Tallulah, 17 months

Being in Morocco and all, we have kind of dropped the ball on Tallulah's updates. She is changing so rapidly that it is sometimes hard to keep track of what she likes and does not like, what will make her happy, and what will make her explode in rage. She is turning into a crazy and hilarious toddler, complete with all that comes with the domain: uncontrollable laughing, constant exploration and discovery, and fits of frustration or exhaustion.

She still loves to nurse, and does so no fewer than eight times a day. I have the milk supply of a mom with twins at 3 months. For a while she had little interest in eating real food, but in Morocco, I did not either so I can't blame her. Now, she is eating everything that is put in front of her, usually brats, sauerkraut, or noodles of some variety. She loves fruit as much as her older brother, and can devour blueberries, pineapple, strawberries, and (now) bananas (which she hated for a really long time). She never liked cereal until two days ago when she ate a whole bowl of muesli. She still isn't a big fan of crackers, but she'll eat dried fruit and nuts like a seasoned hiker.

She is obsessed with going outside, and whenever the door opens, she rushes to the stairs in anticipation, usually grabbing "her" sand bucket and shovel she leaves by it. She knows how to gather up her shoes and bring mom's hers as well. She can navigate play equipment meant for much older kids, and has taken up the climbing rope wall as her personal challenge, and made it to the top of one a few days ago when we weren't paying attention, but she was totally unfazed by how high she was. She is a climber... and a fearless one at that. She also loves swimming, and will go under the water and come back up with huge smiles. She may be our little fish. She would jump right off the edge of the pool constantly in Morocco, and it became so exhausting keeping her alive that we opted many times to take our cautious Atticus alone because he is so much easier to watch! (terrible, I know)

She wants to ride a bike SO desperately.

She is a lover of reading. It took her a little longer to get into books, and she still hates being read TO, but she loves picking up a book and exploring the pages on her own, and I'll often peek in the room and find her in this comfy chair with a book. Sometimes she'll babble along and make up her own stories. So cute.

She still does not have any consistent words (surprising), but she recently took up signing and can sign milk, more, food, baby, please, and outside. We actually recently (yesterday) decided to send her to preschool/daycare in the fall, and she'll be going a few days a week in the afternoons. We were really on the fence about this one because we want her to have as much stay-at-home time as Atticus, but on the other hand, it's (nearly) free with the tuition assistance from the university and it will give Tim a chance to focus on his writing, assembly chair duties, and applying for grad school (maybe) without putting undue stress on me. This semester will be a little bit crazy as I'm going to be submitting and defending my pre-dissertation proposal for my research, taking 5th semester Arabic, and two reading-intensive seminars. It's a small classroom with 8 kids and 2 teachers, they play outside a lot, and it's located really close to our house. I think she'll love it, and maybe it will help her language skills develop. We get three weeks to try it out in September, so we'll see how it goes, and if we feel comfortable with it.

Her favorite spot

Everything makes a great phone.

Eating chocolate croissant in our Fes kitchen

Her adorable gap-toothed smile has brightened many a strangers' day, and she is never hesitant to walk up to strangers and befriend them. I know this is the place to say how fast she is growing up and how I can't believe she is almost 1.5, but that's not actually true for me. She has so much personality she feels like she's been here forever, and sometimes I can't believe she's ONLY been with us a little over a year. Maybe because we've had so many changes and moves since her birth 17 months ago (four moves? two cross-country drives? almost two trans-Atlantic flights? two-week train trip through Western Europe? how many 17 months have such a tumultuous life?) I forget about the time before she existed. We love her a lot, and tell her often. Atticus says it best: "Lulah is my best friend," which he says often and I think really means it.

 

 

Eurocco Trip, Phase III: Fes, Morocco to Karlsruhe, Germany

Our journey to Germany came not a minute too late. We were done with the heat, dust, and Ramadan. I truly did enjoy much of our time in Morocco, but a lot of it was lonely and tedious and so very sweaty. I think had we been there longer we could have eased into a better groove, maybe made some friends, and found places to play, but the weird "we're-living-here-but-not-really" period of two months was not quite enough to really invest but was long enough to feel really long. But it's over, and we're in Germany, and it was worth the two months in Morocco. Plus, my Arabic improved a ton and we had interesting cultural experiences. On the day of our flight, we spent a lot of time at the playground getting the kids' energy out thinking it would help them sleep on the plane ride, since we were leaving in the evening. Farewell, only playground in all of Fes!

Our flight to Germany was uneventful and actually fairly enjoyable. I was nervous about getting to the Fes airport because it is pretty far away, but my school called a driver for us and we paid him 120 dirham for the 30 minute drive (about 14 dollars?) We was really nice, arrived in front of my school 5 minute early, and drove fairly safely. He did refuse to turn the A/C on and the temp was 106 that day, so our kids were pretty dang sweating. It was also 5 pm and he had been fasting all day, so I can't imagine how he was feeling. Atticus looks a little nervous in this picture. I was.

I had ever flown Ryanair and heard horror stories, but I have zero complaints (except there was a family behind us with 6 LOUD kids.... they screamed and kicked our seats and wreaked havoc... it was pretty nuts). The flight left prompt-ish, they allowed us to take our baby backpack even if it was a bit too big (they checked it like a stroller), and when Atticus decided he needed to defecate (he always has to poop at the most inopportune times... he couldn't have gone when we were sitting at the airport for 1.5 hours, had to be the minute we were in line) when we were in line to get on the plane (no assigned seats, so where you are in line is a big deal), the employee at the counter let us out and back again in our same spot. They let the families on first, and where we were in line actually did not end up mattering because the plane was huge and half full. We ended up with six seats for the four of us. We left late in the late evening for the 3.5 hour flight, thinking both our kids would be passed out shortly after take off. But with the crazy kids behind us, Tallulah did not fall asleep until about 3 hours in, and Atticus nodded off during what was a very rough and scary landing through some dense fog (scary enough that the plane cheered when we touched down).

Tallulah woke up as we got off the plane and then we waited in a very long line to pass through customs. They asked us the usual questions but Tim was getting way too specific (and our plans are pretty complicated) and the guy looked a little suspect. But I imagine most Americans are not trying to illegally immigrate to Germany so he let us through. We found a pay phone to call our hotel to pick us up and a McDonald's without free WiFi (free WiFi doesn't exist in Germany, as far as we've seen).

The nice hotel owner picked us up five minutes later and drove us through the countryside to his establishment about 7-8 minutes away. The hotel was immaculately clean. Cleaner than anywhere I have ever stayed, and he had set up a travel crib for Lulah (though Atticus slept all night in it) and pushed together the twin beds at my e-mail request (all free of charge). There was even a changing pad and extra kids' blankets and pillows and plastic Ikea cups in the bathroom.

It was eerily quiet and pitch dark in this tiny German village, and was hard to get to sleep at first, used to the lights and constant late-night Ramadan street noise from the cafe next to our Morocco apartment. But we soon drifted off and slept hard until 9:30 the next morning (we changed two hours of time zone). We woke up and showered and ate delicious fresh bakery pastries, and walked the streets for an hour or so until we needed to leave to catch our bus to Nina and Juwe's city. The nice man drove us to the bus station to catch our bus to Heidelberg (again, all free of charge... and we only paid 45 euro for the room). I've decided the German countryside will be my go-to vacation spot in the future.

Atticus found Angry Birds in the toy store

WW I memorial with the name of my HS boyfriend

The bus trip was (almost) uneventful, though both kids got car sick and Tallulah puked once (in a bag, we were prepared this time!) We sat in front of a hilarious German-turned-British woman and her two kids. She was kind of annoying but super nice and friendly at the same time. Her kids had AWESOME afros, and she had made a Barbie with an afro for her daughter because apparently you can't buy them anywhere. After the two hour bus ride, we arrived in Heidelberg and found the express train to Karlsruhe, and 25 minutes later, arrived at our destination. The trip seemed so daunting in my head, but it is amazing how smooth everything can turn out.

And that was how we got here. Here will come in another post.

Insecurity

As some of you know, I'm a little obsessed with breastfeeding. Also, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, among other things. I'm also a little judgmental when others don't do these things. A lot of times it's because I love it so much I can't understand why you as a parent don't. Soft, stretchy baby carriers make me happy in a way that strollers just cannot. But I think a lot of my judgmentalness stems from my own insecurity as a mother. I don't really like playing with my kids. I don't really like doing a lot of things, like giving them baths or taking them to children's museums. I'm kind of lazy in a lot of ways when it comes to parenting. I do these things most days (except the baths) because I know it will be healthy for them and their development and I want what is best for my kids. But when I'm feeling like a particularly unfit mother, I know I have one thing that I'm really, really good at, and that's breastfeeding. I can nurse my babies exclusively for 6-7 months, and it's not that much more difficult to keep it up through the toddler years. It's the one thing I have (ok, actually, I'm really good at putting my kids in expensive car seats and rear-facing them forever and installing them very, very correctly), that I KNOW without a doubt is best for my kids. And while it is tempting to use as a crutch, like "ah, he can eat a hot dog for lunch, I breastfed him for 2.5 years" or "one more episode of Caillou, he is still breastfed at least" I usually don't. So, when I don't read them at least 11 books a day or let them watch a little more TV, I won't feel quite as guilty because their little brains got all that yummy deliciousness as babies.

I think a lot of the mommy wars stems from insecurity. We are so busy criticizing others' parenting styles, because unless ours are the absolute right way, then we aren't doing the best by our children, and in this day and age, that freaks the hell out of mothers (I really shouldn't exclude fathers from this discussion because I've heard many a dad debate the pros and cons of co-sleeping and baby-wearing with the best of them) We need research to back our decisions, we need science to know that we are good mothers. Which in a way, is really quite sad. What about happiness as an indicator of well-being? Mom's happy, baby's happy, life is all good. Why do we need to know that TV is kiling brain cells or BPA will disrupt endocrine function or rooms with corners will hinder creativity?

I guess I can see how knowledge is power on so many levels, and the more educated you are the better decisions you can make for your family. But with that education comes terrible, guilt-inducing responsibility to be the absolute best parent you can possibly be, and in order to be that, you have to compare yourself to make sure you are being such. And when you compare, you inevitably judge others for their decisions, and are occasionally vocal about those decisions which in turn can hurt other's feelings when they aren't living up to the arbitrary standard you set for them on their behalf. Their insecurity then leads them to think their way is THE way and the cycle repeats.

Tim's been reading the attachment parenting book written by the artist formerly known as Blossom, and listening to her has made me think a lot about my own attitude. I've listened to bits and pieces so I'm not one to pass a judgment on her lifestyle or choices, but her tone is that of "this is the absolute best way of parenting and there is no other legitimate way to do so." I agree with her that our kids are over-vaccinated and over-academiced and over-sleep-trained but I don't think the answer lies in swinging to the absolute other side of no vaccines or ABC books.

 

Intaheytu

That's my attempt at a transliteration of "I am finished" in Arabic. Since we only even study things IN Arabic, I've realized it's really hard for me to transliterate words. I'll leave that to the linguists...

I took my final exam this afternoon at Alif. It was excruciatingly hard. I have no idea who wrote that exam, but it had nothing to do with pretty much anything we learned all semester. There were only three of us left in class by this point (we slowly lost students during the six weeks) and we just kept looking up in disbelief at how difficult it was. I guessed on a lot of things, and the only part where I felt the Arabic I learned all summer was demonstrated was in the writing section. I zoomed through it and I was impressed with my ability to write a complex essay in Arabic with little hesitancy through the different tenses and with specific vocab. I think my Arabic has improved leaps and bounds in six weeks, and while it was grueling and perhaps the most difficult six weeks of my life, I think coming here was worth it in terms of my academics. In the fall, I'll skip to 5th semester Arabic, and keep going from there. As much as I complain about the intensity of these six weeks, I really do enjoy learning Arabic and I feel like I'm pretty decent at it as well. I was in a class with some students who studied for 2-3 years and I could keep up even though I skipped about 8 chapters in the textbook we are using. I had to do a lot of review with my tutor of those chapters, and I finally felt in the last few weeks I had a good handle on all of the vocab we were using in class. When I walked home from the final, I had a profound sense of accomplishment, and I know Tim shared it in as well as he did a lot of the sacrificing and hard work in maintaining some semblance of domesticity while I was gone for six hours a day.

Now, it's over and we have a few short (but will feel long) days left here in Fez (Fes, whatever). We are so ridiculously excited to head out and get to Germany to spend a few glorious weeks with good friends, and then head over to Belgium, England, and Ireland to fly back to the US and live again in our favorite city thusfar. It's been a heck of a summer, but I think we'll look back on it fondly. And while our kids probably won't remember it, (and if they do, they will probably remember the boring days while I was at school and they were in an apartment with no toys and a TV that was in a language they couldn't understand), I think doing hard things is character-building and I have felt my eyes opening to new truths about humanity as I live in a culture so vastly different from my own. But I won't lie, there were times I contemplated dropping out of grad school because the thought of doing fieldwork for a year in another country seemed so daunting as to not be worth the experience. But there were other times I contemplated the year of fieldwork with excitement and anticipation. We even toyed with the idea of me applying for a job that opened up in Provo doing something that is interesting and flexible and would pay fairly well -- it's a job I almost got several years ago but was hedged out by a MESA graduate. I think now with a Master's degree under my belt and Arabic experience, I could potentially get it, and the idea of moving back to Provo has been appealing at times (the rec center!! the frontrunner!! but ohhhh, the air quality and politics!) We ended up on the side of not applying for the job because we love Madison so much and I'm excited to start school again, but maybe in the middle of January we'll be regretting that decision. When I think about the future and the years and years of grad work ahead of me, it is really daunting and I question the value in it. I do not think that I want a high-stress tenure-track job, which is what most of my colleagues in grad school are going for. But for now, I like school and I seem to be gliding along just fine without sacrificing my well-being or my family's, and while the prospect of a real job with a real salary right now is appealing, I know that in the long-run getting a PhD will open up way more doors for work opportunities both in the US and abroad, especially if I continue my Arabic study.

Eurocco: Fez Week 6

Monday: A lazy morning with some deep cleaning and an early nap for Tallulah. We went to the park in the afternoon and walks at night.

Mid-cut. We left it like this for a day.

Tuesday: More cleaning, rearranging. Trying to be domestic in such a different setting is really interesting sometimes, in the different measures it has you take. So today I chopped off more of Atticus's hair to fight the heat, scrubbed off caked on layer of olive oil settled behind the stove, and rearranged the furniture so that the kids can't climb up to get out the window, the idea of which still keeps Cait up at nights.

Post-hair cut.

We hung around the house all afternoon until around four, when we headed outside to kill time playing in front of our house and in one of the secluded areas of Cait's school until it was time to head over to the school's villa. Alif's villa (which here means a really big house with high walls) usually serves as a residence for select Alif school patrons, such as visiting professors and group leaders and such (but no kids), but is now doubling as a place for American students to hang out, eat and drink away from the view of the fasting Moroccan students of the school, who are there to learn English. They've even moved the schools small kiosk, which prepares and sells food and drink to students into the villa. I'm sure the residents don't like it, but compromises must be made.

Anyway, we headed over to the villa because they were having an iftar (the meal eaten at the end of fasting every day, which they translate into "breakfast" at least here in Morocco, which is confusing) cooking lesson and meal. The cooking lesson was a little too well attended to be really effective for everyone, but the meal was really nice. The kids liked wandering around, and Atticus especially liked the pbskids time that he got on the villa's communal computers that no one else uses. The meal itself consisted of bean and lamb soup, hard-boiled eggs, lots of different kinds of breads and pancakes and dates and hard pastries for desert, along with orange and banana juice. Apparently this is what is eaten about every night for Ramadan, and while it was very tasty, I have to believe that it gets old fairly quickly. The kids were pretty worn out, and without too much effort, they fell asleep pretty quick after getting home.

Wednesday:

Karima, our cleaning lady, came in the morning, so we decided to head out for an extended McDonalds trip. Unfortunately, we got there at 10:15 when they don't open up until 11 and we forgot money, so we played around outside, took a walk back home (which isn't a far walk really) and by the time we got back, McDonalds was open. Being open as a restaurant is, of course, tricky business during Ramadan, but McDonalds figures their status as a refuge for foreigners justifies being open (as do the local Burger King and Pizza Hut, apparently), and they cover their bases by having warning signs (in French) that you shouldn't eat food in public and that they are not responsible for anything that happens if you do (Muslims can be jailed if they eat in public). So, we shared a kids meal and a few other dollar menu items, played in the play area and got ice cream and walked home just as the cleaning lady was finishing. I was positive that Tallulah would nap on the way home, but she did not, so we waited for Cait to get home to try to get her down and it took almost her entire one hour break to get her down. Maybe Tallulah is transitioning away from naps now. In the afternoon, we spent some more time at the Alif villa, walked the city, and got a meal at Central Park Cafe a little after evening prayers. The Cafe was setting up like they were expecting a huge crowd, but we were the only ones there. I imagine it fills up well after the last prayer of the night, which comes now about an hour-and-a-half after the sundown prayer, if I judge the time right. By the time we were done, the kids were very tired and we all fell asleep quite well.

Thursday:

Two park trips in the morning, another late nap for Tallulah and our first afternoon back at the pool which was closed for repairs.

Friday:

More park, playing at Cait's school, swimming for Atticus and Mom and wandering at night for me and Tallulah.

Saturday:

We took a long walk to a park in New Fez, which is really middle aged Fez, built after Old Fez but before the modern part of the city where we live. We'd heard rumors that the park was really nice, and we'd been close to it in our wanderings before, so we decided to venture out in the morning to try to find it. The walk in the morning wasn't bad, with the weather being unusually cool and the kids being pleasant. When we thought we were getting close, though, a Moroccan man approached us and offered to show us the best way to get to the park, and I, foolishly agreed. He led us through a long windy path in the old city streets, when really the park had Ben straight ahead of us. And then when I offered him a few durham for taking us the long way to the place we were going just fine, he demanded more money. Even though it cost us only $1.50 on an otherwise free day, it was still a disheartening experience, especially since Cait had been right since the early moments that we should just ditch him.

Anyway, we made it to the park. It was relatively nice, well kept up and large. But the numerous park workers were very strict about where we let our kids wander, forcing us to stay on the paved path and observe nature from a distance of at least 3 feet which Last Child in the Woods has taught us to view as not nearly good enough. We still had a good time, the kids played well and we got hungry and thirsty avoiding eating and drinking in view of others.

Walking back we went through the market looking for a Moroccan dress for Tallulah, but everything was too big, and at the end, the same guy that had led us around town saddled up and tried to convince us in English that things were more expensive than the woman was asking for in Arabic. At that point we high-tailed it home, disappointed in humanity and feeling kind of disenchanted with the whole place, which is unfair based on the action of the one guy, but there it is.

In the afternoon we went swimming together. I took Tallulah out for a walk and we ended up finding the area where they serve free food for Iftar, so we got some Harira soup and the guy next to us gave us a few sweets and then home to bed.

Sunday:

I took Atticus to the park in the morning while Tallulah got a second nap. I took Tallulah out to explore, and then Atticus and then Tallulah again, as Last Child in the Wood has convinced me that just getting the kids out for unstructured time is almost always worth it. Cait took Atticus to the pool while Tallulah had her late afternoon nap, and they returned with some weary travelers, a couple from Belgium, who were waiting for the Youth Hostel to open up, which with Ramadan has even more sporadic hours. We offered to just let them them stay with us, and they accepted. They seemed grateful to have a home-like place to stay as they've been on the road for several weeks, doing a tour of Morocco and would be heading to a new town the next day. We were happy to have adults to talk to. Cait cooked some delicious home-made hamburgers and we all went up to the roof for a little bit to look at the stars. The Belgians came back around 9pm and we had a nice chat with them. Then bed, with the Belgians taking Atticus and my bed while we took a spare out to the living room floor.

 

 

Eurocco: Fez Week 5

It's amazing to me that we have been in Fez for 5 weeks already. Sometimes the days seem so long, but looking back, time has gone by fast.

Monday:

Swimming and around the town exploration.

We had our friends Kyle and Vareena over for dinner, so the early part of the day was consumed with getting the house cleaned after a fairly big weekend. One thing about our apartment, with all its bright tiles and white surfaces, it does not hide dirt, which makes it hard to keep clean, but is very reassuringly clean when you put some work in.

Kyle and Vareena came over for dinner which was lentils and sautéed vegetables, which were simple and satisfying. Afterwards we went out to one of the fruit salad shops near Central Park, although the kids were pretty tired by this point so things wrapped up a little early. It was really nice to see them again, and nice to host a dinner at our house, that like many Moroccan apartments, is specifically designed to host people, although more than two, I suppose. With its two long couches and four regular sized couches, as well as its numerous tables of differing sizes and heights spread among the couches, it would be an awesome place to host a pizza night, if it had an oven, of course. Maybe if we make enough friends and find a nice pan, we'll do crepe night or something before we go.

Abducted by Moroccan money changers. Their attitudes, Tallulah's pure joy and Atticus sulking but attention seeking, sum up their reaction to Moroccan attention so well.

This was also the first day of Cait's private tutoring, which I discussed in an earlier post. So far, so good.

Tuesday:

I went for my second run in Fez this morning (the first was while we were in Hotel Central, and I'm not sure if I blogged about that), out towards the Royal Palace that I had no idea was just down the road. It was a pleasant run and the weather was not too hot, but I still get lots of stares, which I will just have to ignore as I try to keep running. One of the effects of Cait's class time shift is that she leaves a lot later in the morning relative to when we are all used to getting up, so hopefully that gives me a little more time to squeeze in a run fairly often.

After the run, Cait helped me get the kids ready for an attempt to get out before it got too hot, which is a great idea, but stifled by how few things are open early in the morning, including our regular bathroom locations, parks, and snack shops. We were able to go to the playground, which doesn't seem too close, after failing to get into Central Park and failing to get pastries, but we didn't stay too long, because we were hungry, Atticus partially peed his pants, and I didn't have a place to go the bathroom. Still, it was nice to get out.

Atticus had collected a flower that he wanted to show to Cait, but she was already in class, so he showed it to people at her school who were late to class.

After a quiet afternoon and a very hot trip to Carrefour, we made sandwiches and I took Atticus to Cait's school, so he could play some of his internet required games and Skype with grandma Betsey, his reward for being good on the shopping trip. Cait joined us for a bit, and then Atticus and I explored the city and came home to read a Fancy Clancy mystery until he fell asleep.

Atticus imitating the large scale art from Art Attack that comes on Moroccan TV fairly often

Wednesday:

The first day of Ramadan. There was some doubt as to whether it was going to start yesterday, since apparently there isn't a fixed start day, but rather, Ramadan begins whenever the religious authorities say the moon is in the right place in its cycle, or something along those lines. So, lots of shops, especially those serving food were closed, and Cait had her morning class an hour later, which I'm sure are just some of the effects we will notice about Ramadan.

Cait went to school and I waited until the housecleaner came and then I took the kids to the pool. Tallulah still enjoys it more than Atticus, so, after I swam with both of them for a while, he got some iPad time while I played with her. Then both of the kids went down for naps, which was awesome. We had a quiet afternoon until Cait came home.

Lacking a variety of pool toys, we brought a pot. Also Tallulah tripped and bonked her head.

Once she got home, she took Atticus to her school while she worked on a presentation that she had to give in Arabic the next day. He got a few golden hours playing pbskids.org on their school computer. PBSkids was a mainstay of his entertainment and, I like to hope education, in Wisconsin, but is mostly unavailable to us here without internet. I hung out with Tallulah and then took her on an exploration expedition where we ended up at Cait's school.

We took the kids home and put Tallulah to bed and then Cait and Atticus explored a Fez that has been radically changed by Ramadan, with the streets nearly empty when they went out just after the evening prayer that signals the end of fasting for the day. They saw a few people at different restaurants, including McDonalds, but most people were in their homes enjoying the traditional evening meal that they will have every evening for nearly a month. They were unsuccessful in buying milk, as every shop was closed, including the local Carrefour as well as the secondary mission of getting Atticus to sleep. They did return with grapes from a local vendor and a sleepy enough guy that he went to sleep not too much later.

Thursday:

This was a long day, as the temperature is still high, most things are still closed and the kids TV stations have gotten lame with a bunch of poorly produced Islamic history cartoons (not to knock on Islam, just repetitive and surprisingly violent Islamic cartoons) and call-in game shows for kids. I probably should have taken the kids out again, but I wasn't up for it. So we filled the day with reading books, pretend time, building forts, iPad breaks and lots of snacks. I think we'll alternate lazy days like this and more adventurous days like the day before for the two weeks we have left.

We spend a lot of time with mattresses as slides and jumping pads in the living room. Also, Tallulah loves tissue boxes. Also, sneak family photo.

Cait also has complaints of the quality of her classroom experience going downhill as Ramadan gets started, especially her afternoon class, that today also suffered from a lack of air conditioning, which she says is the one redeeming factor of the tedium of six hours of Arabic class a day.

This was also the last day of long hair for Atticus. He developed a nasty rash on his neck that might have been a reaction to shampoo that wasn't washed out well enough, but was also plausibly enough a reaction to the heat of long hair that it was time to give up some of the lovely mane we love so much.

Isn't that an awesome pic?

Friday:

This was a more active day, and I seem to be swinging back and forth pretty consistently between the exhaustion of the active days and the tedium and general grumpiness of the langorous days. I went for a run in the morning, then took the kids to the park and then shopping. Lunch at Cait's school and playing around there, and then we played until Cait came home and took the kids to the park while I cleaned and read. Tallulah fell asleep quick, but Atticus put up his regular heat inflamed resistance until he finally dropped off.

Saturday:

Today the heat finally started to break some, and we tried to take the opportunity to go outside some. We went to the park in the morning and tried to go swimming in the afternoon, but the pool was closed for repairs and who knows when it will open up again. That was a hard blow as we've become dependent on going there for a cool break every other day. We had dance parties and instrument time at home and two suppers until Tallulah was ready to go to sleep. Cait took Atticus out for ice cream and to talk to her sister and I stayed and cleaned and finished Behind the Beautiful Forevers which drove me further into white-guilt doldrums but which I really enjoyed for the richness of detail and honesty about a part of world I am almost completely unaware of, the slums of India.

What a girl. So much personality in those eyes.

Sunday:

Cait took Tallulah to the Sooq to buy some souvenir clothing, getting two outfits for Atticus including a soccer uniform and a few other things, including a cute dress for Atticus's friend Juna, whose family we will, hopefully (please nothing go wrong!), we will be staying with in two weeks in Germany. We're planning to go back to get something for Tallulah. I took Atticus to Carrefour for veggies and ice cream. Cait took Atticus to her school for PBSkids.org and Monopoly. Lazing around until I walked the kids to sleep at night.

I love the little belly still poking out of the uniform.

We're not super satisfied with the haircut, but it's at least a lot cooler and off his neck.

 

Eurocco: Mountain Weekend

We've been pretty stuck in the routine of our lives here after all the spontaneity of our original travel, but we knew coming in that this was likely. This trip wasn't really going to be about being tourists in Morocco, it was about Cait being a student and us being a student's family. Still, when Cait heard of a cheap, fairly quick and interesting sounding trip to the mountains, we thought it would be a good idea. Okay, I was a little hesitant just because I'm still not really anxious to do much unnecessary travel, but I knew that if we didn't do anything else while we were here but the daily routine, we'd probably regret it some in the long run, so I agreed to take the chance and although the trip got off to a very rocky start, it ended up being a pretty good time.

The aforementioned rocky start came soon after we boarded the small bus or large van that was going to be taking us up to the mountains. After we had to switch drivers because of a family emergency and winding our way up into the mountains, the kids started feeling sick. We had been warned against sitting in the back of the bus, but because we didn't want to make anyone switch seats as we were the last ones on, or sit by and annoy the driver, although the seats next to him in the front were open, we figured we could make it through a fairly short trip and everything would be okay.

It wasn't. The trip was longer, hotter, windier and more crazily driven than we had thought. And although we did take a break at a fairly stinky but still beautiful lake, the kids threw up, three times, once for Atticus and twice for Tallulah, before they fell asleep for a while until we reached our first major stop, the monkeys of Azrou.

I am fully aware that there are a lot of problematic elements to wild monkeys being regularly fed human food and becoming accustomed to their presence without any sort of organized protection or care for them (at least that I could see) but at this point we were just glad to be doing something that enthralled both of the kids and took our minds off the fact that we were going to have to make the same trip back down the mountain with what were sure to be two grumpy and worn out kids. Reading, and finishing, Poisonwood Bible which so often decries abuses of Americans in Africa, later that night kept me up late feeling even worse about the monkeys and my whole privileged life in general, but at the moment, we were just glad the wafers for the monkeys were cheap. In all honesty, our kids ate almost all the food that we might have given the monkeys, and what the monkeys got they mostly stole from the kids hands, but still, we participated, when it would have been fairly easy to just watch and save a small measure of our morality. Oh well, the moment has passed and it was really enjoyable, as deviations from morality often are.

After that, we loaded up the bus again and headed off to participate in slightly less, but still somewhat, morally-fraught activities, like fueling tourist economies in nearby mountain towns. The actual town of Azrou, where we got coffee, soda and pastries and then Ifrane where we got lunch and explored were both really nice. Azrou was tucked into an idyllic mountain landscape, it was clean, the people were friendly and the prices for food were low.

Ifrane apparently was once a town exclusively for the French colonists and now houses a high-quality university. It is inhabited now mostly by Moroccans associated with the university and is a hot tourist spot for Moroccans perhaps more than foreingers. It did have the feel of a town whose wealth couldn't quite maintain the glory of what it once was, evinced by the number of abandoned villas, the bird-poop filled park that could have been very nice otherwise and the decrepit playground, but it was still a very lovely town that had a nice, relaxed vibe and wasn't nearly as troubling as some tourist towns that have super nice shops for a street or two and then deep slums everywhere else. We had a decent lunch there of pizza and chicken sandwiches.

This looked like it was planned as a green-space, but now serves as a sandbox, at least for our kids. They ended the day quite filthy.

The lion that guards the city from grumpy children.

If I ever get my mind around the moral dilemmas surrounding participating in a tourist economy then I might write a blogpost on the subject, but right now, I can't really seem to get a grip on it. On the one hand, we're spending money that we would otherwise spend in America, or wherever, on the other hand, we prop up what are fairly volatile and artificial economies, but then again, what economies aren't artificial? And then factor in the environmental cost versus whatever social benefit there is to increasing our understanding of and participation in the broader world, and you've got one heap of a moral dilemma. C'est la vie, I suppose.

Anyway, after lunch and exploration around town, we started up the trip home, anxious about having another miserable trip. But taking the seats in the front to which we'd shifted too late in the first trip, and assuring that our kids were looking toward the road as often as possible, it was an uneventful trip, with Tallulah sleeping for most of it and Atticus shifting between iPhone time and treats and stories. We did leave the bag of all our puke laden kids clothes on the bus, but he swung back by to drop it off and we ended a long day feeling grateful to be back home and satisfied that we'd seen some good sights.