complications

If this were the fall, I would just turn my laptop off and leave it at home. But as it is the spring, I need to bring it with me to the CCCL all the time; spring is the season for registration, housing, and internships. I’m currently trying to line up an interview with the archaeologist from Klamath National Forest, and having a hard time of it. First of all, California is 8 hours behind Rabat time, which makes this a mammoth task to begin with. Add to that my sporadic internet connection and limited availability, and you’ve got one stressed Geneva.

Conclusion: I broke down and bought a modem at Maroc Telecom this afternoon. I can get internet at my house now, but only if I unwind my laptop’s power cord to its fullest extent and sit right up against the window frame. The poor connectivity may also be due to the fact that I am surrounded by brick and adobe houses with very little space between. (Hajja’s making dinner, I think, and it smells like…hot dogs?) My laptop battery is also about to give up the ghost, become an ex-battery, expire and go to meet its maker, etc. In other words, it’s about to die and get recycled and sent to China.

When I bought my modem today, I waited for 20 minutes, but then it took less than 10 minutes to actually buy it. In the US such a transaction would take way longer. One of the nice things about Morocco is that kind of speed and single-mindedness. I suppose it makes administration and bureaucracy a total mess here, but it makes buying things much simpler for me.

I’m getting sucked into the soap operas here, Scheherazade especially, and not just because I like the music. All of them have catchy opening songs, and when they pause for commercials there’s a special little jingle that is becoming as familiar to me as anything back home in the States.

I miss being active. I never realized how much I structured my day around practice and workouts, let alone the importance of the social aspect. I don’t want to join a gym for several reasons: they’re not as clean as I’d like (this is probably the only place I’d complain of cleanliness), I don’t want to be hassled by muscle-y Moroccan men, and I don’t want to spend the money. So that leaves me rounding up friends to go running and doing improvised weight circuits in my room like a creepy person. Did I mention one of the family’s previous students rowed for Yale? Yeah. They showed me pictures and I felt woefully unfit.

I miss you Skidmore Crew! I can’t wait to get back on the water in the fall!

I have an exam tomorrow morning in al-arabiya (this way of saying it is an abbreviation of al-lugha al-arabiya, meaning “the Arabic language”). I suppose I should study for a bit…