Sunday, November 29, 2009

In Which I Am Even More of a Nerd



O hai, tattoo. Sorry about the failure quality, but when I uploaded them any bigger Blogger freaked out and distorted them. Also it may look a little rough because I took them the day I got it. (June 19 woot woot)

This little piece of nerd-dom came out of my French lit book last fall at VCU. I don't remember what the context was but I remember looking at it and going, "Wow." I wrote it in my notebook and forgot about it, and then would randomly turn back to that page and be all "Oh hey, I like this!" Pretty soon it just stuck with me. And I felt nerdy for liking it, but I think it's true.

So I'd been contemplating a tattoo for a long time but never been able to figure out what I wanted or where, and I wasn't going to be one of those people who gets a butterfly or a heart or something girly for the sake of just having a tattoo. I was sitting in my room in France one day doing something entirely unrelated to anything (probably playing games on Facebook) when suddenly I thought of this and was like "YES." Thus plans were made with the BFF to go get myself permanently scarred. Obviously it worked out. The one hangup was that I originally wanted it on my left wrist instead of my ankle. That wrist happens to be the one I sprained and was bothering me at the time, so I decided against it in case I was going to have to wear a brace or do something that would have irritated or ruined the tattoo.

Literally, it means "To translate is to betray." Moroccans here have said "Translation is treason." While more poetic, this is technically not right because trahir and traduire are verbs. (Nerd much?) The latter phrase was in a book (in English) that Liz was reading by some Japanese guy, I think? And the French phrase itself is taken from Italian ("traduttore traditore").

I know it doesn't make sense to a lot of people. But I like it, even though it's hard to me to articulate why. For one thing it's ironic because to me it sounds awesome in French, but when you translate it in English it just sounds stupid and no one understands. Beyond that, translating things and really preserving their meaning can be hard. I don't claim to be super awesome at it, but I've translated two musicals into English for Meghan and on many occasions I hit a wall where I knew perfectly well what the meaning was in French but couldn't put it into coherent English to save my life. That is an extremely frustrating feeling. But because of this it reminds me I need to get better at French because if I have to translate something I can at least try to make it as close as possible. It also reminds me why I want to learn so many other languages: instead of relying on other people to tell me what's going on, I want to know for myself. And if a bad translation has to be made, I'd rather I do it on my own and have no one else to blame. I don't know if this makes sense anywhere outside of my own head, but this is the rationale. So this isn't just a stupid frivolous tattoo. It means something, if only to me. And I'm okay with that.

If you're still confused, I like this person's answer (in French) on Yahoo! Answers. Enjoy.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

And Now for Something Completely Different

I've been thinking about this since I was in France last semester: being an Anglophone is made of a little bit of fail. On one hand, sure, it's great, because English is the new international language and everyone else wants to learn it. On the other hand, what reason is there then to learn other languages? Why should we bother? When I was at the Boren Convocation in June a girl who was going to China was telling us that on her flight to DC she was talking to the man sitting next to her and he pretty much asked the same question. Why did she want to learn Chinese? She already speaks English. It should be up to everyone else to learn English; it's not our problem to learn their language. Of course the rest of us were like, "Um, WUT."

Things like this make me sad. It also makes me sad that in the US we don't care about learning languages in schools. If you're lucky you take 2-3 years in high school, maybe a year or two in college depending on your high school grades, and that's it. You're done. And unless you're something special, 2-3 years of a language is just not worth it. You can't really communicate or do anything. I started French ten years ago but I wouldn't call myself fluent yet. (Granted it's pretty much on me to get there on my own now because there's not a whole lot left I can learn in classes, but still.) I'm not saying it takes that long to be proficient in any language, but if all you're doing is taking classes in school you're not going to get anywhere.

When I was in France there were a bunch of Europeans studying there as well. They all spoke their native language, obviously, as well as English and French to varying degrees. But they were learning two foreign languages, and they were practicing them both at the same time because we all spoke to each other in English. This is where I feel like it's a disadvantage to be an Anglophone. Everyone learns English so what is there left for us to learn?

There's also the fact that Americans are stereotyped as not knowing other languages and not travelling and whatever. Both in France and here I've had people ask me if I'm French because of the way I speak. When I say no, they go for British, probably because I'm white. When I say American, I've actually been told that no, I can't be American, because Americans don't speak French, don't go to other countries, don't study in other countries especially, etc. The study abroad coordinator guy at Savoie was British and when I said I was going to Morocco even he was like "Really? But Americans don't go to Morocco." Yeah, I got that. Thanks. And of course when I went to Turkey with Carolyn people flipped out that an American was speaking Turkish to them.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm wired differently and there's something weird about me. I mean, I know there is because I know I understand languages really well and all that, so I'm sure that influences the fact that I want to learn more. But I hate going to another country and not understanding what's going on. It's so frustrating to think that with more time and more pratice I could understand, but I don't really have the time. I wish I'd started learning languages earlier, or that at least when I was younger I would have actually used the teach-yourself-Spanish things I had. (But when you're 7 you don't really think about these things.) When I was younger I did decide that I wanted to be fluent in every language ever. I later dismissed that becuase it was stupid and would never happen. Now I'm thinking it's not as unrealistic as I thought it was. Of course I won't be fluent in every language, but I'd settle for proficiency in a handful of them. Mainly these ones:

*Arabic
*Spanish
*Japanese
*German
*Gaelic
*Hebrew
*Portuguese
*Russian
*something from Eastern Europe
*Mandarin

Not necessarily in that order, but something like it. Not that Gaelic is any kind of useful for anything and Hebrew is kind of limited, but yeah. One day I will be awesome and surprise the heck out of people I meet because I can speak multiple languages very well. إن شاء الله

Friday, November 27, 2009

Just kidding.

Due to lack of communication and a little miscommunication, we didn't actually go anywhere for this break. Awesome sauce. On the upside, I get to do all my homework. Oh wait, that's not really an upside is it? Meh. Time to make more coffee.

ETA: I found warm fuzzy slipper socks in my drawer. This is a fantastic development. I is a fuzzy kitty.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

There Will Be Blood

Hopefully, anyway.

This coming weekend is Eid al-Adha, the biggest holiday of the year. [Educate yourselves.] We have Thursday-Monday off. Whee. I've been told that blood runs through the streets when they kill the sheep. However, when I asked my roommate about it she said she's never seen that, and that people usually do it on the roof of their house. I'm hoping that if we stay in a medina or something somewhere we'll get to see it.

The plan as of right now is to spend a night in Marrakech and then a few nights in Essaouira. Maybe Agadir as well? We should probably nail this down considering it's a huge holiday and whatever. Ah, well. We're in Morocco. We're polychronic. We'll figure it out.

In other news, have some photos of Ifrane. The first chunk is campus. The last 4 are at the souk, which is pretty much a huge market. That has everything. Yes, even the kitchen sink. The picture of the park is a playground just built by the National Initiative for Human Development. Hence the title about developing humans. We're punny.

Now that I've spent two hours writing three posts and uploading an obscene number of photos and completely ignoring my homework... it's bedtime! Whee!

24 days til Egypt. 24 days til everyone leaves. Sad kitten is sad.

Welcome to Morocco, Land of the Flying Fences.

Last Saturday (the 14th) was a World Cup qualifying match between Morocco and Cameroon. Guess who went? Oh yeah. Took a grand taxi to Fes with Andrew, Ben, Ally, and Annemarie Saturday morning to watch the game.


But first, we passed a Japanese tour bus in Ifrane. Ben was really excited.


We were let off in the centre ville and walked to the medina. It wound up being something like half an hour. Which is nothing when you hiked 9 hours in two days the previous weekend. But that's beside the point.

So not too long after we leave the taxi station and as we're walking through downtown, we're crossing a street. Which is dangerous in and of itself. I decide it's safer to walk on the sidewalk than in the street. Usually a good idea. Not a good idea when said sidewalk consists of wet cement.


I laughed about it the entire day.


I stepped up onto the sidewalk, sank into it a little, put my other foot down like a fool, screeched, and jumped back into the street. Ally and I laughed for like a block and a half. I wish now that I'd taken a photo of my shoe prints. :( And for the record, the sidewalk was not roped off and there was no warning about the cement. I guess they expect you to watch where you're walking or something. (Something Moroccans don't usually do either, but that's beside the point.)

So we found the medina, finally. After walking by a construction site and learning they're putting a Carrefour in Fes! But not til like 2011, so it's dead to me. I miss Carrefour though. But I digress. Medina. We almost got run over by a few donkeys, mopeds, and dirt trucks. Went to a restaurant. Talked to Ally's friends there. =P Waiter man decided Andrew and Annemarie were married and that he and I were siblings. I'd say it's just because we're white, but Ben was not included in the family affair. Maybe Ben was just giving off "Don't mess with me, I'm Canadian" vibes at this point. Ally was off making new friends in the restaurant. There were a bunch of guys from Cameroon there getting lunch before the game too.

Oh god, I just lost The Game.

Moving on. Party over here:



Annemarie, Me, Ben, Ally, Andrew


Post-lunch (mmm, tajine!) we went souvenir shopping in the medina. I has a scarf. Ally is amazing at bargaining. Of course, after she argued with the scarf guy and got us 50 Dh scarves, we passed a stall maybe 10 feet away selling the same scarves for 20 Dh. Oh, life. I mean, it's a different of $4, but still. Wandered a little. Took turns leading and getting us lost. More souvenir shopping. Failed attempts at getting Morocco jerseys. Suddenly realized we had like an hour and a half before the game started, so we booked it out of the medina and got cabs to the stadium.

Petit taxis only take a max of three people. We had five. Clearly we had to split up. Andrew and I were the designated French speakers.

Ally: I call Cat!
Ben: I call Andrew!

...Smartest decision ever. Let's send the two boys (and Annemarie) together and me and Ally alone. This didn't really occur to anyone until Ally and I were dropped off on the other side of the stadium from everyone else. And were pretty much the only girls in sight. However, cell phones are amazing and we eventually found the others. Found out the ticket window was closed. Oops. Also found the only guy in the country who doesn't speak French. That one threw me off. But yeah. We didn't have tickets because you can't buy anything in this country online. The stadium was pretty far out of the city, so we didn't go beforehand. We figured we could buy them right before we went in because we didn't think many people would be going. Even if Morocco won they weren't going to the World Cup. We could have bought scalped tickets, but while Ally and I were wandering a soldier warned the others against buying from a scalper.

So there were fences up to keep the crowd out. At some point not long after the game started, the crowd starts rushing the fences and then they break through. So people take off running. And then run back, because the soliders are beating them back. Literally. And the cycle repeats. And then Ben joins the crowd. And tells us, "If I get arrested, it's my own fault. Don't worry about me!"

And he was never heard from again.

Okay that's a lie. But sounds more epic. He made it through. And not long after that we all got through, because they just let everyone go. Which Ben's roommate had said they would probably do in order to fill the stadium.

The game itself was actually kind of lame. It went by really quickly though. And really made me miss playing. Aww. I can't remember what the score was. It was either 2-0 or 3-0 Cameroon. Morocco did get a goal though. Some random guy got on the field carrying his own soccer ball and ran from Morocco's goal line all the way down to Cameroon's. He stopped in front of the goal and punted the ball into the net, then fell to the ground dramatically. The players and the refs just stood there and watched it happen. Cameroon's goalie wasn't even in the net. After that, while everyone was cheering, the police dragged the guy off the field and beat him. Yeah.

During the later part of the second half we made some new friends too. And by made friends I mean a bunch of young boys came over and started talking to us. Mostly in Arabic. Hey guys, let's go talk to the white people in Arabic! I'm sure they'll understand! They had a great time when they asked Ally in Arabic, "Do you speak Arabic?" and she said "La." (No.)
Then, in Arabic, "Do you speak French?"
"La."
Again in Arabic, "Do you speak English?"
"Oui."

...Well played, Ally. So they amused themselves for a good five minutes repeating that exchange. I should probably mention that in addition to being teenagers, maybe younger, (which makes them obnoxious by default), and in addition to being boys (which not only makes them more obnoxious but also means they have no respect for women), they had been huffing wood glue or something from a plastic bag. So these kids rose very quickly on the list of people I want to hurt. They had a great time babbling at us in Arabic. At some point they realized I speak French and one of them invited me to his house for couscous. And then tried to steal my sunglasses. Off my face. This country is so special.

Suddenly, when there are probably fewer than five minutes left in the game, everyone runs up to the top of the stands. Except for the confused foreigners. A soldier comes by and has us move down about ten rows. We found out later, via Ben, that the charging was to avoid getting hit by flying chairs. Because people just tear them up and throw them. Awesome. We didn't see any of this. We did see three soldiers chase someone and start beating him like three rows behind us.

So we left. And there's minor chaos going on outside. People are yelling and throwing things and running around. And there are a lot of these fences lying around from when the crowd rushed them earlier.



And people are flinging them around? Ally and I are trying to navigate our way out of the chaos before she has an anxiety attack. Andrew and Annemarie are a few feet behind us. There is metallic scraping all around us as fences are being dragged, pushed, and flung.

And OH HAI, one hits me in the leg. It was on its side, and the part that hit me was the foot of it. Right in the back of the knee. Initially I was just like "Okay wut? I got hit by a fence?" And we kept walking. Ben materialized out of nowhere. And we walked back to centre ville. Traffic was crazy and there was absolutely no way we were getting a taxi, at least not from the stadium. At some point I stopped and looked at my leg and was like "Oh hey, big angry red spot!" It was maybe six o'clock at this point. We were in search of a Japanese/Thai restaurant that some other exchange students had told us about. The first guy I asked about it looked at me funny and said it was about 5km (3.1 miles) away and that we should take a taxi. Hah. Again, the taxis were few and far between, and those that we saw were all full. So we kept walking. A lot. I asked maybe four more people where it was just to make sure we were going the right way. Yay, French.

Finally got back to centre ville. Passed the infamous wet cement sidewalk, but we couldn't find my shoe prints. There were a lot of others though. Got taxis to the restaurant. Which happens to be a semi-fancy-ish place. And we're all sweaty and gross. And my shoes have cement on them. Whee.



But oh my god the food. There are no words for how awesome this food was. I got sweet & sour something or other and I died a little when I tried it. It was actually a little sad, I think, how excited we all were over it. God it was so good though. As we were getting ready to leave another group of exchange students came in. We laughed. And then came back to Ifrane. Went out for a few drinks. Came back and got sandwiches at the cafe. Pretty much had an awesome day.

And then I took this picture.


Hahaha. I feel like I should be angry that I was hit by a fence. Or... something. I swear to god all I've done is laugh about it since it happened. And probably annoy people to death by going, "Guess what color it is today!" Although I think Mom's reaction was the best. I called her, told her to get on Skype, and then said, "Want to see something awesome?" To which she replied, "I'm afraid." [She reminded me this is pretty much how I announced my sprained wrist last semester too. I need to change my approach if I get another epic injury.]

Lastly, this photo is my leg on Monday.

None of that discoloration is birthmark. It's all bruise. I LOL'D.


Since then it's just gotten progressively yellower. Now it's yellow with a little purple around the edges. You can see where the leg of the thing hit me too. I kinda hope it scars, but I don't think it's going to anymore. Sad face. I know I'm twisted, but come on. That's an epic story. "You see this scar? Yeah, that's from when a fence attacked me. That's right. A fence."

Slideshow!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

One Does Not Simply WALK into Mordor...

...One hikes there.

So Friday night, November 6th, we left campus at midnight to drive 5 hours (ish) to Chefchaouen. "We" being, me, Andrew, Ben, another American, and 11 Moroccans. The Explorers Club organized the trip. And I should correct myself, we left at 1am. Piled into an AUI van. Rolled into Chaouen at like 530 am, before the sun was out. It was fantastic. And bumpy. We had breakfast at some little cafe/sandwich shop right by where the van parked. Spent the next 5 hours wandering around Chaouen. Took pictures like this:




Chefchaouen is known for being blue. Also known for its hash. But whatever. Which isn't to say we didn't get a bunch of guys asking us if we wanted any. One guy wanted us to go to his farm 35 km away. That would have ended well, I'm sure. Great story though.

So yeah, wandered til noon. I was with Andrew and Tom the whole time. We got lunch at like 11:15 because we were supposed to meet at noon to be on our way to make sure we'd have enough daylight for the hike. Then we found that everyone else was just sitting down to lunch. At noon. We finally left Chaouen at 2pm to hike up to the place we were staying that night.

Protip: When you need AT LEAST 4 hours of daylight, likely more, and the sun goes down around 6... you don't leave at 2. But hey.

The hike kind of killed me. It was really rough at the beginning but at some point it got better. Until my leg rebelled. Earlier in the week I'd tweaked the arch of my foot doing yoga, but it hadn't really bothered me since so I figured I'd be okay. Not so much. Then my knee started bothering me too because I was walking funny. It was great.

Still pretty near the beginning of the trek.

But dude. The views from the mountain were so epic. And then we went into the Shire and Mordor. It was crazy. But like, being that high up was one thing. To be able to see it all was amazing. And at multiple points we were in the clouds. In. The clouds. As in the clouds were rolling right by us. It was ridiculous. And everything was so green and the sky was crazy colors and looking out through the clouds was just... wow. And it's kinda sad because the photos don't really do it justice. The light kept changing and it's just crazy. I was walking with Andrew and Ben and Ben's roommate for the most part, and we kept making jokes about being in Mordor and such because it really looked like that at some points. We lost the game a couple times too. There were all kinds of silly things talked about and stupid jokes and things to remember forever.

Also there was a lot of this:
"Hey guys, let's cut up the mountain!" Because we were behind everyone else. So clearly it's faster to cut up the side than follow the path. Mmyepp. It wasn't so bad, except for the time I fell and high-fived a prickly plant. Above picture is Andrew and Ben. And Ben's Canadian coat.

By the time we reached the actual top of the mountain it was completely dark. Yay. We were under the impression that once we got up we were done. Nope, there was like another 1.5 hours to go down. But there were tire tracks or something weird that had created ruts, so we had to go pretty slowly or risk death. >> Also no one had flashlights. And cell phones didn't help a whole lot. In the end we were all rescued by a Land Rover owned by the people we were staying with. That was a special ride. There were like 9 people crammed into it. It was fun.

The place we were staying turned out to be the house of the people who owned the hostel thing that we were not in fact staying at. The Explorers' Club had been trying to arrange this trip for a long time but it wasn't working out so I guess finally they were like "Can we plz stay here?" And so we stayed there. IT WAS SO COLD. I mean, up in the mountains. No electricity. Coldness. But we had lots of mint tea, and harira (Moroccan soup), and chicken tajine. All of which was really good. And then it was bedtime.

The next morning, surprise, it was still cold. We had an amazing breakfast of bread, olives, tea, awesome coffee, something else?, and some kind of honey thing that was amazing. Again we wound up leaving like two hours later than planned, but whatever. We left just before 10:30am. It got significantly less cold as we kept hiking. Which was almost sad because I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt since the weather forecast had been all "OMG COLD AND HIGH CHANCE OF RAIN." This hike seemed a lot easier. We went up and down a lot, but we stayed in a group almost the whole time because we were walking along a path that was lined by prickly bushes and was barely wide enough for one person as it was. Also there were berries. Lots of berries. That everyone decided they needed to pick from the bushes and eat. And by pick, I mean stop dead in their tracks on this narrow path on pretty steep inclines. We were not amused. The berries weren't even that good. They were weird, actually. Kind of spiky but not? Idk.

Lots of walking and trees and mountains later, we got to the village of Akchour at the end of the trail. And there was much rejoicing. And a little bit of dying. And a half hour drive back to Chaouen, where we had a delicious dinner. Yay, tajine. And salad. Nom nom nom. And then a 5-hour drive back to campus, during which we stayed awake until the last hour. Fail.

And then we had class the next day. And I'm pretty sure we all died a little every time we had to move. It was such an epic weekend though. I feel like this post is way too short for the amount of fun that was had, but most of what happened was things that you had to be there for, either because stupid things were said or done and will always be inside jokes, or because there's really no way to describe the crazy views and they way it felt to be there. Either way, epic weekend was epic, and totally worth the cold and the pain we felt later. Yay, Morocco. <3

Peekchurs!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

OH HAI.

Wow. So clearly I fail at this whole blogging thing. Nothing particularly blog-worthy has happened though. Midterms were a pain in the butt but I did fine on all of them. It's funny here because everyone freaks out over midterms. Mostly because they never do the homework and then have to cram everything come exams. But hey, whatever.

We've played Trivial Pursuit so often since that first day that we know the answers to at least a quarter of the questions. It's funny when someone reads a question and everyone is like "Aw, we've had this before." I'm going to own at this game next semester when the new group of exchange students comes in. Tee hee hee.

Also, I think Pictionary is my new favorite game. We just discovered it last week. So far I've won and lost a game. It was hilarious when we won because some of our pictures had nothing to do with anything. I was highly amused. It was highly amusing. Good times all around.

Now that there's only a month left in the semester, I'm starting to do fun things. I guess I kinda fail haha. But there's always next semester. It saddens me beyond words that in a month and two days everyone will disperse and I will likely never see most of these people again. I know the same is true for my friends at VCU; a bunch have already graduated and most will graduate this year. But it's still different. I haven't been at VCU since last December. Yes it will be weird to go back and not know a lot of people, but at this point I'll be expecting it. As far as AUI goes... having spent an entire semester with awesome people and then coming back after break not to see any of them is just wrong. It's just going to be made of fail all around. :(

Moving on from that super happy topic: I'm not coming home for Christmas. When I left home initially I wasn't planning on coming home. Then I figured I would, because it sounded like everyone else was going home and I wasn't going to stay in Morocco by myself. After talking to people I changed my mind again. And now plans have changed a lot, but mine have been finalized: I'm spending Christmas in Cairo. Mia has a friend who lives there but won't be there during break and is letting us stay in his apartment. She and I will spend a full month there before coming back to Morocco, and Ally will be with us for 3 weeks before she goes back to the States. I am super excited about this. We get to go see the Pyramids. In Egypt. Wut? There will of course be trips to see all the rest of the awesome awesome things, but dude. Egypt. How much win is this made of?

I would love to continue rambling, but sadly I have homework to do. Ew. There should hopefully be two more posts this week, though, because the past two weekends have been entirely epic. Consider yourselves warned. :)