I teach a class of 12 year-olds every Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 12 noon. While I appreciate my students on an individual basis, the experience has taught me that I really don't want to teach 12 year olds.
Last term, I had my students make their own TV shows. They picked the genre, wrote the scripts and acted it out while I filmed everything on my digital camera. They were pretty into the project, and some of them turned out quite nice. Anyway, while the students were busy working, I decided to snap some pictures for my my own posterity. Right as I snapped a picture of a group of girls, the wildest of the boys decided to throw his marker in front of the camera. The result? Priceless.
Refer me back to this picture if I ever say I want to go back to teaching kids.
Pictures from my trip to the conference in Agadir, Feb 1-6, 2010
 Outside El Jadida, on the road to Agadir  Agadir  Outside Agadir  The road from Essaouira to Marrakesh  Back in Tetouan
February marks the one year anniversary of this blog. To celebrate, I have decided to post photos capturing the happiest moments of this eventful year.
These are the pictures that I took on one Tuesday in November. I wanted to document a day in my life here in Tetouan, but I didn't make it past 3 p.m., so I guess it's really just a morning in my life. At any rate, it gives you a good idea of the non-job aspect of my life here. My hope is that you will have a better idea what I am doing here in Morocco, what my surroundings and my routine look like. Enjoy!
 My laundry blowing in the morning breeze and the mountain that greets me every morning. I always take a minute and look out the window when I wake up. I can't help it. The view never ceases to take my breath away!
 After breakfast, Mary and I head out to our mosaic tiling class. It's on the other side of town and through the old medina, so it can be a real adventure.
 We usually pass through the main circle in town. The flags are up to celebrate Independence Day, which was to be celebrated the week I took the picture (in November). The building with the blue sign straight ahead is where I have my Arabic lessons, too! On the other side you can see the post office and the Spanish consulate. The cafe with the green canopy is one of Mary's favorites, and next to that you have the old yellow church (not picture).
 A little bit further and you come to the entry into the old medina. Go straight and you come to a lot of jewelery shops, go to the right and you will find nuts, live birds, delicious smoothies (including za3za3, which Mary and I call the Tetouani cocktail!), go to the left and find yourself in the King's palace (that is, if you could get past the guards!). Mary and I went straight to make it to Bab Al Okla, the nearest exit to our school.
 Inside the medina, we walk by little shops, produce and nut vendors, book stalls, fish mongers, hungry cats, butchers and bakers. Mary stops to buy some delicious flat bread. The baker was super creepy. I took his picture, but he's too creepy and I don't want him on my blog!
 Welcome to Dar Sana3, paradise in Morocco. This is the building where mosaics is held, but the school is quite large, and has young apprentices studying all kinds of traditional Moroccan crafts, such as carpentry, metal (copper) work, embroidery and textiles, pottery, painting and more. The interior courtyard, as you can see, is beautiful! It's a beautiful garden with lovely mosaic work, a fountain, citrus trees and a vine-covered trestle.
 Me with my teacher, Ali, one of the nicest people I've met in Morocco. We are in the tiling studio at Dar Sana3, where Ali teaches us new designs which we recreate using a protractor, ruler, pencil, pen and colored pencils. It's interesting; the ruler is used mostly for drawing straight lines. Most measuring is done with the protractor. I have just about filled up my first notebook with designs!
 After class, Mary and I stop at our favorite bakery for a quick bite to eat. I have a coffee and a small tuna sandwich. Mary has a chicken pastry with her coffee. The workers here are so nice and we know each other by name. They always talk to us in Arabic about our day and and ask about our friends who also shop at the bakery.
 I can't talk long though, because I have to meet my teacher for my derija lesson. We meet twice a week and I think I am making a lot of improvement. My teacher is really smart, very patient, and he speaks Spanish which is a bonus. Actually he is in Spain right now, so I have been meeting with another teacher at the school the past few weeks.
After class, I head home, grab some lunch and relax a little. Then I do some lesson planning before going to work!
Today I went for a hike with some friends. We went up the mountain outside my window, the one that gives me great sunsets that infuse every corner of my house with specks of gold and ruby and amethyst. The mountain that is often the first to greet me when I wake up in the morning. The mountain that welcomes me when I come home from walks in the city, waiting in the lap of this Mediterranean valley like an overprotective parent. Today, I climbed up this mountain and I sat on her shoulder and looked back at my home, or my house, or whatever it is that I have after living here for nearly three months. I had to remind myself where I was, where I am. I am in Morocco. That tree over there is Moroccan. Those goats are Moroccan. I could accept where I was, but I suddenly couldn't remember how I got here. Why am I here? What events brought me to this place, this town, this mountain? What am I doing here? I ate a tangerine. I ate another. Life is good here. I have made a lot of baby steps. But now I think I am ready for more. I'm ready to climb.
I recently realized I hit that phase in culture shock where you hate everything, and think everything is awful. I realized this on Tuesday, the day I did the photo documentary of my life - not the best timing. But it's good I recognized what I was feeling and why, first of all because it makes me feel less crazy, and second of all because it motivates me to do nice things for myself. And that's why today I have decided to upload a special album, dedicated to the great and wonderful things in Japan. I'm not doing this because I prefer Japan to Morocco by any means. Rather, I realized I have a ton of awesome pictures of Japan that never made it on my blog, pictures that I love to look at and that make me very happy. And since I'm feeling a little down, I think some happy pictures will be the antidote to my melancholy. I hope you enjoy!
Think back to my apartment in Japan. Remember the photos? A talking, self-heating toilet, a bed I could cook from, sparkling white floors I could eat off of, a lovely view of a brick wall and a strip club, a 40 minute commute on a packed train... now put that image down, flip it and reverse it. There you have it, my apartment in Tetouan! It is in virtually every way the opposite of my place in Hon Atsugi: a broken toilet seat, a living room so big it echoes, a cockroach body count that's currently up to three, a breathtaking view of the Rif mountains, and an easy three minute stroll to work. It's a perfect example of my own personal motto: it's not better or worse, it's just different.
And generally speaking, I like different.
So let's get to the good stuff. Let's see the pictures:
 The view from the balcony. It's a nice sized balcony that gets plenty of sun!
 The kitchen. In several ways this place reminds me of my apartments in Spain. For one, it has the exact same water heater I had before. The doors with the big useless knob in the middle is also very Spanish.
 The bathroom with the broken toilet seat. I am going to Moroccan Ikea today to buy the replacement!
 The lovely living and dining room. A family of birds live in/above the window, and I can hear them nesting at night. It freaked me out at first, but I'm getting used to them!
There is also satellite TV, so we have lots of channels, including one called Fox Series which has shows like CSI Miami, The Simpsons, ER and Desperate Housewives. I also like watching the channel simply titled "Sudan" because it's unlike anything I have ever seen on TV.
 My bedroom. I took this picture right after I moved it, but now I have more decorations up and it feels like home!
Happy belated birthday to me. I'm now 25, and have been so for a month and a day. You could argue that its rather pretentious to title a blog "A Quarter of a Century of Excellence" for your own 25th birthday. And to those people I would say, yes, I suppose it is. But it was my birthday a month and a day ago. And on your birthday you can be pretentious. Alternatively you can also have traveler's diarreah on your birthday. And that's exactly what happened to me one month and one day ago today.
I was in the Philippines with Koichi, completely exhausted, first from an acute case of culture shock and then from an acute case of... well, you know by now. We had planned to take a ferry on my birthday to a beach about five hours away from where we were staying in Manila. The day before, two typhoons swept into the area... one off the coast of Manila, the other inside my large intestine. Needless to say, the hour and a half "ferry" ride (really it was a dingy) the next day was a true delight. I think the only reason I didn't puke was because I hadn't eaten anything on account of already being sick. But we made it to dry land, and once we regained our sea legs (and stomachs), we had a rather pleasant day and night at the beach. It was truely a nice break from the craziness of Manila. Only one thing loomed in our minds as my birthday came to an end that night (and it sure came early... I feel asleep at 9 p.m.!) ... we still had to survive another boat ride back to Manila in the morning.
The next morning, Koichi and I woke up to stare in horror at the sea. Giant waves crashed violently onto the shore and collided with the break walls, water gushing onto the street... the only tiny, crumbling street that connected our hotel to the marina. We watched in horror as the locals timed their crossing with the thrashing waves, running frantically to safety before the next wave came crashing down. Koichi made it across. I was not so lucky. In hindsite, I was fortunate I only got soaked. The wave could have knocked me down, or worse yet, dragged me into the sea. But at the time, I was sick and about to be tortured for an hour and a half, so my dripping pants and soggy sneakers made me feel anything but fortunate.
But something fortunate was about to happen... fortunately. Althought the waves continued to rattle the boats and our nerves, our trip would prove to be a bit smoother than the last. Our boat arrived and this time it much closer to deserving it's title of "ferry". In fact, for the sake of this blog I will call it a ferry, without quotation marks. So the boat was bigger, Koichi and I got better seats, the crew was nicer, and quite honestly, after the experience we had the day before, this boat felt like a cruise ship. A cruise ship where everyone had drunk too much the night before. At one point, a Korean tourist who had had his head between his knees since before the boat even left the bay got soaked by a wave that splashed into the boat. He had held it in for nearly an hour, but that was it. From that point on, if you needed him, he was hanging over the edge of the boat. I thought they were going to have to carry the poor guy off once we arrived at the marina!
When we finally did make it to the marina, I was actually feeling much better, and even a little triumphant. I never want to get into any vessel that calls itself a ferry every again (and that's a good thing to remember since I am going to be in northern Morocco), but I made it, and with a stomach bug to boot. I should add, however, that while neither Koichi nor I are in a huge hurry to go back, the nice coulpe who sat next to us on the ferry back to Manila did say that in all their year living in the area, they had never ever had such a terrible boat ride. So please, don't let my experience prevent you from hopping into a "ferry" in the Philippines during a typhoon... should the opportunity ever arise.
So, that's typhoon number one. Typhoon number two took place in Japan while leaving to return to the US. While much less eventful than the first typhoon ( I think everyone says their first typhoon is the most memorable, and they just stop taking pictures after that), there is one oddity I would like to point out. So while my flight was not canceled, my train was. To be honest, I don't know what was more surprising - that a little rain could cause a train to be canceled, or that a train was canceled -for any reason- in Japan. Luckily I had the help of some friends who did know such things were possible, and so I made it to the airport on time and in one slighlty frazzled piece.
And that leaves me with a natural disaster (earthquake) and an unnatural disaster (customs), which I will save for another day. I'm in Pittsburgh now, getting ready to go to Morocco, and I have a ton of things to do. After all, I am 25 years, one month and one day old today, and I'm not getting any younger.
 Koichi at Puerto Galera. I don't think the boat in background was our boat, but it was very similar. Note that the weather was actually nice most of the time, despite the typhoon. Tropical weather is a mystery to me.
 Our hotel, The Oriental (MOM!!). It was really beautiful.
 Me "eating" my birthday dinner. I got asparagus soup, but Koichi ate most of it since I still wasn't feeling great. The people at the restaurant were really nice. When they found out it was my birthday, they put on the "Birthday CD", which played the birthday song in a couple different genres. Koichi and I also spilt some yummy fried bananas for desert!
 A picture taken from our boat as we headed back to Manila. Note the giant wave crashing onto the shore.
Since today is my last chance to travel around Kanagawa before packing up and leaving, I decided to spend the day wandering around Kamakura and the surrounding area. Kamakura is second only to Kyoto in the quantity and fame of its temples and shrines. Its a cute town located right next to the Pacific Ocean. It's touristy, but surprisingly peaceful, and though just an hour outside of Japan's two largest cities, Kamakura is lush and green, and according to my guidebook, is flowering year-round. Right now is the tail-end of hydrangea season, but I still did manage to see some beautiful blue and purple flowers.
Perhaps the most iconic picture of Kamakura is the Daibutsu, or the Giant Buddha. It's actually located in Hase, a small town outside the city. You can see my pictures of this statue as well as others in my Snapfish account. Check them out by following the web address below:
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=992768017/a=140311026_140311026/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/
Enjoy!
*I taught my last class in Japan and am officially on vacation!!!! Yahoo!!!!
Today is hot. The rain has let up recently, allowing an intense heat to settle over the area. And it's not just hot- it's humid. I realized the other day, while trudging up a flight of overcrowded stairs at the Sagami-Ono station, that I was breathing half oxygen, half moisture. The air is so thick that you can feel it in your throat and lungs. And as for my hair, well that's just a complete lost cause. Today I finally went to the hair salon because I could not stand it any longer. The guy chopped off a lot more than I had expected (and more than I think I asked for... but I did ask in Japanese so maybe instead of "just the ends" I said "hack of a few inches", I can't be sure.) but the good news is that my shorter hair-do is much cooler and more managable in this humidity. And hopefully my hair cut will also keep me from shedding lke crazy during my homestay in Nara. My apartment gets so disgusting after just a few days, with hair tumble weeds rolling from the kitchen to the bathroom and sticking to my clothes and feet. I really don't want to gross out my host family like that. I would be seriously embarrassed.
And so maybe it is because of this intense heat that I almost accidentally cooked myself to death inside my apartment. The temperature has been rising lately, and so I have been using the airconditioner more and more. At first it worked fine, but recently it seemed like it wasn't getting cold in my apartment. Today was the climax. It was so hot in my apartment. I figured it was too hot outside and that my air conditioner just couldn't keep up with the heat and humidity. I got out of my apartment and walked around for a while, enjoying the air conditioned stores around my house (it did not, however, occur to me that the stores' air conditioning was working fine. Idiot.) But I started to feel a little tired from walking around in the heat, so I headed home. Inside the 'oven', I decided I needed to lay down for a bit. An hour later, my doorbell rings and wakes me up. I hadn't intended to go to sleep, but I am pretty sure that if my neighbour hadn't come over to my room to ask me a question, I would have remained in my heat-induced sleep coma all night. By then, unfortunately, my brain was cooked. I was so drowsy and disoriented that I think I first spoke to my neighbor in Spanish, and was really confused when she answered in English. Finally, Koichi calls me on Skype, and after talking for a bit, asks me what's wrong. I tell him about my sweltering apartment, and he asks me to hold the AC remote (which is all in Japanese) up to the web cam. After a few minutes of fidgeting, sweet, cold air starts to pour out of the air conditioner. I immediately feel 100 times better. So what was the problem with my air conditioner? I had turned on THE HEAT! Yes, so in 90 degree weather, I had my heater blasting away night and day. I almost gave myself heatstroke inside my own apartment.
There is a happy ending to this story, though. The AC is softly blowing 23 degree C air into my apartment, and I am starting to shiver a little as I write this. I am kind of afraid to turn the AC down though after my near-death experience, so I think I will just put on extra-warm socks tonight, and maybe use an extra blanket to sleep. I just hope I don't wake up with frostbite...
 My new hair cut. Notice how crazy I look. This photo was taken just a few hours before the heat-induced sleep coma.
 In this photo I look a little irritated on account of the heat. It was too hot even to take a picture.
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