Whew! Been an action-packed few days. Real quick post to fill you guys in (sorry about the radio silence), and then I won't have Internet for the rest of the week.
In-processing at Fort Knox was pretty damn boring, mostly just a lot of briefings. For that reason, and also because I'm not sure how much I'm actually allowed to say about it, I'll just skip over it and say that I spent a pretty nondescript few days in Kentucky, working out and living in a barracks. Real fun. Moving on.
Our flight was direct from Newark to Tel Aviv, so that was... fun. I sat next to this very Jewish-motherly-type woman, a former Hebrew professor, which was nice! She helped me brush up on Hebrew a bit, I taught her some Arabic, and we had a few surprisingly deep conversations. And also some shallow ones, like about how great Richard Gere was in An Officer and a Gentleman, which I watched on the flight (and which you should watch).
To stay on the safe side, I'll mainly be talking about the touristy stuff that we're doing in Israel, rather than the other stuff. I'm 99.999% sure that no one cares about the other stuff, and it's not like we're doing anything that would be particularly damaging to national security if it were to get out, but we got a couple briefings that really stressed operational security ("OPSEC"), so, you know, why take chances. In that vein, yesterday, our first full day here, we visited the Palmach museum. The Palmach were a branch of Haganah, a Jewish resistance group/militia that formed during the later years of British occupation of Israel and later became the foundation for the formation of the IDF. It was... moving. As a Jew, I forget sometimes that Israel doesn't have the intense personal meaning to others that it does to me, and that most people didn't focus on Israel nearly as much (or at all) in their education as I did. Even so, it was quite something to watch the struggle of the Palmach unfold as they fought for their right to a land, one tiny patch of land in the midst of hostility, where Jews would never have to fear for their safety. It's still amazing to me that, literally less than a day after establishing a Jewish state, those people fought for that state's very existence against six (conservatively, depending on how you classify irregular armies and coalition forces) enemy forces that wanted nothing less than the complete and utter destruction of Israel... and won. Say what you will about the Jews, but you don't get kicked around the globe by everyone under the sun for 4,000 years without learning a few tricks for fighting back.
Today, keeping with the Palmach, we toured the Ayalon Institute. The Ayalon Institute is a museum located at a kibbutz near Rehovot; the kibbutz hid an underground bullet factory for the Palmach from 1945 until 1949. Those kids were damn dedicated. Secret entrances under the laundromat and the bakery to mask the noise and steam, complete vow of secrecy even from fellow kibbutzniks, and hours of work underground every day churning out bullets to help defend Israel, first from the British and later from the Arab forces. It was especially sobering to realize that a lot of those workers, and indeed a lot of the Palmach and other similar groups, were my age or younger. These were high school graduates, pulling off a secret operation on a level of complexity that most adults couldn't. Makes you think, yeah?
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Wall o' Text
So I'm sitting in the only room in Fort Knox with wifi that I've found yet. I have time enough, I think, to post a few more days of Morocco. This is exciting, because when I catch up, I can post all of the boring in-processing stuff that will no doubt happen over the next few days in one post, rather than having "Today I got a shot!" and "Today I filled out paperwork!" be two different blog posts. Anyway, now that I've somewhat justified (to myself, at least) my lateness, please enjoy Days 6 and 7 of Morocco. Thanks for reading!
Should Have Bought That Man-Bag -- Day 6
Fez. Is. Huge. Way bigger than Rabat. It's kind of like how Athens is the capital of New York rather than NYC. We capped off today with a drink and a view from the balcony of the Hotel Les Merinides. We could see the entire city... breathtaking.
Backtracking a little, we headed into Fez after breakfast at the top floor restaurant in our hotel (which also has a fantastic view). We toured through the Mellah, the old Jewish Quarter (fun etymology fact: "Mellah" comes from "mellh," the Arabic word for "salt," and is so called because Jewish merchants had a monopoly on salt back in the day). It was a bit sad, if only because it's no longer truly a Jewish district; Jews moved into the new French town because the houses were nicer, and the district fell into disrepair. It's still bustling, but no longer Jewish. Nabil pointed out the differences between Jewish and Arab architecture: Jewish homes tended a bit more towards European and Moorish influence, with twisted metal balconies and other small touches of ornament on the exteriors of houses. We visited a restored synagogue, absolutely gorgeous, named Slat-el-Fassiyene. It was unlike any synagogue I'd ever seen, with a glass skylight covering most of the ceiling. However, though it's no longer in use as a synagogue but only as a historical structure, I still felt the same quiet peace steal over me that I do in any synagogue, be it one in Atlanta or Jerusalem.
We then bussed over to a pottery and ceramics factory, which manufactures some of the high-quality, gorgeous pottery that Fez is renowned for. It was fascinating to watch the creative process from beginning to end, from the clay pit to the potter's wheel or the tile chisels. Blue is the official color of Fez, and a large portion of the factory's wares are in blue and white; beautiful, understated, and with a tendency to make me feel afraid to breathe too hard lest I disturb the china cabinet that I've obviously wandered into by mistake. I may have picked up a gift or two.
The restaurant that we ate at served lunch up in what I believe is a uniquely Fez style: several (twelve or thirteen) small communal appetizers, including olives and fava beans, followed by a large communal tajine. Afterwards, the general consensus was that we were refreshed enough to spend a lot more money, so the next items on the itinerary were perfect: a clothing store and a tannery.
Sherif wasn't kidding when he said that Fez had the best shopping. If Willy Wonka had decided to diversify and branch out into textiles and leather, his facilities might have looked something like the factories that we visited. Sherif also wasn't kidding when he said that Fez had the best and most determined salesmen. I managed to get out of the clothing store without purchasing more that a blue scarf for myself (which can also be made into a khaffiyeh-style head wrap, perfect for not dying of heat in Marrakech). At the tanner's, however, the salesmen very nearly convinced me to spend around 80USD on what Gabrielle and LP termed a "man-bag". In my opinion, if Jack Bauer uses one then it can't help but be manly. I decided in the end that I couldn't justify it, but I came disturbingly close.
Afterwards, we crashed that hotel that I mentioned at the beginning of the post to sit on their balcony and take in the view. We then went back to our hotel, relaxed for a while, and got prettied up to go out for a fancy dinner. The food was great, the restaurant royal, and the dinner shot a lot of fun. There was a band of old dudes in white robes and fezzes, and belly dancer, and a magician, who had a phenomenal mustache. I got called up to dance with the belly dancer, which was pretty fun! Thanks, musical theater.
We were all in a pretty good mood upon getting back on the bus to the hotel, but before we disembarked Nabil said something that made me think. He told us that some tour groups will spend their entire time in Morocco doing only things like that restaurant, and go home with a severely incomplete image of Morocco. For some reason, that made me a little angry. Travel is about broadening your horizons, challenging your perceptions, and learning about other cultures and yourself. If all you're going to do is drink and watch a circus, you can do that at home, and without the *ahem* digestive problems that foreign food causes in some. That sort of ethos has probably contributed to the overall negative global image that Americans, and America, have. I'd love to help repair that, however possible or impossible it may be.
Arabic Word of the Day: المللة, Al-mellah -- The salt
Render Unto Jordan That Which Is Jordan's
Today was busy as all hell. We visited three distinct cities, took two tours, and spent four hours or so on the road. I can't believe we're only about halfway through the trip; it feels like it's been a year.
Meknes was first today. Our guide was awesome. Very funny, very thorough, and his jellaba-over-a-three-piece-suit look, complete with skullcap, made him look like a wizard (a jellaba is a hooded robe widely worn in Morocco, sports fans!). He toured us around a bit of Meknes, specifically the silo of Moulay Ismail, who built it to help support the black army that he used against the French. The silo looked like a fort, it was so large; I felt like Howard Carter, exploring Tut's tomb (although Ismail's silo is substantially younger, only sixteenth century). Strange to think that this vast complex, at least fifty feet high (I'm bad at estimating distances, it could have been a hundred), was at one point literally filled to the ceiling with grain.
We then went to one of the only two mosques in Morocco that non-Muslims can enter (obscure law dating back to French colonization that no one bothered to change, don't ask). It's in the royal grounds in Meknes, so it was incredibly lavish, decorated beautifully with the same sort of tile patterns that we saw in Fez. When I asked about the star motifs (five-, six-, and eight-pointed), I learned that there are two versions of the five-pointed star, and both are culturally significant in Morocco. The one on the current Moroccan flag, your standard pentagram, represents the diversity of Morocco, with one point for each major group: Arabs, Amazighi, Jews, Christians, and Muslims (there's some overlap, obviously). However, the ancient one, with one point longer than the others that appears in things like mosque decoration, is meant to symbolize Islam, with one point for each pillar. That longer point symbolizes the first and most important pillar: There is no God but God (Allah), and Mohammed is His prophet. It's interesting to me that the first pillar of Islam and the First and Second Commandments are, with the exception of the bit about Mohammed, more or less identical. Noting the little similarities and differences between my religion and Islam fascinates me. So many people seem to think that Islam and Judaism are locked in some eternal conflict, bound to fight one another until one is eliminated. There's nothing in any text that makes this the case, though. It's one of the reasons that Sherif hates the British: their meddling in the Middle East (or, as a self-proclaimed "genius" once admonished against, "getting involved in a land war in Asia,") was a major factor in escalating the low-level conflict between Jews and Arabs into the very violent, global-scale issue it is today. Plus, they taxed us without representation and shit. Fuck those guys, seriously.
Speaking of imperialism and colonialism, on the way from Meknes to Chefchaouen we stopped at Volubillis for lunch and visited the nearby Roman ruins. Everyone took a bunch of great pictures, and I think someone got one of me posing like a Roman statue, so look out for that. John and I talked about hoe the Roman Empire, once the all but undisputed master of the known world, had devolved into a pile of strewn-about rocks that foreigners walk through and take pictures of while talking smack about the Romans. It was a little harrowing considering America's current status as the most powerful entity in the world; people have drawn the comparison before, I know, but it had never seemed quite as scary or plausible as when I faced tangible evidence of the rise and fall of another immensely powerful civilization. I was reminded of a story from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, which purports to take place in our world several ages along from the present on the "Wheel of Time," a device built on the concept of cyclical time. One character tells another the story of two giants, ages and ages ago, named Mosk and Merk. The giants destroyed each other and broke the world by hurling spears of fire and light across vast distances, each trying to murderify his opponent. Jordan, writing during the Cold War, depicted global thermonuclear war between the Soviet Union ("Mosk" for Moscow) and the United States ("Merk" for America) as having destroyed the world and obliterated any memory of its inhabitants save a severely distorted fairy tale. The concept of something that I take as much pride in as my country being wiped out so completely as to preclude any legacy, or even only to the extent of leaving nothing behind but ruins, terrifies me a little bit, as I think it would any reasonable person.
Anyway, enough literary criticism. We finished the day in Chefchaouen, a resplendent mountain town that I'll tell you about in my next entry. Thanks for reading!
Arabic Word of the Day: امريكا, "Amreeka," -- America
Should Have Bought That Man-Bag -- Day 6
Fez. Is. Huge. Way bigger than Rabat. It's kind of like how Athens is the capital of New York rather than NYC. We capped off today with a drink and a view from the balcony of the Hotel Les Merinides. We could see the entire city... breathtaking.
Backtracking a little, we headed into Fez after breakfast at the top floor restaurant in our hotel (which also has a fantastic view). We toured through the Mellah, the old Jewish Quarter (fun etymology fact: "Mellah" comes from "mellh," the Arabic word for "salt," and is so called because Jewish merchants had a monopoly on salt back in the day). It was a bit sad, if only because it's no longer truly a Jewish district; Jews moved into the new French town because the houses were nicer, and the district fell into disrepair. It's still bustling, but no longer Jewish. Nabil pointed out the differences between Jewish and Arab architecture: Jewish homes tended a bit more towards European and Moorish influence, with twisted metal balconies and other small touches of ornament on the exteriors of houses. We visited a restored synagogue, absolutely gorgeous, named Slat-el-Fassiyene. It was unlike any synagogue I'd ever seen, with a glass skylight covering most of the ceiling. However, though it's no longer in use as a synagogue but only as a historical structure, I still felt the same quiet peace steal over me that I do in any synagogue, be it one in Atlanta or Jerusalem.
We then bussed over to a pottery and ceramics factory, which manufactures some of the high-quality, gorgeous pottery that Fez is renowned for. It was fascinating to watch the creative process from beginning to end, from the clay pit to the potter's wheel or the tile chisels. Blue is the official color of Fez, and a large portion of the factory's wares are in blue and white; beautiful, understated, and with a tendency to make me feel afraid to breathe too hard lest I disturb the china cabinet that I've obviously wandered into by mistake. I may have picked up a gift or two.
The restaurant that we ate at served lunch up in what I believe is a uniquely Fez style: several (twelve or thirteen) small communal appetizers, including olives and fava beans, followed by a large communal tajine. Afterwards, the general consensus was that we were refreshed enough to spend a lot more money, so the next items on the itinerary were perfect: a clothing store and a tannery.
Sherif wasn't kidding when he said that Fez had the best shopping. If Willy Wonka had decided to diversify and branch out into textiles and leather, his facilities might have looked something like the factories that we visited. Sherif also wasn't kidding when he said that Fez had the best and most determined salesmen. I managed to get out of the clothing store without purchasing more that a blue scarf for myself (which can also be made into a khaffiyeh-style head wrap, perfect for not dying of heat in Marrakech). At the tanner's, however, the salesmen very nearly convinced me to spend around 80USD on what Gabrielle and LP termed a "man-bag". In my opinion, if Jack Bauer uses one then it can't help but be manly. I decided in the end that I couldn't justify it, but I came disturbingly close.
Afterwards, we crashed that hotel that I mentioned at the beginning of the post to sit on their balcony and take in the view. We then went back to our hotel, relaxed for a while, and got prettied up to go out for a fancy dinner. The food was great, the restaurant royal, and the dinner shot a lot of fun. There was a band of old dudes in white robes and fezzes, and belly dancer, and a magician, who had a phenomenal mustache. I got called up to dance with the belly dancer, which was pretty fun! Thanks, musical theater.
We were all in a pretty good mood upon getting back on the bus to the hotel, but before we disembarked Nabil said something that made me think. He told us that some tour groups will spend their entire time in Morocco doing only things like that restaurant, and go home with a severely incomplete image of Morocco. For some reason, that made me a little angry. Travel is about broadening your horizons, challenging your perceptions, and learning about other cultures and yourself. If all you're going to do is drink and watch a circus, you can do that at home, and without the *ahem* digestive problems that foreign food causes in some. That sort of ethos has probably contributed to the overall negative global image that Americans, and America, have. I'd love to help repair that, however possible or impossible it may be.
Arabic Word of the Day: المللة, Al-mellah -- The salt
Render Unto Jordan That Which Is Jordan's
Today was busy as all hell. We visited three distinct cities, took two tours, and spent four hours or so on the road. I can't believe we're only about halfway through the trip; it feels like it's been a year.
Meknes was first today. Our guide was awesome. Very funny, very thorough, and his jellaba-over-a-three-piece-suit look, complete with skullcap, made him look like a wizard (a jellaba is a hooded robe widely worn in Morocco, sports fans!). He toured us around a bit of Meknes, specifically the silo of Moulay Ismail, who built it to help support the black army that he used against the French. The silo looked like a fort, it was so large; I felt like Howard Carter, exploring Tut's tomb (although Ismail's silo is substantially younger, only sixteenth century). Strange to think that this vast complex, at least fifty feet high (I'm bad at estimating distances, it could have been a hundred), was at one point literally filled to the ceiling with grain.
We then went to one of the only two mosques in Morocco that non-Muslims can enter (obscure law dating back to French colonization that no one bothered to change, don't ask). It's in the royal grounds in Meknes, so it was incredibly lavish, decorated beautifully with the same sort of tile patterns that we saw in Fez. When I asked about the star motifs (five-, six-, and eight-pointed), I learned that there are two versions of the five-pointed star, and both are culturally significant in Morocco. The one on the current Moroccan flag, your standard pentagram, represents the diversity of Morocco, with one point for each major group: Arabs, Amazighi, Jews, Christians, and Muslims (there's some overlap, obviously). However, the ancient one, with one point longer than the others that appears in things like mosque decoration, is meant to symbolize Islam, with one point for each pillar. That longer point symbolizes the first and most important pillar: There is no God but God (Allah), and Mohammed is His prophet. It's interesting to me that the first pillar of Islam and the First and Second Commandments are, with the exception of the bit about Mohammed, more or less identical. Noting the little similarities and differences between my religion and Islam fascinates me. So many people seem to think that Islam and Judaism are locked in some eternal conflict, bound to fight one another until one is eliminated. There's nothing in any text that makes this the case, though. It's one of the reasons that Sherif hates the British: their meddling in the Middle East (or, as a self-proclaimed "genius" once admonished against, "getting involved in a land war in Asia,") was a major factor in escalating the low-level conflict between Jews and Arabs into the very violent, global-scale issue it is today. Plus, they taxed us without representation and shit. Fuck those guys, seriously.
Speaking of imperialism and colonialism, on the way from Meknes to Chefchaouen we stopped at Volubillis for lunch and visited the nearby Roman ruins. Everyone took a bunch of great pictures, and I think someone got one of me posing like a Roman statue, so look out for that. John and I talked about hoe the Roman Empire, once the all but undisputed master of the known world, had devolved into a pile of strewn-about rocks that foreigners walk through and take pictures of while talking smack about the Romans. It was a little harrowing considering America's current status as the most powerful entity in the world; people have drawn the comparison before, I know, but it had never seemed quite as scary or plausible as when I faced tangible evidence of the rise and fall of another immensely powerful civilization. I was reminded of a story from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, which purports to take place in our world several ages along from the present on the "Wheel of Time," a device built on the concept of cyclical time. One character tells another the story of two giants, ages and ages ago, named Mosk and Merk. The giants destroyed each other and broke the world by hurling spears of fire and light across vast distances, each trying to murderify his opponent. Jordan, writing during the Cold War, depicted global thermonuclear war between the Soviet Union ("Mosk" for Moscow) and the United States ("Merk" for America) as having destroyed the world and obliterated any memory of its inhabitants save a severely distorted fairy tale. The concept of something that I take as much pride in as my country being wiped out so completely as to preclude any legacy, or even only to the extent of leaving nothing behind but ruins, terrifies me a little bit, as I think it would any reasonable person.
Anyway, enough literary criticism. We finished the day in Chefchaouen, a resplendent mountain town that I'll tell you about in my next entry. Thanks for reading!
Arabic Word of the Day: امريكا, "Amreeka," -- America
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Still Alive!
Hey all, just wanted to shoot a quick post saying yes, I am still alive. A combination of a paper for this class, another paper for my CULP deployment, and every hotel that we've been to for the past week having had terrible wifi has been murder on my ability to keep this blog up. I will catch you up, I promise, beginning either tonight or tomorrow night. Rather than post nearly a week's worth of travel all at once and force you to slog through that, I think I'll post the first three days that I missed, followed by the second, and so on until I catch up. Almost done with Morocco, that's weird to think about. Anyway, sorry again, and thanks for reading!
Monday, May 13, 2013
First Weekend in Morocco.
Apologies for the missed few days! Here are the entries for two days ago, yesterday, and the day before. It's a doozy.
McDonald's Fries: Better in Morocco -- Day 3
I'm starting to think that there's no such thing as a "short day" here in Morocco, at least within the context of this trip. I say this because I was about to star this entry with "It's been a long day," but upon further reflection, realized that it's been no longer than yesterday or the day before, though packed full like both. We began the day with class at the CCCL. The walk there is about 20-25 minutes from the hotel; I think tomorrow I'll be able to do it without directions, no small feat once we get into the narrow, twisting alleys of the Medina.
Our first lecture today was "Costumes of Morocco." When Farah, the lecturer, walked in, I was struck by how elegant she was. She wasn't arrogant or aloof when she spoke, far from it, but she seemed to me extremely dignified, while managing to be friendly, warm, and welcoming at the same time. She talked for a while about Moroccan clothing customs, especially about the amount of covering that women wear. I learned that, until recently (and currently, in certain more conservative neighborhoods), social class and covering were directly correlated; the richest, highest-class woman would almost never leave the house, and if she were by some extenuating circumstances forced to, she would cover everything but one eye in a loose, shapeless robe. Demonstrations of some of the different flavors of Moroccan clothes were, of course, in order. At some point, I'll be posting pictures, so look for one of me dressed as an Amazighi (Berber) tribesman if you feel like laughing at your computer for ten minutes. Other Jonathan (there are three Jo(h)ns on this trip: your humble narrator, John "Spac" Spacapan, and Jonathan Williams, and we room together) got wrapped in this Saharan tribal outfit, complete with veil. He looked like he had just stepped out of Prince of Egypt or Lawrence of Arabia. All he was missing was a scimitar, and he looked like he really wanted one around the fifth time that some of the girls told him to hold still so that they could take a picture.
After lunch, we walked around the souk (marketplace) in the Medina. I picked up a few gifts for people back home; you're probably not getting one. Jerk. I bought a nifty curved Arab knife, called a janbiya, which should look cool hanging on my wall. And really, why else do we even have weapons?
After the souk, we took the tram to Agdal, a neighborhood more Westernized and with more teenagers, college kids, and twenty-somethings than we've seen in the rest of Rabat so far. The contrast with, for example, the Medina was astounding. Fewer hijabs by far, a much higher frequency of mixed-gender friend groups, couples holding hands... if it weren't for the fact that everyone was Moroccan and speaking Arabic, we could have been in downtown Sandy Springs, GA. We stopped at a McDonald's, for God's sake. As the title notes, the food was better; moreover, the exterior was way nicer than any McDonald's has a right to be.
The reason that we were in Agdal was to visit some students at AMIDEAST, a study center that, as I understand it, focuses on helping Moroccan students who want to study abroad (usually in the US) to do so. We had a discussion with them about college in America, which started off a bit slowly but warmed up. When kids spoke up, it was obvious that they were, to a one, brilliant. Each had three or four languages under their belts, all taking the hardest classes... and they were impressed by me, seeking my advice? I don't mean to short-change myself, and I know that I've worked hard to get into my school and to get the grades that I have, but these kids were way more impressive than I. It boggles the mind sometimes just how much I have versus what they have, based entirely on the country in which I had the good fortune to be born. One girl, Najwa, told me that we had a few mutual acquaintances, Middle Eastern students at studying abroad at Vanderbilt. She's going to Vassar in the fall, but she might come visit Vandy, which would be pretty cool.
After dinner and another walk around the souk, a few of us went out clubbing. Maybe we were out too early (I heard from another American student here that the club scene doesn't really get going until 2am or so) or maybe it was just a lemon of a club, but the experience ended up consisting of a cab ride there, paying 10dh for a godawful margarita, hanging out in a booth because no one in the club was dancing, and another cab ride back. So, better luck next time, us. I hear Marrakesh is supposed to be bumpin'. It wasn't a total bust, though; John, LP, Gabrielle ("Gabby") and I sat around talking outside the hotel around 10:30am. Who says summer is for sleeping?
Arabic Word of the Day: فقير, Fakeer -- Poor. Very useful in the marketplace!
Hebrews, Shebrews, Webrews -- Day 4
The first part of this post was written halfway through the day, and the second, after the ***, was written late that night.
Languages fascinate me. I say this without a trace of irony or, I hope, faux-sophisticate pretense. I'm working on my fourth currently (although it's been entirely too long since I've spoken Hebrew or Spanish with any regularity -- I guess I'll see in a few weeks, at any rate). My dad once encouraged me to pick up as many languages as I could; he knew that I was considering the military at the time, and he put it in a military context. A good soldier, he told me, learns as many skills as he can. Each skill is another tool, another doorway, another opportunity. If you're trained as a paratrooper or a machine gunner or a medic, you're more valuable an asset to your unit, and this can be extremely useful. Similarly, languages open channels of communication with people who could as easily be complete strangers, and build goodwill with very little effort. It's amazing to me how, from the high school students yesterday to the wait staff in our hotel to the shopkeepers in the souk, Moroccans seem to instantly open up when I ask in halting, accented Arabic how they're doing, how many dirham something is, or if I could please have some tea, Moroccan-style.
***
I started thinking about this because we had our Darija (Moroccan) Arabic crash course this morning. I was a bit ahead of the curve (as I would have hoped, given my year of Arabic), but some of it was very, very different than the Fusha (formal) Arabic that I've learned. It's so interesting to me how you can track a civilization, and the bonds that the different groups together and keep others apart, by their languages. Arabic is different all over the Middle East and the Arab world. Egyptian and Iraqi and Moroccan are almost different languages. Moroccan, for example, draws on French a fair amount, and possible Amazighi as well, in accordance with Morocco's status as a cultural mishmosh (technical term). Universally across the Arab world, however, everyone understands Fusha, because it's the language of the Qur'an. The faith that binds Muslim Arabs across continents and oceans enables them to communicate with each other, and vice versa.
Interestingly enough, later in the day, I had the opportunity to converse in Hebrew with a Moroccan professor of Hebrew at the University of Rabat who accompanied one of our lecturers. I actually started in my seat when I heard her address me in fluent Hebrew. I suddenly felt an acute pang, a truly intense mix of homesickness, nostalgia, and loss. I should qualify "homesickness": it wasn't that missed my country, my friends, my family, my girl, although of course I did and do. Rather, it was as if I'd been missing a finger for a while, or a favorite tool from my toolbelt, and had finally noticed. I'm not sure how much of this stemmed from the way that Hebrew, specifically, is regarded by me as a Jew, and how much came solely from my shame at having let lapse my grasp of a language, any language, that I had once been all but fluent in. When I said goodbye to the professor (whose name I still don't know; I should ask Sherif or Nabil if they know), I think she was a bit startled, hopefully pleasantly, by how fervently I thanked her for the chance to speak Hebrew, and even just to hear it, once more. This lapse, something that I consider an unforgivable affront not only to my parents, who spent way too much money for me to waste by going around forgetting stuff, but to the unspoken obligation of all Jews to perpetuate ourselves and our culture, isn't something that I'll allow myself to do again. I have a friend or two back at Vandy who took Hebrew, and of course back home. After the wholly unexpected intensity of my reaction to hearing Hebrew again, I think some sort of arrangement to practice every once in a while would improve my quality of life beyond considerably. Inshal'lah.
Arabic Word of the Day: ممتاز, Mumtaaz -- Excellent
Hebrew Word of the Day: לדבר, Ledaber -- To speak
Tiddes -- Day 5
I'm sitting on the bus, bound for Fez, and there's a lot running through my mind. We're rolling out of Nabil's childhood home village, Tiddes, in the Middle Atlas Mountains. We saw a fair amount of it, including Nabil's parents' home (his mother cooked us a fantastic lunch: roasted chicken, vegetables, and couscous!), but the most vivid part of my memory by far was the souk. It wasn't like the ones in Rabat; I wouldn't call those marketplaces touristy per se, but the Tiddes souk was definitely more survival-oriented. Plastic tubs, kitchenware, and simple clothes predominated over the shining teapots, wicked knives, and glitzy knockoffs that I'd grown accustomed to seeing. Rather than the shops of Rabat, merchants sold out of rough tents and awnings. The people were the most different. The men no longer wore tight jeans and Western t-shirts and smiled widely when they realized that we were Americans, but instead wore dirty robes or loose work clothes. The women, despite Nabil's claim (not that I doubt him, but this was interesting to note) that the countryside is generally less religious than the city, were hijabi to a one; one girl actually seemed almost frightened of us. I suppose a good part of that was the sheer rarity of white people in the Tiddes area. Tourists are a significant part of the economy in a city like Rabat, and it's probably seen as not only being a good sport but being good for business to humor them when they walk into your shop and start spouting the Arabic phrases that everyone learns before going shopping: "Besh-hal?" How much?, "Ana taalib fakeer!" I'm a poor student!, etc. In contrast, if I'm sitting in the dirt in front of my wares, hoping that someone comes by and buys something so I can, y'know, eat (with my four teeth), and some wide-eyed American kid comes up to me and, obviously proud of himself, asks in accented formal Arabic how I'm doing, I'm not sure how charitable I'm inclined to be.
I'm probably reading too much into this, projecting class guilt and such. After all, we also played with some kids, who seemed just as excited to play with Americans as kids in Rabat. But it seems like a common theme of this trip, at least for me, is how the only thing that put me on one side of this lens, as the visitor, rather than the other side, as the native, was the twist of fate that resulted in me being born to an upper-middle-class family in the greatest country on God's green Earth, rather than in a slum in Fez or Shanghai.
I realize I'm not saying anything particularly revolutionary, here. Every college kid with a sheltered worldview has their perspective shifted a bit the first time they witness real poverty. It's simply very strange to think about, from a philosophical point of view. You can work as hard as you can for your whole life, day in and day out, but if you were born the wrong color, the wrong place, the wrong time, then you're screwed from the get-go.
That being said, I don't think it's possible to change that on a wide scale. Basic economic theory (from what I gathered during my brief and incredibly boring foray into economics in high school) requires that any stable society has different socioeconomic strata, and yes, some poverty. It will be more difficult now, though, to consider "poverty" as an abstract concept, rather than as a powerful series of sights, smells, sounds, etc. What I can do here, I believe, is remember this, and use it to strengthen my resolve to help heal the world in any way I can. Tikun olam.
Arabic Word of the Day: هل طفة الكيل, Hal tofha alkayil -- The straw that broke the camel's back (idiomatic)
I'm probably reading too much into this, projecting class guilt and such. After all, we also played with some kids, who seemed just as excited to play with Americans as kids in Rabat. But it seems like a common theme of this trip, at least for me, is how the only thing that put me on one side of this lens, as the visitor, rather than the other side, as the native, was the twist of fate that resulted in me being born to an upper-middle-class family in the greatest country on God's green Earth, rather than in a slum in Fez or Shanghai.
I realize I'm not saying anything particularly revolutionary, here. Every college kid with a sheltered worldview has their perspective shifted a bit the first time they witness real poverty. It's simply very strange to think about, from a philosophical point of view. You can work as hard as you can for your whole life, day in and day out, but if you were born the wrong color, the wrong place, the wrong time, then you're screwed from the get-go.
That being said, I don't think it's possible to change that on a wide scale. Basic economic theory (from what I gathered during my brief and incredibly boring foray into economics in high school) requires that any stable society has different socioeconomic strata, and yes, some poverty. It will be more difficult now, though, to consider "poverty" as an abstract concept, rather than as a powerful series of sights, smells, sounds, etc. What I can do here, I believe, is remember this, and use it to strengthen my resolve to help heal the world in any way I can. Tikun olam.
Arabic Word of the Day: هل طفة الكيل, Hal tofha alkayil -- The straw that broke the camel's back (idiomatic)
Friday, May 10, 2013
Apparently, it's "decapsuleur" in French.
The first part of this post was written in the afternoon, between class and the trip to the supermarket. The second part, after the ***, was written late at night.
Damn. I'm not even going to try to describe everything that I've seen and done since landing in Rabat yesterday. It's now 5:32pm, and I'm sitting in the hotel cafe waiting for Katherine and Other Jon (John Spacapan, or "Spac") to get down here so we can swing by a liquor store and pick up some wine before meeting everyone for dinner at 7. Nabil, our guide, told us that liquor stores here close at seven in the evening; thus, this critical errand needs to be done right now, and not later at night like kids might hypothetically do back home. Tonight we're eating at some Syrian place that Sherif (our accompanying professor) knows about, it should be tasty.
After checking into the Malak Hotel (thanks to an Egyptian girl I know back at Vandy, who taught me that "Malak" means "Angel"; very similar to the Hebrew "Malach"!) yesterday afternoon, everyone was wiped. Most of the group slept the entire four hours or so before dinner, but Katherine, John and I took shorter naps and explored the few blocks around the hotel, which includes a gorgeous park. We got unabashedly ripped off by a little girl, but she was cute enough that none of us cared too much. She approached us asking for 5 dirham (8.2 dirham = 1 USD, sports fans!) for a pack of knockoff Wrigley's gum. Through an ungainly language comprised of my limited Arabic, Katherine's somewhat less limited French, our considerable English prowess (which the little girl did not, unfortunately, share), and a frankly badass display of Charadesmanship, we managed to establish a rudimentary form of communication and glean her name, which was Fatima. She was amazingly confident, bursting into song at one point and generally getting in our faces... honestly, she kind of reminded me of my sister. Not having exchanged any dollars for dirham yet, I was willing to overpay her a bit, $1 for a pack of gum. Katherine then decided to give her another dollar, pretty much solely for being cute, bringing our total to $2, or approximately 16 dirham. Three times her asking price. I think we might be doing this "haggling" thing wrong.
We ate dinner (some delicious chicken tanjine) at a place in the Medina, the Old City, then came back and shot the shit for a while in the hotel cafe over dessert, and that was pretty much it for the night. I slept like a log.
This morning we took a bus tour of Rabat, which was excellent. We saw the Mausoleum of Mohammed V, the King two Kings ago. It's on the same site as the Hassan Tower, a mosque that was intended to be the largest religious edifice in the would when it was conceived in 1195. However, it was left unfinished. There was something sad and beautiful about the scores of unfinished columns strewn about the 45-meter tower, that never grew into the 90-meter minaret that it was supposed to.
We saw a few more sites, but the highlight for me was the Kasbah Des Ouyadas, a fort that looked as though Moorish archers would appear along the walls at any moment, prepared to hurl down death and Crusaders pounding at the door. This deadly combination stood in sharp contrast to the beauty of the Kasbah, both the interior streets (lined with white and blue, reminiscent of Greece) and the utterly resplendent stretch of Atlantic coast upon which the fort is perched. Sherif bought us some tiny desserts, including baklava, a favorite of mine. We existed for a time in a place composed entirely of sunshine, sea breeze, and sugar.
After lunch, we headed back over to the CCCL for class. Our first lecture was fairly standard, a brief overview of Moroccan history and the (quite fascinating) dichotomy between more liberal elements, which want things like equal rights for women, and the conservative elements, who haven't quite gotten that memo yet. However, it was the second lecture that caught our attention: "Dealing With Harassment in Morocco." Apparently, in Morocco, unsolicited complimenting of women (or as Chelseay referred to it, "spitting game") as they pass on the street, often coupled with following and/or groping, is considered more or less normal, acceptable behavior. At first I was taken aback, but Nabil made an interesting point: in this conservative Muslim culture, opportunities for men and women to meet are really damn limited. Cafes are for men, hitting on girls at your local mosque is majorly frowned upon, and the only women who go to bars are sluts. And yes, that is a harsh word, but I use it there on purpose: I don't mean promiscuous ladies, I mean full-on, real live prostitutes. So, this combination of frustration and the need for attention and approval on the part of the men leaders to different stages of harassment. Stage 1 is flattery, compliments.Saying things like "Hey, Gazelle, how are you today?" (Bonus points for anyone who uses "Gazelle to pick up a girl back in the States) or the classic "Are you an angel?". Stages 2 through 4 get worse, progressing from insulting where complimenting fails to groping to... well, suffice it to say that Stage 4 is ugly, disgusting, and can get you life in prison back home.
***
After class, a few of us went on a wine run. The concierge was incredibly nice (almost fluent in English, too; we wrote him a thank-you note later) and, after ascertaining that we wouldn't be drinking in the hotel, actually walked us to the nearest supermarket with alcohol. An interesting moment came when we realized that A) None of us had a corkscrew, and B) Katherine and I didn't know how to say "corkscrew" in French or Arabic (I know you expected alcohol to have been thoroughly covered in my intro Arabic textbook, but no such luck). In an impressive display of resourcefulness, we navigated the problem by mimicking the motion of uncorking a bottle and accompanying it by popping my cheek, making that ubiquitous "pop!" of a wine bottle opening.
One thing I've come to enjoy is the moment, however brief, of pure camaraderie that comes when two people, neither of whom speak the language of the other, manage to communicate from one idea to the other, and both realize that they've succeeded at the same time. It's a very warm feeling of understanding, and one that often ends with both sides laughing. Nice, no?
Arabic Word of the Day: الغزال, Al-ghazaal -- Gazelle
PS Pictures to come!
Damn. I'm not even going to try to describe everything that I've seen and done since landing in Rabat yesterday. It's now 5:32pm, and I'm sitting in the hotel cafe waiting for Katherine and Other Jon (John Spacapan, or "Spac") to get down here so we can swing by a liquor store and pick up some wine before meeting everyone for dinner at 7. Nabil, our guide, told us that liquor stores here close at seven in the evening; thus, this critical errand needs to be done right now, and not later at night like kids might hypothetically do back home. Tonight we're eating at some Syrian place that Sherif (our accompanying professor) knows about, it should be tasty.
After checking into the Malak Hotel (thanks to an Egyptian girl I know back at Vandy, who taught me that "Malak" means "Angel"; very similar to the Hebrew "Malach"!) yesterday afternoon, everyone was wiped. Most of the group slept the entire four hours or so before dinner, but Katherine, John and I took shorter naps and explored the few blocks around the hotel, which includes a gorgeous park. We got unabashedly ripped off by a little girl, but she was cute enough that none of us cared too much. She approached us asking for 5 dirham (8.2 dirham = 1 USD, sports fans!) for a pack of knockoff Wrigley's gum. Through an ungainly language comprised of my limited Arabic, Katherine's somewhat less limited French, our considerable English prowess (which the little girl did not, unfortunately, share), and a frankly badass display of Charadesmanship, we managed to establish a rudimentary form of communication and glean her name, which was Fatima. She was amazingly confident, bursting into song at one point and generally getting in our faces... honestly, she kind of reminded me of my sister. Not having exchanged any dollars for dirham yet, I was willing to overpay her a bit, $1 for a pack of gum. Katherine then decided to give her another dollar, pretty much solely for being cute, bringing our total to $2, or approximately 16 dirham. Three times her asking price. I think we might be doing this "haggling" thing wrong.
We ate dinner (some delicious chicken tanjine) at a place in the Medina, the Old City, then came back and shot the shit for a while in the hotel cafe over dessert, and that was pretty much it for the night. I slept like a log.
This morning we took a bus tour of Rabat, which was excellent. We saw the Mausoleum of Mohammed V, the King two Kings ago. It's on the same site as the Hassan Tower, a mosque that was intended to be the largest religious edifice in the would when it was conceived in 1195. However, it was left unfinished. There was something sad and beautiful about the scores of unfinished columns strewn about the 45-meter tower, that never grew into the 90-meter minaret that it was supposed to.
We saw a few more sites, but the highlight for me was the Kasbah Des Ouyadas, a fort that looked as though Moorish archers would appear along the walls at any moment, prepared to hurl down death and Crusaders pounding at the door. This deadly combination stood in sharp contrast to the beauty of the Kasbah, both the interior streets (lined with white and blue, reminiscent of Greece) and the utterly resplendent stretch of Atlantic coast upon which the fort is perched. Sherif bought us some tiny desserts, including baklava, a favorite of mine. We existed for a time in a place composed entirely of sunshine, sea breeze, and sugar.
After lunch, we headed back over to the CCCL for class. Our first lecture was fairly standard, a brief overview of Moroccan history and the (quite fascinating) dichotomy between more liberal elements, which want things like equal rights for women, and the conservative elements, who haven't quite gotten that memo yet. However, it was the second lecture that caught our attention: "Dealing With Harassment in Morocco." Apparently, in Morocco, unsolicited complimenting of women (or as Chelseay referred to it, "spitting game") as they pass on the street, often coupled with following and/or groping, is considered more or less normal, acceptable behavior. At first I was taken aback, but Nabil made an interesting point: in this conservative Muslim culture, opportunities for men and women to meet are really damn limited. Cafes are for men, hitting on girls at your local mosque is majorly frowned upon, and the only women who go to bars are sluts. And yes, that is a harsh word, but I use it there on purpose: I don't mean promiscuous ladies, I mean full-on, real live prostitutes. So, this combination of frustration and the need for attention and approval on the part of the men leaders to different stages of harassment. Stage 1 is flattery, compliments.Saying things like "Hey, Gazelle, how are you today?" (Bonus points for anyone who uses "Gazelle to pick up a girl back in the States) or the classic "Are you an angel?". Stages 2 through 4 get worse, progressing from insulting where complimenting fails to groping to... well, suffice it to say that Stage 4 is ugly, disgusting, and can get you life in prison back home.
***
After class, a few of us went on a wine run. The concierge was incredibly nice (almost fluent in English, too; we wrote him a thank-you note later) and, after ascertaining that we wouldn't be drinking in the hotel, actually walked us to the nearest supermarket with alcohol. An interesting moment came when we realized that A) None of us had a corkscrew, and B) Katherine and I didn't know how to say "corkscrew" in French or Arabic (I know you expected alcohol to have been thoroughly covered in my intro Arabic textbook, but no such luck). In an impressive display of resourcefulness, we navigated the problem by mimicking the motion of uncorking a bottle and accompanying it by popping my cheek, making that ubiquitous "pop!" of a wine bottle opening.
One thing I've come to enjoy is the moment, however brief, of pure camaraderie that comes when two people, neither of whom speak the language of the other, manage to communicate from one idea to the other, and both realize that they've succeeded at the same time. It's a very warm feeling of understanding, and one that often ends with both sides laughing. Nice, no?
Arabic Word of the Day: الغزال, Al-ghazaal -- Gazelle
PS Pictures to come!
Thursday, May 9, 2013
A Good Day to Fly Hard
I wrote this last night on the plane from Paris; I'm now sitting in the airport in Rabat (!!!) waiting for our guide to get here with a bus. It's 1:35pm here.
My watch says that it's midnight in Detroit, from where we departed. This won't get posted until we hit ground in Paris at the earliest, which should be in about two and a half hours. Depending on how much wifi costs in DeGaulle, I might even just wait until we hit the hotel in Rabat, which will be at around two in the afternoon there, so... about eight in the morning back in Nashville? Hell if I know, I'm not a scientist. Posting might also be delayed by my intention to take full advantage of the drinking age in France. Anyone know how to say "Overpriced drink fruity enough to get my ass made fun of back in the States," in French?
The two days before departure were fairly stressful, I won't lie. We had full days of class, 9 to 3, getting a crash course in Moroccan history, culture, etc. That was fascinating, but on top of that having to 1) Pack up my stuff (and figure out what's going into storage, what's going home, what's going to Morocco, and what's going to Israel), 2) Coordinate all of my paperwork (as if travelling to the Middle East weren't complicated enough, leave it to the Army to make it more so!), and 3) Find time to say goodbye to everyone left me pretty burnt out. I found a bit of time to spend with my girl, which was rad. She packed me the Cadbury bar that I'm snacking on right now, in case you wanted any evidence that she is, in fact, the bomb.
All said and done, I needed a bit of a break. While having no Internet on this flight is a bit frustrating (I have a ton of work that needs to get done, including an eight-page paper about the Intifadas for my CULP deployment... fun), it's also incredibly relaxing. Having no choice but to not work, all I've done in the past six hours is nap, watch "Argo" (excellent, five stars) and "A Good Day to Die Hard" (considerably worse, but lots of explosions and sinister Russians, so... 3 out of 5 blazing AK-47s), and read a bit. "Argo" was a good reminder that not everything is perceived elsewhere the way it is in the US, especially when it comes to the region of the world to which I'm heading. As someone who takes immense pride in being from the greatest country on God's green Earth, I sometimes forget that. Hopefully, this journey will challenge some of my views. Admittedly, I'm not going to Baghdad, but I sure as hell ain't going to Newark, either.
We're not scheduled for anything once we touch down in Rabat other than checking into our hotel and having a group dinner at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning (CCCL) where we'll be having a lot of our lectures. In the interim, I might see if anyone else wants to go exploring. Or, I might just nap. Life is full of mysteries.
The flight tracker says that we're off the coast of Ireland, and while I can't see any ocean or land from my seat in the center column, I can see the sunrise out of the window across the aisle. Coupled with AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" blasting in my earbuds, this is seeming like as clumsily symbolic a place as any to wrap this post up, so I think I'll try to catch a few winks before we hit ground.
Yippee-ki-yay, North Africa. Stay tuned!
Arabic Word of the Day: المغرب, Al-Maghrib -- Morocco
My watch says that it's midnight in Detroit, from where we departed. This won't get posted until we hit ground in Paris at the earliest, which should be in about two and a half hours. Depending on how much wifi costs in DeGaulle, I might even just wait until we hit the hotel in Rabat, which will be at around two in the afternoon there, so... about eight in the morning back in Nashville? Hell if I know, I'm not a scientist. Posting might also be delayed by my intention to take full advantage of the drinking age in France. Anyone know how to say "Overpriced drink fruity enough to get my ass made fun of back in the States," in French?
The two days before departure were fairly stressful, I won't lie. We had full days of class, 9 to 3, getting a crash course in Moroccan history, culture, etc. That was fascinating, but on top of that having to 1) Pack up my stuff (and figure out what's going into storage, what's going home, what's going to Morocco, and what's going to Israel), 2) Coordinate all of my paperwork (as if travelling to the Middle East weren't complicated enough, leave it to the Army to make it more so!), and 3) Find time to say goodbye to everyone left me pretty burnt out. I found a bit of time to spend with my girl, which was rad. She packed me the Cadbury bar that I'm snacking on right now, in case you wanted any evidence that she is, in fact, the bomb.
All said and done, I needed a bit of a break. While having no Internet on this flight is a bit frustrating (I have a ton of work that needs to get done, including an eight-page paper about the Intifadas for my CULP deployment... fun), it's also incredibly relaxing. Having no choice but to not work, all I've done in the past six hours is nap, watch "Argo" (excellent, five stars) and "A Good Day to Die Hard" (considerably worse, but lots of explosions and sinister Russians, so... 3 out of 5 blazing AK-47s), and read a bit. "Argo" was a good reminder that not everything is perceived elsewhere the way it is in the US, especially when it comes to the region of the world to which I'm heading. As someone who takes immense pride in being from the greatest country on God's green Earth, I sometimes forget that. Hopefully, this journey will challenge some of my views. Admittedly, I'm not going to Baghdad, but I sure as hell ain't going to Newark, either.
We're not scheduled for anything once we touch down in Rabat other than checking into our hotel and having a group dinner at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning (CCCL) where we'll be having a lot of our lectures. In the interim, I might see if anyone else wants to go exploring. Or, I might just nap. Life is full of mysteries.
The flight tracker says that we're off the coast of Ireland, and while I can't see any ocean or land from my seat in the center column, I can see the sunrise out of the window across the aisle. Coupled with AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" blasting in my earbuds, this is seeming like as clumsily symbolic a place as any to wrap this post up, so I think I'll try to catch a few winks before we hit ground.
Yippee-ki-yay, North Africa. Stay tuned!
Arabic Word of the Day: المغرب, Al-Maghrib -- Morocco
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
On the Tarmac
Ho! My name's Jonathan (Jon) Berger. I'm a rising junior at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA. I'm pre-med, in Army ROTC, and I enjoy singing and geeky stuff. If you're reading this, it's almost certain that you know me personally, and are aware of most, if not all, of these things about me, but I kind of have to do this bit at the beginning. You know how it is.
If you're reading this, you probably also know that this summer is somewhat of a doozy for me! In a good way. I'm currently en route to Morocco for a Maymester (a class that runs the length of May) abroad on "Religion and Culture in Morocco"; seems like a pretty good location for the topic, no? After that, I'll come back to the States, turn around immediately, and head off for a CULP (Cultural Understanding and Language Proficiency) deployment in Israel with a few other ROTC cadets from schools around the US. So, if you we're asking yourself "Man, why does this 'Jon' guy think he's cool enough to have something to say that I want to listen to? What a jerk," well, now you know.
I'm currently typing this on my iPhone, thumbs a pair of blurs, frantically trying to finish this first post before the stewardesses (flight attendants, whatever) come around and tell me to shut my phone off. You might say to yourself, "What a moron. He had a three-hour layover in Denver to do that! Why wait until he's on the Tarmac, literally about to take off for Paris?" Those are some excellent points, hypothetical reader. I mistakenly assumed that, seeing as Delta has wifi on the two-hour flight from Atlanta to Buffalo, they'd have it on the eight-hour one from Detroit to Paris, but apparently we're not quite there yet. Not that I'm bitter, or anything.
When I have a few minutes to sit down with my laptop and some sweet, sweet wifi, I'll give you a rundown of how I got here and my itinerary in brief for the next two months or so. Until then, keep an eye on this space, and I'll talk to you soon!
If you're reading this, you probably also know that this summer is somewhat of a doozy for me! In a good way. I'm currently en route to Morocco for a Maymester (a class that runs the length of May) abroad on "Religion and Culture in Morocco"; seems like a pretty good location for the topic, no? After that, I'll come back to the States, turn around immediately, and head off for a CULP (Cultural Understanding and Language Proficiency) deployment in Israel with a few other ROTC cadets from schools around the US. So, if you we're asking yourself "Man, why does this 'Jon' guy think he's cool enough to have something to say that I want to listen to? What a jerk," well, now you know.
I'm currently typing this on my iPhone, thumbs a pair of blurs, frantically trying to finish this first post before the stewardesses (flight attendants, whatever) come around and tell me to shut my phone off. You might say to yourself, "What a moron. He had a three-hour layover in Denver to do that! Why wait until he's on the Tarmac, literally about to take off for Paris?" Those are some excellent points, hypothetical reader. I mistakenly assumed that, seeing as Delta has wifi on the two-hour flight from Atlanta to Buffalo, they'd have it on the eight-hour one from Detroit to Paris, but apparently we're not quite there yet. Not that I'm bitter, or anything.
When I have a few minutes to sit down with my laptop and some sweet, sweet wifi, I'll give you a rundown of how I got here and my itinerary in brief for the next two months or so. Until then, keep an eye on this space, and I'll talk to you soon!
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