Saturday Morning Downtown

This weekend was South Dakota's "Festival of Books," and there were plenty of attractions in little Brookings! Bright and early Saturday morning, Maria, my dad and I went to a poetry reading by Ted Kooser, who is a Nebraskan former Poet Laureate. I saw a reading he did at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln when I was in high school, and I've loved him and his poetry ever since. I was so excited to find out he was coming to Brookings!

The three of us woke up early on Saturday morning, made and ate some pancakes, and walked over to the Brookings Arts Council building, which was a lovely, cozy venue for such an event.

The reading was wonderful, and he mostly read unaired, recent poetry of his from the past few months. He even read us a poem he had written since being in Brookings. Although none had yet been published, they were all so polished which is a testament to his experience and talent. The whole session was very intimate, and he shared a lot of personal details (including his habitual wake-up time 4:30am, a relic of his years as an insurance salesman to squeeze writing into his day), and detailed backstory on a few different poems.

At the end I was even brave enough to go up and speak to him! We chatted for a few minutes and I told him about how this wasn't the first time I had seen him read. He was very gracious and even let me get a picture with him.

After the reading we headed to the farmers' market, which had a really great vibe that morning with story time, a small jazz band, the usual fare of fruits, veggies, flowers, bread and honey, and also some more unusual sights.

Fresh-squeezed apple cider, made by a colleague of mine!

Bia and I shared a cup of apple cider while admiring a pair of visiting...

Alpacas!

There were people spinning yarn from the alpaca wool next to them, and they had hand-knitted hats, scarves, pot-holders and more for sale.

So of course, I got the cutest turtle ever!!

After that, Bia and I perused the book fair and I made a wonderful purchase:

All in all we had a really lovely morning in downtown Brookings! Big city-style events, small town charm:

Our turtle collection

Othman and I got back last night from a short trip to the north of Morocco. We needed a small vacation and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves staying in small but beautiful Assilah and visiting Tangier. It was my first time in both places and only my second time in the north, and it was lovely. I will be posting about the trip in the days/weeks to come but for now wanted to share two of the souvenirs we bought:

We both love turtles and tortoises and a while back I was gifted the figurine of a turtle. Othman's mom gave me a few more and said I should start a collection. Other than a rock collection I loved as a kid (and still have in a box at my parent's house!) I've never collected anything on purpose, but I decided—why not! (It also serves the purpose of being an easy gift for anyone to get me, haha.)

These turtles come from all sorts of places other than Tangier. One is from the Brookings Art Museum, another from its antique shop, then there's one from a keychain from India my dad gave me years ago, the tall one in the back is from the streets of Santa Fe via my mom, one is from a Christmas market in Toulouse, and the list goes on! About half were gifts and the other half we bought ourselves. I just need one from Brazil to complete my four continents! I love the stories behind them and their provenance, and their variety of shapes, sizes and colors—plus they make my bookshelf look cute.

Happenings and gifts

I've been having such a lovely visit home these past two weeks... the four travel days are totally worth the time I'm to spending with my family!

Between stomping in the snow, antiquing and thrifting with my sisters, eating out at restaurants,

taking sister selfies,

doing wintry art projects,

shop shop shopping (which is an activity I'm not particularly fond of, but after many months in Morocco the US stores are such a nice change!), and eating my mom's homemade food, I received a package in the mail enclosing a late wedding gift! Our adorable flower girl's family apparently had never given us one, not that we had noticed, and sent it once they found out I was home for the holidays.

Little Marguerite is the daughter of very good family friends!

These kitchen towels are very high quality and soft and are adorably hand embroidered by said flower girl's mom, and I absolutely love them!! 

They're all wonderful, and I can't wait to use them, but I think this one is my favorite.

They also gifted us this ceramic cicada which is from her dad's region in southern France and which we thought was just too fun.

I also got a late Christmas gift from a sister who was annoyed at my constantly using her waterbottle...

and have continued to add to my turtle collection!!

It's been a good trip so far!!

Poor turtles!

Remember the cute little turtle family from Othman's birthday cake? 

They're made out of sugar and his mom kept them for us to take home. But we forgot them a couple times in a row... and when the other day she got them out for us to take... I didn't want them anymore:

Now that's one intense before and after!

A late birthday report

This week has been one of the busiest in a while (I guess that happens the week after vacation) so I'm only uploading these pictures of Othman's birthday now! When he got home on the 19th he had this view:

Having the week off I had all sorts of time to prepare a great birthday evening for him! Many times he's gotten me elaborate many-item gifts, but I usually opt for one bigger thing for him. Maybe it's because he's so hard to shop for! One way or another this year I wanted to out-do him, and had the time to for once. I think I succeeded, even if quite a few of the gifts were just little jokes, they put a smile on his face!

He has had an ridiculous workload and amount of stress at his job for the past couple months, and I knew his day at work wasn't going to be the most celebratory. I wanted to make sure the time he spent at home was full of love and surprises!

I made his gift opening a game and he had to match the description with the correct gift before he could open them, and though it took a few tries he did better than I expected!

For his cake I made my go-to chocolate cake recipe I've posted about before, which is one we didn't feel tooooo bad about eating too much of!

We went out for a really nice Chinese dinner that night and just enjoyed a quiet evening in each other's company.

That weekend we went out to a French Creperie with his family and a couple of good family friends. His mom surprised both of us with this AMAZING cake that she made and decorated!! It definitely beat mine beauty-wise! 

I loved the little turtle family she made, and the pond is just the cutest touch. I couldn't eat the cake but from the little bit I tasted it was delicious! The owner of the restaurant and its chef were duly impressed and even asked Othman's mom if she had a bakery of her own!

We were all successful in making Othman's birthday great, now here's to making his last year of twenty-hood even better!

Of turtles, owls and cultures

Our turtles are cute. Because, well, they are! One downside of working "normal" hours now is I don't get to hang out with the turtles in the mornings like I used to. But on weekends I have fun watching them and taking some pictures. It's really amazing how much Sparkle has grown in just over a year! Take a look at her back in October 2013:

You CANNOT tell me this is not adorable.

And now:

They're almost the same size! Chomper won't be bigger for very much longer. She's grown so much that over the summer we upgraded their large round laundry tub to one of those big under-bed shallow storage containers. 

When I cleaned out my British Council locker in June I decided to be environmentally friendly in this country where non-industrial recycling doesn't exist, and hand shredded what seemed like reams of paper destined for the trash to use as bedding. The woodchips we had been using were gone, we couldn't find another bag no matter how hard we looked, and they had the tendency to get moldy under rocks anyway, so shredded paper is a good option (and easier to clean). Plus Sparkle and Chomper love burrowing into it and hiding. We also give them a couple different boxes (anything from empty tea or rice boxes, to shoe boxes, to this wedding-gift-iPhone-speaker box) to hide in, which they love. Anytime we clean their cage we switch them out though because they can get pretty gross after a while. But it seems that the different images and patterns on the boxes provide some intellectual stimulation for our little guys! Take a look--

She just seems so engrossed!

I love having some other living beings in the house with me when I'm home alone, and I love the fact that turtles are easy to care for, not smelly, very containable/transportable, and cute! I've been thinking about getting a class pet for my Kindergarteners, but I haven't quite worked out the logistics of that yet, and it's far from being a priority. But if I do get one, it will surely be a turtle. Not only do they have all the good qualities listed above, but they're also tough! Meaning I won't be scared of an over-enthusiastic 5-year-old squishing it to death or anything. ;D

I know it's blurry but how great is this? She's a little modern dinosaur! 

An observation Othman and I make on a regular basis is how stemming from my upbringing and backgrounds I have no patience for inefficiency that is so rampant in this country. "New world" cultures are all about practicality, innovation and efficiency whereas "old world" cultures like both of his value traditions, constancy and patience. Why am I mentioning this in a post about turtles? Well because our turtles are most decidedly products of the old world and are very, very Moroccan. Below you can see Sparkle sort of climbing up the side of their box... why? Because she wanted to turn around. And why would she go left where there is tons of empty space when she could turn right and climb halfway up the wall and plonk down again once facing the other direction?

By the by, forgive my using the word "turtles" over and over in a post that is clearly about tortoises and not turtles. In French there is only one word for both--tortue--and in the Franglais that reigns supreme in this household Sparkle and Chomper are always called turtles. Before you look down on the French for not having two names for two very different creatures, be aware that they cannot possibly understand how we can call hiboux:

and chouttes:

both owls when they're so clearly so different. But to be honest I can barely understand the difference. It's all a matter of perception and expectations. 

As another example, a lot of people here say they don't like butterflies, papillions in French. I couldn't understand how that was possible till I learned French doesn't have a separate word for "moth". So when you have moths in your closet or those little tiny moths getting into your dried foods, they are still papillions. Well no wonder! But for us English speakers the pretty ones have a name and the noxious ones another. It seems to me Americans have a fascination with butterflies that the French simply lack. But a difference in perception that comes about as a result of language (or lack thereof) explains it. 

When you only live in one culture you think the way you (plural) see things is the way everyone does... but living abroad for extended periods, as well as learning other languages, really opens your eyes to the amazing variety and difference of perceptions there is in this world, and how that really is a beautiful thing.



Edit-- let's bring this post back to its original subject, shall we?

Chomper being studly:

And Sparkle being complicated yet again as she tries to turn around:

I had no owls or papillions in my head when I began writing, and these two cuties are where it all started. And I really couldn't handle the last image of my turtle post being an owl! 

Not goodbye, just seeya soon

So you may remember the restaurant La Squala from when I posted about a goodbye brunch I had with some colleagues back in January. Well this past Friday I had another chance to eat there—for the same sad reason of saying goodbye—this time for dinner. It was a really lovely evening, which started with four of us getting there before the others, and chatting about all sorts of things. I snapped this picture of my colleague with Othman—I love their easy-going friendship.

I took the opportunity of us being few at the table to present my friend with a small gift I painted for her. Othman drew it back in February and it took me ages to finish painting it, but when I was about 1/3 of the way done I decided it would be the perfect gift for Rim—not least because she's moving out of the country and it's flat and light! She also shares my love for turtles so that works out nicely too.

Others arrived and we all ate delicious food, and talked and laughed and talked some more. The neighboring tables must have been a bit confused by the mishmash of French, English and Arabic, but we were all able to follow!

Three English teachers, featuring a bottle, menus and lots of hair!

Rim and I became very good friends this year and I'll definitely miss her! From team-teaching to shopping, from getting waxed to birthday dinners, we've had a really fun year. We're all crossing our fingers that her next job is in a country close to Morocco!! We actually worked together for almost a year before really noticing each other and becoming friends, but I'm just really happy for the time we did have. 

Finally about 3.5 hours after we got there we made our way out, with full bellies and big smiles, but not without first taking a girls picture:

Actually MANY girl pics, with Othman snapping them... I found this one in the bunch, absolutely loved it and had to post it. That looks very much like a "are you done yet??" look.

And we rounded off with an everyone picture. We can thank the waiter for the slight blur, but to be fair my camera can be a bit confusing. It was a wonderful night with lovely people, and was over too soon.