I forgot to post these links!

Mala’s photos (which frankly are usually better):

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjagannathan/SpainMorocco

Mine:

http://picasaweb.google.com/eileenfitz/

I have no one to share it with! It doesn’t bother me really but it does seem like a shame to waste the day. Linda is busy and I don’t want to bother the other like, three friends who are still here. I already went out walking but was so tempted by the many shoe stores that I decided to just come home where I’ve been trying to find internship abroad programs.

So here’s the story on that…

I’m trying to decide if it’s reasonable to talk immediately to my advisor when I get to UT about doing a possible teaching internship in France. I would be looking to do something more involved, obviously, than what I’ve done here already. There are lots of programs that claim they can hook you up with an appropriate internship in France. Here’s the most promising one I’ve found:

Nantes Internships:”IES offers students the opportunity to teach in French écoles primaires (elementary schools), collèges (junior high schools), and lycées (high schools). The work requires at least four hours of supervised teaching each week. Interns are evaluated by both the teacher and the school principal. Interns must also take the accompanying seminar (IN395) on Methodology and Pedagogy (1.5 hours per week) and are required to prepare a research project in connection with the course. Students earn 3 credit hours for the combined practicum and seminar participation.”

But I can’t tell if you can do it as a graduate student or just an undergrad.

Anyway I think it would be interesting to pair an internship abroad with an internship in Austin and I know there’s at least one international school there.

So I’m eager to get started on planning this but I don’t want to give my advisor the impression that I’m doing it all just in order to get back to France (which to be honest is obviously part of it). But since I want to start my career in France (and since these deadlines are all kind of early) it seems reasonable to talk about this from the get-g0, right? right? Someone please affirm me, I’m codependent.

that I’m the worst at getting done when I have lots of time to do it. Well anyway so far I have at least

1) sent in my apartment application for next year
2) finished my Stafford loan application (I think, it was all a bit confusing really…)
3) figured out health insurance (although really I can’t claim this task for myself, it’s my dad who took care of it in record time)

I have left to do:
1) make and go to a bank appointment to talk about leaving my account open, cutting Orange’s access to my account, and ending my insurance
2) cutting my phone line (but that can wait till the last minute more or less)
3) mailing off my books
4) give many, many things to Linda (printer, air mattress, tv, bookshelf, bedding, kitchen utensils)

And banks are closed on Mondays anyway.

We went to the annual picnic concert in the champagne park on Saturday night and joined one of the cellists from the orchestra and her sister. It was pretty nice. French picnics are serious though. Like, they have real dishes.

I guess I’ll go stack up some books.

So! I got back to Reims yesterday! I really liked Morocco, I think it did me good, but I was ready to be back in my own bed. I needed to shave and stuff.

So where did I leave off?

Mala and I did find the thuja artisans’ cooperative, which seemed mostly to just be their shop in Essaouira. It was beautiful. Mala took some pictures and as soon as she has time to post them I’ll put some up here. There were a million things I wanted to buy–trays and boxes, but I just bought a jewelry box and it is BEAUTIFUL.

We ate lunch and then went and got massages. They were good but weird in the almost-nudity aspect. Then we took baths in the huge, awesome bathtub in our hotel and went out for dinner. The next day we got up and walked on the beach where we were accosted (okay, maybe too strong of a word) by a jewelry salesman who showed us beautiful things we couldn’t afford and then just chatted. The nice thing about the vendors in Essaouira was even if you didn’t buy anything, they accepted your answer, and then still wanted to chat. Everyone in Essaouira, as opposed to Fes, recognized immediately that Malavika was Indian and would yell out “Hey India!” as we walked by. Although she was a bit deaf and I had to point it out before she started hearing it.

We also stopped to buy pottery soap dishes made in Safi, and the vendors asked us to have tea with them so we did. It was two young guys, one of whom is studying English so we sat with them for about half an hour and then went to the car to start the drive to Marrkech.

So we arrived in Marrakech and our host met us at the airport where we dropped off the car, since he lives a 10-minute walk away. We waited for the sun to go down and the temperature dropped 20 degrees and then he took us in a petit taxi to Djemaa El Fna, which was insane. Mala took a video so I’ll post it. It’s too hard to describe so I won’t even try. We drank the best orange juice ever from the orange juice vendors on the square (which wasn’t really square at all). We wandered around the souqs and found Mala a fes to give to a friend. Then we walked to the ville nouvelle which was really different from the ville nouvelle in Fes–it was very modern and polished as opposed to Fes where the sides of the roads were still kind of ripped up.

The next morning we slept in and then headed into town. I hate catching the petits taxis. I don’t know why we found it so difficult. I think we had trouble identifying which side of the street we should be on. Anyway it worked out eventually and we walked through the souqs to a cafe that I am amazed we found. We took photos of the square down below. Then we walked back through the souqs to the Palais El Badi, which is huge and ruined. They were setting it up for a big festival. Mala bought some earrings nearby and I looked at rings but they were all too big. Then we walked to the old Jewish cemetery which was mostly ancient unmarked white stones right next to each other. The guardian met us and talked to us in English and showed us the grave of a rabbi from a few hundred years ago.

The next day we left for the desert. We had to be at the offices of the tour group at 7 am so we got up at 5:15. We were the first ones there and there was a bum sleeping in front of the door so we waited downstairs which is where everyone else arrived anyway. We were in a van with 8 other people who were mostly cool: 2 French, 2 Swiss (a mother and her 7-year-old son), 2 Brazilians, and 2 American guys.

As we drove it got hotter and hotter. By the time we stopped in Ouarzazate for lunch it was sweltering and the ride from there to Zagora, everyone pretty much just tried to sleep. We found out later it was 110 degrees (no AC). It wasn’t miserable though. When we got to Zagora people tied scarves on our heads and we were put on camels. My camel that day was actually really comfortable. We rode them for about an hour and then we dropped right on the edge of the desert where the dunes begin, about a 5-hour drive from the Algerian border. Berber nomads then took over and acted as our hosts for the night. They fed us and sat and talked with us and then later played music for us after the sunset (when it dropped 20 degrees again and then kept dropping through the night). We had really nice tents but everyone slept under the stars anyway because it was nicer. They woke us up to see the sunrise and then eat, and take camels back. My camel in the morning was too big and really uncomfortable–my back is incredibly sore and I think it must be from that. Then we started the 10-hour drive back to Marrakech. Actually I think we made it back in under 10 hours.

So in between all these things we hung out a bit with our host and his roommate who were pretty cool people who work at the airport so know lots of things about airlines. But when we got back from the desert trip we were mostly gross and tired so we just bathed and watched tv and crashed. I left the next morning.

I think that’s it… I’ll try to post videos and pictures etc. when I get Mala’s though.

So we’re back from the desert overnight. We are kind of stinky. Marrakech has been awesome. Mala and I have taken excessive photos so I’ll post a bunch after I get home.

I can’t really think of what else to say right now. Will give a good update when I’m back chez moi and bored because everyone else has already left.

So apologies in advance for missing letters.

So! Here’s what’s happened:

Monday I left Paris via Orly airport and met Mala at the Madrid airport. We met up with Ana who took us out for tapas in three different places. The place we went for sangria was actually one of the places I went with les filles over a year ago (Las Cuevas). She walked us through the gay neigborhood. It was lots of fun being in Madrid with a madrilena.

So the next morning we caught the bus to Algeciras which turned out to be a ten hour ride. It wasn’t so bad; we entertained ourselves; I was only a little worried that we didn’t have a place to stay reserved in Algeciras. We got to Algeciras though and found a perfectly decent hostal with air conditioning; booked our ferry for the morning, and ate.

We took the bus to Tarifa in the morning and got on the ferry for Tanger; the dude looking at non-EU passports was looking at EVERY SINGLE PAGE so we were actually the last two on the boat. The ferry was cool but only a 35 minute ride. I got a stamp in my passport. Getting off into the port at Tanger was a bit disorienting but interesting. We changed money and ran into some Scottish girls who had taken the night bus down from Madrid and were also going to Fes; we split a cab to the train station with them.

We caught the train to Fes which was fine until the air conditioning stopped working and it was sweltering hot in our car. The way the wmen dress is interesting–some are very traditional, some wear head coverings but are still very stylish and modern, and some wear completely western clothing. We go to Fes at 4 and were picked up by Linda’s friend who took us to his apartment. He was a little worried about finding us at the train station but I was the only white girl and Mala was the only Indian so it turned out to be pretty darn easy. Fes was pretty uneventful and we weren’t there for long–we just got drinks and fries in the ville nouvelle and took lots of confusing petit taxi rides.

We picked up the rental car in the morning yesterday. It was a brand new Fiat– seriously we are the first to drive it. Driving here is totally fun–in the cities you can kind of do whatever you want and everyone’s going so slow it doesn’t matter. We stopped in Volubilis to look at the Roman ruins and ate lunch at the cafe there where we were harrassed by a bee.

Then we drove straight to Essaouira. We drove past Rabat and Casablanca. So that took about 5 hours. The highways are really well marked and it was really easy. Near the end we went through a lot of little towns where people generally walked in the middle of the street and Mala honked at them and they thought it was hilarious. We got pulled over for passing in a no-passing zone (which of course all the Moroccans were doing too) but the policemen just wanted to chat and explained the law and tried to speak Arabic to Malavika (not the first time this has happened). So they didn’t even ask to see papers. We passed lot of donkeys. I took two good pictures of them out of about 20 efforts. Also near the end of the ride the scenery was beautiful. I’ll post pictures when I get back. We pulled into Essaouira at sunset and since it’s so dusty here that was really pretty.

Yeah so finding the hotel in Essaouira was a bitch. Everyone walks in the streets here so it was really hard to not kill people and figure out where e were gong. The street signs are all in Arabic (I knew that they would be). We asked a few shop owners for directions and they were really nice but bad at giving directions. We finally stopped at a swanky hotel and the guardien and the woman concierge gave us detailed directions and explained that we couldn’t drive to the hotel because it’s in the medina and you can’t drive in the medina (duh). So we parked where she told us to and the parking guardien walked us to the hotel. We were so relieved to be there–the sun had gone down and I was beginning to despair.

We dumped our stuff in our super cool hotel room and Mala convinced me (already half in pajamas) that we should go find something to eat. We went out into the street and were stoppd y a young guy who asked us (in English) if he could ask Mala a question about an Indian song. Then we asked him if he could tell us a good cheap place to eat so he showed us to this tiny cafe where we went up to the third floor terrace.

I am so excited to have a full day of non-travel. We hope to find an artisans collective to look at thuja woodwork and walk on the beach and maybe get massages. We go to Marrakech late tomorrow afternoon.

This keyboard is a bitch. So I think I have to stop. But I think I’m all caught up now.

Hello! I’m in Paris again. Left Saint-Malo yesterday after shmoozing with scientists for a week and am off to Madrid tomorrow to meet Malavika. Who apparently has lost her credit card and drivers license. Which probably means I’ll be doing all the driving in Morocco… :-/