Upside Down Goodness

What lies beneath...

More Moroccan Family Love

We continue to eat well in the hands of Moroccan friends. Our colleagues have invited us over for some delicious meals and this one was special because their daughters were in town from Rabat and Casablanca. The special dish called Seffa Medfouna is another wonderful combination of savory and sweet. Portions of seasoned chicken are covered with vermicelli noodles garnished with cinnamon, powdered sugar, almonds, and raisins.  The flavors are great together and it was our first time having this dish with vermicelli. Happy day.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Ok...before this turns into a garden blog I'll post about something besides our container garden. The other night we were settling into another evening session of Breaking Bad (latest American television favorite) when we heard the quite common screech of car brakes from the wide boulevard we live on. Usually you hear it...and there is a slight catch of breath as you hope you won't hear a crashing sound....only to be relieved that it is just another near miss in the driving chaos.  This time the screech was met with a loud and very near crash and crumple from the cars colliding.  We slowly got up to look out the window.  To our surprise the crash happened directly in front of our tv/lounging room.  A petite taxi doing a usual 4 lane U-Turn got t-boned by a car coming down the street at typical high speed. A stream of oil and gas started making its way down the road.  The worst part is that a woman was in the back seat passenger side...right where the cars collided.  The taxi driver opened her door and we could see she was well enough to use his cell phone, but she stayed in the car resting her head on the seat while they waited for the ambulance. Probably the safest bet.  The ambulance came....what seemed to be an hour later.  The law that requires cars that were in accidents to remain exactly as they were really creates a fresh accident hazard as cars coming down the street were screeching to a slow and swerving into the oncoming lane to avoid them.  The police came...what seemed to be 2 hours later...and literally 3 hours later a tow truck came.

Second to the spectacle of the accident was the fact that every window in the apartment building opposite us was filled with similar nosy nellies.  We wondered if those apartments were even inhabited because we NEVER see anyone...until there was some street drama below.

Harvest Time

It wasn't so long ago that we were fretting over these little guys. They seemed so spindly and we were convinced we were doing things wrong.  

Now look how far they have come...

It's a good recipe for life...a little patience, some sunlight, good water and nutrition and people looking in on you to make sure you are okay = flourishing

Bowl full of happy lettuce soon to be transformed into a happy salad.

New arugula seedlings getting ready to be thinned...

Patriotic harvest 

Now to savor our tiny salads!

Documented Growth

See that bluish space between the building and the trees? That is the Atlantic Ocean viewed from our balcony if you hang over the edge and look to the right.

I'm so amazed by the progress of the balcony garden.  It seemed so impossible for those lettuce seedlings to transform into anything that resembled a lettuce leaf and now look how far they have come.  Watching this growth more closely than I ever have before with a garden has reinforced my wonder and gratitude toward food that we grow. I realized this when I went to make a cucumber salad and grabbed a giant cucumber from the bag I had bought at the store.  My immediate thought was: THIS IS HUGE! 

THIS MUST HAVE TAKEN SO LONG TO GROW THIS BIG! Now when I walk by the guys who drive little carts from their farm into the city with the latest crop (NECTARINES AND PEACHES) I'm even more thankful to the people who grow and tend to our food. It takes a lot!

Soup's On!

In the food department I've really been into blended soups (ever since I found the blender tucked onto a high shelf in the kitchen). Our favorite is this Carrot-Ginger soup, heavy on the ginger.  As my student form the Sahara says: when it gets hot, make soup!

Someone Like YouoOoouuUUU...

I forget how fun it can be to work with teenagers or students younger than college age.  So much of working with this age group is about being supportive and encouraging. We were discussing that in college we never really follow up with..."I just want you to know he wrote that poem HIMSELF! (followed by applause)"  It is a refreshing change.  Another aspect that I am totally entertained by is teenager choreography.
Here a group of students render a version of Adele's Someone Like You with their own dance accompaniment. That choreography? The 'Adele' character starting from a crouch in the middle of the others, entering a slow rise as the accompaniment enters a ring-around-the-rosies move around him while he sings...
Unfortunately, the video isn't loading, so I added these screen shots to give you an idea. The audience singing along with the chorus and the performers sort of forgetting the lyrics when it gets fast, but then recovering with dramatic flair are not captured as well in photographs...

Earning our ELF Keep

We've been busy with a number of events lately.  A project that we love is bringing together two groups of English students from different high schools for an afternoon of events that they prepare for in advance such as planning skits, songs, performances, and presentations, as well as games, Q&A, and conversation.

The hosting students offer the guests dates and milk.

The hosts decorate the teacher lounge for the event.

Students prepare presentation posters sharing information about their home town and school.

Students create the program.

These students wrote and performed a scene that turned really intense. The story is about a Palestinian student in the US who disrupts class and annoys the teacher by acting out, only to find out that the teacher who is annoyed with his behavior is also Palestinian. The teacher ends the scene with a pep talk about being strong and carrying on in life. The teacher and student actors got really emotional in the end of the scene and when they were finished some classmates in the audience were crying. The high school teachers were sort of stunned as they didn't ask to see the script before the performance.  The Emcee tried to wrap it up with a discussion of their concern for Palestinians. Emotions were really running high. The students had a brief Q&A afterward asking the writers about their motivation and students went around sharing some of their concerns and sympathy. It is present in their every day lives and the emotions are raw.  It was very powerful for us.

One of my students in the teacher training coordinated some language games that the two schools completed in a race. 

This student is wearing a traditional Amazigh outfit that a woman would wear to a wedding or other ceremony.

Jennifer & Koala 

The student on the right was such a dear. He was really shy at first, looked so much younger than the other students and was a good helper. As the afternoon progressed he got more and more brave and finally came up to me and Ryan to talk to us. By the end he was posing in pictures and walking around with us and asking me for my contact information. He really opened up and it was so wonderful to see how happy he was to practice English with us.

The teachers wanted to do a demonstration on how to make British tea. They are so bewildered by the milk step. They kept asking about how the milk works 'but Jennifer what about the milk? We don't use the milk!"...finally they asked me to do a full demonstration and explanation of how to make a cup of British tea. Then students repeated my instructions and made their own cups to accompany the MANY cakes we had to eat!

At the end of these events we plant a few trees or plants in the schoolyard to commemorate the event.  Here I am with my trusty pic axe!

The day was a success! From left is Nadia my student in the TEFL & ICT program, the Director of the school, and one of the English teachers. We noticed later that we conveniently lined up in order of height!

The Lemon Farm

All this blog silence is a direct result of the following:

-Lots of travel, conferences, and workshops.

-All teaching, mentoring, and meeting duties in full swing.

-General internet annoyances that make uploading anything seem like a major chore!

That back log of photos and tales is getting to be too much though so I hope to share some of these experiences now before it is all a distant memory.

One of our best experiences we have had took place a while ago. We were invited to a citrus farm for a celebration of the Prophet's birthday event.  My colleague Youssef invited us and a number of other professors from our university were in attendance as well. We made our way to some farmland just outside of Agadir to a former teacher-turned-citrus farmer's land.  It was a gorgeous place with roads lined with lemon trees, heavy with fruit.  The grounds were set up with huge tents, white chairs and a stage...much like an outdoor wedding.  As we waited for guests to arrive we toured the farm. The lemon trees were so full that lemons were falling to the ground and it was killing me not to grab some...oh the candied citrus peel that could come of this! I didn't remember the camera so we don't have photos to share.

Finally, it was time for the festivities to begin. A lovely and delicious Arab culture tradition at many events is guests are welcomed with dates and a small glass of milk. Because it was a type of religious celebration, the women sat at tables on one side and the men on the other with many children buzzing about between the two groups.

This meant Ryan got our English speaking colleague and it was Arabench (my Arabic/French mix) for me.  In our attempts to speak as much Arabic with Moroccans as possible (instead of French) we just say the Moroccan Arabic structures and vocabulary we know and we insert the French vocabulary when we need it.  The amazing thing is the Moroccans don't bat an eye.  They are never confused by it and in fact many say they do that all the time (maybe not in the sloppy way we do it), and it works.

The ceremony began with a reading from the Koran and some prayers. Then the band played a number of songs and they passed out lyrics books.  I liked these because they are printed with the Arabic writing with diacritics (the small accent type marks that show you how to pronounce the letters) this allowed me to follow along with...oh say....the first 6 words.  Then the ladies I was sitting with would point out where we were in the song.  Great reading practice for me!

We had been at the farm for quite a while and most events, meetings, and occasions get going a bit later than planned so I was getting hungry!  Then servers came around with small servings of cake and avocado smoothies in small cups for the women.  I looked across and noticed the men weren't getting this treat.  I knew Ryan would be sad. More songs from the band and waiting for the meal to begin. The many children in attendance were entertained with two clowns and a hotdog cart.  Children would wander in and out of the seating area, coming to their mothers to complain about some kid injustice, on the verge of tears, or excitedly wanting to share something they had discovered.

Not too much later the meal began in full force. The servers came around with silver kettles to wash our hands (I love these rituals) and then quickly returned with huge domed platters with giant seafood bastillas. We had learned to make a version of this in our cooking class in Marrakech. This picture below shows the general idea of what it looked like...but it was huge... the size of a turkey platter.  We pulled pieces of the pastry that is filled with chopped vermicelli noodles, fish, calamari, onions, seasonings and all kinds of other goodness that I couldn't notice because I was too blissed out eating it. There was one giant bastilla per table of about six people.  I was getting full...and we had only just begun.

 When the bastilla remnants were removed out marched the servers with giant clay tangines.  When they removed the lid I couldn't believe how much food there was in the dish.  Baskets of bread accompanied it and the second course was in full swing.  The only problem was now I was slowing down.  Slowing down eating in Moroccan culture is unacceptable.  The ladies I was with kept saying...'ma tahashim '-'Don't be shy' and 'kool/khood zeed'--'eat/take more'.  In French they would ask, "don't you eat meat?" even if I just finished a big piece of it.  At the time I didn't know 'shba'at hamdullilah' --I am filled thank God' (a polite way to say I don't want to eat anymore!) so I just kept eating more, waiting for them to get distracted with conversation.

Then it was time for dessert. Towering platters of fresh fruit arrived with little sharp knives for peeling. I tried to keep it simple with a kiwi....keep a low profile...then big sections of orange and apple were being given to me. You just have to go with it.

Before tea and cookies we had some more songs from the band...and a little digestion time!  The children were getting wired on cokes and orange sodas and a few had come by for handfuls of bastilla and tagine (how can a hotdog compare?).  The biggest discovery for the children was the stray lemons on the ground (and more than a few pulled from the low hanging branches).  A mom I was sitting near watched as her son had removed his jacket and turned it into a make shift carrying device. He filled it with so many lemons he was having trouble carrying it and walking back to the kid crowd.  We watched him try to maneuver his bounty and as he got near us he looked up, wild eyed and grinning, and shouted, "CITRONE!!!" like he had just found a mound of gold coins.

Pots of Moroccan tea came around and trays of cookies. The band was finished and digging into their own meal so we had time to walk around and mingle.  Finally, it was time to say goodbye and as we were making our way to the parking lot field a colleague said, 'Yep...7 hours later, we are finished with lunch. If this were a wedding we would be here until 7am'.  And that's how it's done in Morocco.

We're Having a Heat Wave

It is getting HOT here. We are having a string of sizzler days which means hiding out in the apartment and venturing to the store or to an event in the evening if possible. Some Moroccan friends say this is normal...others say this is not normal for this time of year and it feels more like July or August. All we know is it is HOT and the air feels like a blow dryer aimed at your face.  Another popsicle it is! 

I think this says it best...