school here. I have busy days that leave me exhausted, plus as a teacher in a primary school one gets sick a lot.

BUT, can I complain when I'm LOVING the job, my principal, my colleagues, the school's professionalism and high standards, the lovely campus, and the kids? And that's not even mentioning the perks (see aforementioned new insurance) and the salary. Or the fact that I'm walking so much around campus all day that I've lost eight pounds in a month. 

Can I complain? No, no I can't. 

Can I complain about missing my family when I have my husband here, my cozy little apartment, wonderful friends within walking distance? When I have Whatsapp and Facebook and blogs and Skype to close the gap? No. 

That's one happy me in the middle of my fam AND hubby.

No, I can smile. I can be thankful, and smile again.

You know you're home in the US when...

...the huge South Dakota sky greets you with beautiful skyscapes,

that constantly change.

...giant baskets of candy greet your supermarket entryway.

...this is your parents' new house, long-awaited and more perfect than anyone dared to hope for.

...this is the place where you learn of the existence of strawberry salsa, make it, and almost die from the pleasure of being able to eat salsa for the first time in five years!

...you get a haircut for the first time in two years and a lil sis does a before and after pic. (My hair in the after picture is a bit funky but hey, it happens.)

...this is where you eat breakfast.

...your breakfast is the best yogurt ever, the best honey ever, blackberries and strawberries,

including a homemade latte made with frothed almond milk. Mm mm delish.

...this gorgeous dining room is your current workstation,

and this is your inspiring view!

I'm so incredibly happy and thankful to be home for two months this summer!! I've been extremely busy up to now with daily walks around our new historic neighborhood, garage sale-ing, taking tons of pictures with phones and cameras, including of visiting Isabel and her friends (stay tuned for that!), doing tons of summer reading, and of course eating delicious food. It's gonna be one good summer.

Flowers and candles

I've been very quiet here on the blog lately, not for lack of things to talk about, but for lack of time to talk about them! As a quick update, let me revel in how lucky I am for a moment. I have a hubby that brought me these yesterday (after grocery shopping while I was at work!) for no special reason.

(Forgive the bad quality phone pic.)

The bunch of colorful and wonderful smelling fresh flowers was so big that I split it into two separate bouquets. 

They're at the entry of our apartment along with a lovely birthday present I got from a lovely friend – the essential oil diffuser on the right. I've had a tea candle lit in it almost constantly when I'm at home since I got it, and I'm convinced that the citronelle scent I've been using lately is a large part of the reason we've had very few mosquitoes so far this summer even with our unscreened windows. 

I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such love.

Mother's Day

Today is one of those rare, rare days that insists on two separate blog posts, because not only is the the birthday of my lovely wonderful sister, as seen below, but it's also Mother's Day! So today is the day to celebrate the woman who gave birth to two girls six years and one day apart, not to mention FIVE other children.

With all the offspring, plus a future daughter-in-law!

Just last night I was having a chat with some girlfriends who were over, and we were discussing motherhood. I made the comment that it seems like the first child a couple has is in many ways a selfish act. The child is for them, the couple. The subsequent children, however, especially if they're born close together, are very unselfish gifts. My siblings are the most wonderful gift my parents could ever give me. I told my friends, all of whom come from small families, how I was so glad my parents were open to having so many children, and how much less rich our family would be if they had stopped after two, three, or even five! 

We were cuties, sure, but how different our family would be if Isabel was still the baby!

The conversation meandered a bit, until we landed on the subject of how much moms sacrifice for their kids. My mom is finally, now that her youngest kid is 14, getting a bit of a life for herself. She just taught a Brazilian cooking class at a local supermarket that was a huge hit, and has been more active in publishing articles and various small books in recent years. This past year she has taken up exercising daily, something she never had time to do before as a homeschooling mother of seven, and is looking more amazing each time I see a picture of her. She even has lots of friends that are not just the moms of our friends! After such a long time of sacrificing everything for us, including never having a career though she has a Master's degree, she can finally take more time for herself, and its a wonderful thing to see. It really highlights how much she has done for her kids. We sure are lucky.

At the cooking class.

Thank you for everything mom, and Happy Mother's Day.  I can only hope to someday be as half a good mother as you are someday. If I get even there, I'll be content.  

I've also got three more Mother's Day shout outs! The first goes to all of my friends who have had babies in the past couple years and are experiencing their first or second Mother's Days. All my respect and love goes out to you today!

The second goes to my mother-in-law. Even if it's not the French Mother's Day, which will happen on the last Sunday of May, I want to take this moment to thank her for going out of her way in so many instances to help me get settled in Morocco. At large Berrada family functions when I'm usually feeling rather overwhelmed she makes a point to guide me through what I'm expected to say or do, what is going on, and who everyone is! Let me say it is much appreciated. Merci d'être une belle-mere tellement attentionnée!

The last is for my wonderful grandmother, who has always been someone I could rely on for strength, fairness, and unconditional love. She and I have only grown closer as I've grown up, and I am so grateful for that! I love and am truly grateful for our long phone chats, and even more our not-so-long (because they're generally interrupted!) talks in person! 

Lots of love and gratitude to you all today!