Morning Greetings

Bonjour!

It's another beautiful day in Rabat, Morocco, as Bob likes to say.

Actually it's a bit overcast, but still springtime-warm: Anna and Tommy went off to school today in shorts (Anna's were more like cropped pants).

We had a great time earlier this week with the Amy, Terry, Camille and Charlie when they came to stay with us in Rabat. They left for Fes yesterday, and we join them tomorrow for a couple of nights in a riad before we start our adventure to the Saharan desert. (Yes, Bob is going to get to ride his camel. Since I'm sure few of you will want to miss seeing this important event, we'll definitely post some pictures. BTW, my prediction is that riding camels will be fun for about 10-15 minutes, after which it will quickly become much less fun).

I'm hoping to have a special blog from a guest writer later today. We'll see what I can do! In the meantime, here are a few more photos for you.... The photos include a couple of pictures of the holy city of Moulay Idriss (one of the two photos shows the mausoleum of Moulay Idriss, with the green roof, an important site for Muslims), an example of the incredibly intact stone mosaics we saw in Volubilis, a couple of pictures of Anna and Tommy in Volubilis, and a picture of Camille from Sunday with one of our "pet" cats, Fluffy.

A bientot!

Hi!

It is Anna and Camille (one of our guests).
Camille and her family came here on Sunday and since then have visited the beach and the Kasbah, as well as spent some time in Paul's, a delicious cafe.

Camille says that her favorite place has been the beach. Though she also really liked the the Kasbah with all of its storks. h
Last Wednesday, Tommy and I got pets, a beautiful bird (Billy) for me, and a Hamster, (Cocoa) for Tommy. Since then, we have spent a lot of time working on getting our new pets to trust us.

Morocco is, as always, beautiful but the weather is becoming hotter, as Camille and her family have discovered. And school is getting easier. Our French is really improving and (hopefully) will continue to improve.

That is all for now, but I will make sure that either my Mom or I do another update soon.

Beautiful Green Morocco and Ms. W Has Arrived

Bonjour,

It's springtime in Morocco, which means the countryside has become even more beautiful. After all of the rain, the next couple of months are likely to be filled with flowers and lots of green. Here is a picture, taken from a moving car window, of the countryside. As Amy says, it looks like Ireland here.

Speaking of Ms. W., she's been here with us for a week now, searching with me (with mixed results) for good vegetarian food. Last weekend, we traveled to Moulay Idriss (a holy city atop two different hills, which had been largely closed to non-Muslims until recently) and Volubilis (extensive Roman ruins near Moulay Idriss and Meknes with intact stone mosaics). This gives you a taste of Volubilis.


Amy also got to meet our friends Khahil and Lamia (I'm sure I am misspelling Lamia's name) on Saturday, when we had coffee, tea and crepes at their home. Here is Amy, Lamia and me at Lamia's lovely apartment. The other picture is Lamia, Khahil and their boys, some of our good new friends in Morocco (Tarek is one of Tommy's buddies at school).

Finally, here are some pictures of us goofing off after dinner, as Anna, Tommy and me make Amy listen to our repeated renditions of our favorite scene from Austin Powers. Most inappropriate dinner conversation.















As Anna says, TTFN.

A Birthday in Paris

Bonjour!

So, it's been a while, and we're long overdue for a post. We're in Paris, and it's March 4th, the day after my birthday.

Needless to say, a birthday in Paris is a good thing -- especially when you divide up your "mini-tours" of the Louvre with stops at cafes, wonderful shops (with lots of shopping for me, the birthday girl), an English-book bookstore with a great selection of books, and a good restaurant. A Parisian woman even told me yesterday that "vous parlez francais tres bien" (not really true and part of her successful effort to sell me stuff, but nice to hear nonetheless). But maybe I didn't really need that second glass of wine last night.... March 4th is not as much fun as March 3rd.

We're staying in an apartment in a lively section of the city, which is great because it means that we can have a break from eating out (and a break from paying too much to eat out) and cook some meals in our apartment. We've done a lot of sightseeing -- and the kids have actually been getting into the museums. Thanks to the Percy Jackson books, Tommy was particularly interested in the Greek antiquities at the Louvre (at one point, he told us not to rush him because he "wasn't finished," as he walked around with the media guide, studying the sculptures). We've climbed to the second stage of the Eiffel Tower, spent a lot of time at the Pompidou Center, and did a very thorough tour of the outside of Notre Dame (which took nearly an hour before we bailed. I'm sure the tour of the inside of the church was just as good, but the kids had had enough, so a quick trip inside had to suffice).

Before Paris, we had an eventful trip to Brugge (another story for another day, but you can ask Bob about our run-in with the psychotic restaurant man), a quiet stay in Groningen, Holland (where it rained a lot, and Bob gave a talk), a lovely stay in Amsterdam (a close rival to Paris for my affections -- but maybe that's because I found a cool coat to buy there -- more shopping! -- and found the Anne Frank museum even more moving/affecting than I imagined), and a surprisingly enjoyable trip to Brussels (we didn't know it was such a pretty city -- if you go, be sure to visit the Music/Instruments Museum, where you can hear recordings of many of the 7000 instruments that they have collected from around the world -- instruments dating back many hundreds of years).

We're all well, and plan to see a bit more of Paris, including a trip to Versailles tomorrow, before we return to Rabat on Saturday.

A bientot,

Kim

The photos: Kim shopping in Amsterdam, and then Kim after shopping in Paris, by the Louvre. Bob and Tommy by the Arc de Triomphe. Anna goofing around in a cafe after drinking a full cup of Italian hot chocolate.

School

Hi! it's Anna and I was figuring I should probably write about my life and Tommy's life seeing as you have been hearing a lot from my mom.

We have been at our school for seven weeks. Sometimes a week feels like an lifetime because we are SO bored, but other times it feels like only a couple of hours. And the teachers and students are doing their best to make it feel less like a lifetime and more like a couple of hours.

The French system is really very different from the average American one. Every morning we walk into class and wait for the teacher to tell us we can sit down. Throughout the day a majority of our time is spent copying things off the board. And in the French system EVERYTHING has to look perfect. We must write in perfect cursive that is approximately half a centimeter tall, and We use rulers for every little line we make. If you are writing on unlined paper, first you have to draw in lines with a pencil, then you have to write in a blue pen and then finally you have to erase the lines that you wrote earlier.

The school schedule is also very different. Instead of a really long summer break, we have four two-week-long breaks during the year, and summer does not start until July. Also, something that seems widely accepted here is the fact that on Wednesday we do not have school in the afternoon. It is very nice because it always seems like Wednesday is the hardest day.

Emotionally being away can be very hard. Sometimes I go to bed thinking I just want to go home because I miss my friends and I miss my old school and I miss English. But I really like Morocco and the more I get into this sabbatical the more I think I will be liking it.

I cannot add the photos right now because they are on the computer that my dad has in Belgium; but we will make sure to add extras next time.

I have got to go, but I will post again very soon.

Busy, busy, busy

Bonjour, toutes ma famille and mes amis. J'espere que tout va bien.

So things have certainly gotten busier for me (Kim) since the last post.

I've started French classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Institut Francais in downtown Rabat. The class is very international: There's only one other American; the rest of the students are from Korea, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Iraq/Germany, Ethiopian, etc. Somehow I managed to get through all the assessments and ended up with a group of people who speak much better French than I think I do. Our instructor is from Cameroon, and we all have a nice little "cafe au lait" break together in the morning. I'm hoping for big improvements in my French.

I've also joined a fitness center, and I had my first class yesterday. The instructor is very Moroccan -- "allez! allez! le maximum! encore!" -- so I pushed pretty hard (I tried to pretend I was Connie and very tough, etc.). Suffice to say, I can barely walk today, although I plan to drag myself there again tomorrow.

The fitness center has different times for men and women-- apparently to ensure no interaction between the sexes. Despite the precaution, however, none of the women wore shorts, and only some of the women even wore short sleeves while working out. One woman looked to be wearing long-sleeved pajamas along with her head scarf during our class. But the instructor was, suprisingly enough, a man, and he did not hesitate to touch some of the women (like me) who needed help with the various positions. I'm still trying to sort out how these gender politics work.

Bob, meanwhile, has lined up an Arabic tutor three days a week for nice, long sessions. His tutor is a young professor and graduate of Mohammed VI University, who, in exchange, is working on his English conversation skills with Bob. Between that and his various writing projects, it's business as usual for Bob.

I think the kids are liking school more and more. They seem to be gaining some traction with their French and understanding better what is going in classroom, which makes the day much more interesting and less an exercise in clock-watching. Socially, things are definitely good for them. In fact, both of them had friends over to our house this weekend. That was stressful for us (especially me), since we wanted to reciprocate (and replicate) as much as possible what had been done for us at their homes. Fortunately, Rachida, our maid, may make the best tarte au citron in Morocco, so we had a lovely, still-warm tarte to serve with the coffee, tea, cookies, and fruit salad. (The Moroccan families we know have teatime with crepes and gateau around 5:30-6 p.m. Then they don't serve their children dinner, which is usually something light like a soup, until 8 p.m. -- right before bed. We've been eating dinner later than usual here, but haven't fully adopted this system since, predictably enough and for Tommy especially, it tends to mean a large meal of sweets and a light, light meal of the healthy stuff).

We do, of course, still get some complaints. But at least Tommy has stopped telling us that our decision to send him to a French school was just our way of trying to torture him. And Anna's complaints seem to focus on her difficulty with getting out of bed in the morning, which is hardly a new issue.

Bob has come up with this big incentive plan by giving them "points" for good work at school. Anna, especially, loves this system and has made a big scoresheet for the refrigerator to keep track of all the points. Bob has told the kids that if they get to 100 points before our trip on February 20, they can get pets here (i.e., hamsters or birds), with the understanding that we will have to find them a new home before we leave Morocco (a condition that has not yet been accepted by either kid). I'm not sure we really need any new pets though, since we have already "adopted" what seem to be three stray cats in our neighborhood.

Last Sunday, we took a day trip to a nearby fishing village, Moulay Bousselham (see the sunset photo that Anna took), to check out a well-known and important birding area (done with a guide by boat) and to have some delicious fresh fish (I even ate some, and Dad/PopPop would have loved it). The birds nest in a lagoon that is 90% sea water and 10% fresh water, and include corcorans, flamingos, osprey, various ducks, many types of gulls, etc. The village and its spectacular shoreline with a big, dramatic surf have been developed quickly, although improvements in the restroom facilities would still be good.

Anna will have to write next time, because she says that this post is, once again, too long. We are going to add some photos, however, since Bob says that photos are the most important part of the post.



Les photos: From El Jadida (1) the 16th Century Portuguese cisterne (the site for Orson Welles' film, Othello), (2) children getting rides on the beach (there were camels too), and (3) Kim and Anna strolling along.

Last photo: Tommy listening closely to our birding guide in Moulay Bousselham (the trip was a bit too long).

On Azemmour, Learning to Relax, and The End of the Weekend

Bonjour!

It's Anna and Kim again, with a new post.

So this weekend, we traveled to Azemmour and El Jadida, two cities on the coast, south of Casablanca. While there, incredibly enough, we stayed in our first hotel since arriving in Morocco (due to the considerable generosity of our friend, Francois, who allowed us to stay in his villa for nearly the first three weeks we were here). We stayed at the Riad Azama in Azemmour, which is a traditional "house" built around an internal courtyard. Although it was built in the 18th century, this one still had the original painting on some of the ceilings and was lovely, with delicious meals. It could have used a bit more hot water in the morning, though. Like some hot water.

On Sunday morning, we traveled by local bus to El Jadida, which was a Portuguese city that has been designated as a World Heritage site. It is supposed to be the next big thing around here, and while it has charm and a great setting, it's not quite Dubrovnik yet. There's a bit too much garbage around (and as Anna points out, a few too many people peeing in the streets) to pull it off.

On the way home, we experimented with traveling by "grand taxi." The grand taxis are big, old and (always) white mercedes sedans, without seatbelts naturally, that pile in about six passengers all headed in the same direction for a lower price than a regular "petit taxi". The petit taxis aren't permitted to leave the town in which they work, but the grand taxis are. So, we didn't love the train schedule on Sunday and decided to take a grand taxi to Casablanca and then catch one of the many trains to Rabat. It turned out that the ride was just as slow, more expensive and less comfortable. Suffice to say, next time we'll just take the train.

On "learning to relax," well, we'll see. I'm trying, but it's not easy for me, especially when our lovely maid, Rachida, is running around cleaning and scrubbing our house, cooking us these wonderful meals (giving the kids a huge stack of French crepes with Nutella after school today), and serving me tea. I'm signing up for French classes and joining an exercise facility, so I have more structure to my day. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'll enjoy it here, especially now that I have finished running around and finding/buying the key items for our villa. Just not my make up.

Finally, on the "end of the weekend," Anna had a challenging morning today, trying to get up for school. She really didn't want the weekend to end ("it's not long enough"), and she really didn't want to go to school and listen to all French. As Anna says, it can get pretty boring when you don't understand a lot of what is being said -- and it is hard having people think that you just aren't smart because you can't communicate well. It was a sad taxi ride to school.

Fortunately, as it turns out, Anna reports that the day "was better than she expected." Still, she and Tommy are quite excited for their two week break beginning on February 20.

Anna says this blog is long enough. I'm getting a lot of sighs from beside me. So she'll be in charge of adding some new photos and captions.



Tommy trying not smile... (left)

Anna and Tommy reading, (bottom).









Anna and Tommy still reading, (left).