After a week of skirting around Marrakech I dove into the city for an afternoon to have lunch with my friend Kamal’s family. They welcomed me in true Moroccan style - actually it was a much more impressive meal that I’m used to, even after all the homes I’ve been welcomed in. Moroccans are experts at hospitality which can be really intense for somebody who’s not used to it. When I first arrived in Morocco in September 2005 I felt smothered by all the attention and hospitality; it was overwhelming. Now that I know what to expect I love it. I [View Full Entry]

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I decided to visit my friend Rebecca, who was in Peace Corps with me and is still here since she extended her service a year. Becky lives in another town close to Marrakech and I used to travel from Kelaa to her site in Ait Ourir almost every month. Maryam woke me up in the morning around 11:30. It had been another hot, sleepless night. When I looked out the door of my room into the central living room I saw all the furniture had been moved. It was washing day. From the cleanliness of Boise it’s hard to understand just [View Full Entry]

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I suppose I’m still at the starting line. I’ve spent the past few days lazing around Maryam’s house, my old home, playing with her daughter Salma, catching up on the events of the past year, talking with the neighbors who stop by and reading a travel memoir about kayaking in the Arctic. I’m not headed that far north, but in a week or so I do need to start heading north. For now I’m content to relax, to feel like the school year is over and I really am on summer vacation, and to enjoy being back in Morocco. I joked [View Full Entry]

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This is the most suspenseful part of any journey - getting to the beginning. Somehow airplanes don't feel like travel, it's more like a time machine that whisks me through time and space. I can never get my head around time zone changes and distances when I'm in an airplane. I'll feel much more comfortable when I'm on the ground in Marrakech and I can start my journey by land. This blog is mostly a warning that if you're on my subscriber list you're going to be getting quite a few blogs over the next couple months as I travel from [View Full Entry]

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I know I said I was retired from blogging but I had to do one last post as a ode to everything I love and miss about Morocco. I am also happy to announce that thanks to Google's cache of webpages I have been able to find and republish my lost blogs. [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everybody, Salamu alakyum, Travelblog crashed last week and lost my last ten blogs. While I am very disappointed I hope that you all had a chance to see my last ones before they disappeared into cyberspace. I am now back home, having finished with Peace Corps and accepted a job teaching in Boise. This is my last blog and I am now retired from blogging. Yay! Knowing my days were limited in Morocco I tried to fit in as many adventures as I could in the first half of summer. Gnawa, June 21-24: The Gnawa music festival in Essouira is [View Full Entry]

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Day 1: Bart’s Birthday It turns out that the part I had hiked in April with my two friends from Peace Corps Togo was only the beginning of the trail. Bright and early in the morning I set out hiking from Imlil with Bart (Peace Corps Morocco) and Dave (US civilian). We passed up Sidi Chamarouch, where I had turned around last time, at 11am and continued on up the trail to the Toubkal Refuge. We didn’t have much gear - Dave didn’t even have a sleeping bag and was relying on an airplane blanket to get him through the night [View Full Entry]

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I have been hearing about the wonders of Ozoud for almost two years now, and finally got to see the splendor for myself. Photos really don’t do it justice. People have been showing me their photos for a while now and I was only vaguely impressed. The majesty of Ozoud must be appreciated in person because only then do you feel so completely dwarfed by the huge falls. I’ll admit, I haven’t seen Niagara, but after driving for a couple hours across the foothills of the Atlas, the Ozoud canyon opens up without warning in a wide, desolate plateau. We escaped [View Full Entry]

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We decided we couldn’t make it to Chicago in one day and my Dad doesn’t have a Ferrari that she could convince me to “borrow,” but we still had a fun day in the big city. Maryam’s husband Hichem volunteered to spend the day with Salma (who got her first two teeth this week and is now walking!) and the two of us took off for the day. I’ve wanted a day in the city with her for a long time and we decided to do all the tourist stuff she’s never done. She usually gets to go to Marrakech when [View Full Entry]

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Looking at my blog it seems like I am always on vacation. Peace Corps can be a lot of fun and I am so lucky to live in such an amazing country that has so many tourist attractions. But I am most often in Kelaa and usually doing something productive. This was a big weekend for me. On the 19th the women’s association I’ve been working with, El Ghad Al Bassim, organized a “cultural competition”. I’ve never seen anything like it in the US but it seems to be a fairly normal event here. There was a performance by Kelaa’s star [View Full Entry]

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