Sometimes you just gotta live your life

So today is my free day. Every Tuesday I don't have classes, so usually I come up with something to do whether it be making plans with friends, sleeping in, running, reading a book, etc. There's always some little errand or some kind of homework that could use doing so I find things (besides sitting in my room all day) to occupy my day. Today was no exception. Actually, before I get into this I should preface this with an explanation of sorts. Lately we've all been feeling a little down. We're more than half way through the program with less than 2 months left and most of us are starting to feel it. I didn't even realize why I was in such a funk until my friend Miranda asked me the other day "Aren't you just getting tired of being abroad?" Which I answered with an "Yes. Absolutely." I don't mean to be a baby or ungrateful. I am the luckiest little shit alive to be able to study where I've studied, met the people I've met and simply been all of the places I've been in the last 2 semesters. and my adventures aren't even over! but it definitely comes with a price. Studying abroad for a year sounds like such a good idea when you're planning it at your university when in all actuality it is really rough. No income for an entire year, getting funny looks everywhere you go for speaking english and feeling exhausted after an entire day of speaking french/attempting arabic. Not to mention living in someone else's house, no matter how nice they are and how close I may be with my family, at the end of the day it's not my house. We've all hit a wall I think where we miss controlling when and what we eat, doing our own laundry and how long our showers are.

So bearing that in mind, today Liza and I got lunch, when I realized that I had left my wallet with my lunch tickets sitting on my desk at home, which just happens to be about 40minutes away... so liza lent me one which was fine. Then we went to a tabac (a drugstore type deal) and bought her minutes for her phone and proceeded to go to the train station to pick up our tickets. This is round 2 btw because the first time I forgot the confirmation numbers. This time, we waited in line, just to find out that I needed my credit card to get the tickets, which was in my wallet. at home. I think it was a combination of things because we felt so defeated in that moment that Liza first suggested we get a glass of wine. It wasn't even 12:30 in the afternoon. lol. But as we got onto the metro we both agreed that tea felt like such a better idea than wine...

So we went to what has become one of our favorite places, Haricot Rouge. This place has it all. They have the most incredible hot chocolate, teas and coffees, along with literal milk shakes. and all of which come with a little bite of brownie... SO GOOD!! But today we not only got tea, but we got 5 cookies to share. I think we looked pretty pathetic too because we usually get like one little brownie with our tea, but the woman put like 3 of them on each of ours... but we ate it all. We sat there for 3 hours just talking about life and how we've gotten to this point. We watched people come and go as we sat there slowly drinking our tea and eating cookie after cookie just talking about boyfriends and high school, family and college and what comes next. We joked that we were having our quarter life crisis and that this is the time to have it. One of the things that really stuck with me was a story Liza told me while we were both stressing out. Apparently she had this friend who never finished what she started. she never finished college, and would start a diet just to say forget it later the same day. One day Liza was eating a burger and her friend asked her for a piece which confused Liza because her friend had said just that day that she was giving up eatin red meat. To which this girl responded "Sometimes you just gotta live your life, you know?" It's so simple but just struck me as so extraordinary. Liza said she was just blown away by it and it's stuck with her for year now. It really seems like such an obvious thing but I think it's interesting how hard it hit me.
Anyway, by the time our teapots were completely cold, we were starting to feel a little less overwhelmed, so we started making a grocery list for our vacation foods. We decided to continue by going to the grocery store and looking at foods as this is one thing that we have complete control over. So we walked around the grocery store and then galerie lafayette which is somewhat like macy's just talking and window shopping. Liza was still hungry so we went to a kebab place, then we went back to my house to get my wallet. Tomorrow is my host mom's birthday so I wanted to make her something. I decided on rice crispy treats with chocolate chips, so we went back to a different grocery store in st gregoire (closer to my house). The grocery store is HUGE btw... A lot like a super walmart or something... it has anything you could ever want to buy! After we found what I needed and explored a little, Liza went home and I went back to my house.

My host parents went to dinner with friends for the night so I invited ashley over and made dinner and the rice crispy treats while catching up as we hadn't hung out for over a week. anywhere else that would be really weird to say, but those of us who are here or who had been in morocco can attest to it; when you see the same people every day for weeks and weeks, then go a couple days without seeing them it feels like a lifetime. Oh the beauty of study abroad!

Making up for lost time

So recently I realized just how little inspiration I've had to write this semester. I mean, I'm half way through and I still cannot seem to get a routine down so that I post all the time and my logic is this... you ready?

Blogging to me is like running. As I'm sure Jason or any of my friends will tell you, I love running. I love the way i feel after I run, I love being active and I even love being sore the next day because how sore I am is a good judgment of how hard I pushed myself and I LOVE pushing myself to my limits. However, I haven't been able to get a routine down for that either since high school ended because I always seem to find reasons not to or that make running inconvenient. And the longer it's been since I last ran, the more of a reason not to run again because it's been so long and I forget how I feel after. But I've been running more regularly lately, which might be why I feel like I should catch up on my blog. So I won't waste any more time on this analogy =)

So in the past month, more has happened than I could possibly write in one post, so I'll just sum it up. For our winter break that lasted a week, I went back to Morocco and took along some of my friends. As usual for me, plans got really messed up, my friend wasn't going to be getting into Paris until 9:30 with no way of getting to Beauvais at the hotel only she had access to while the other 4 of us tried to figure out what to do. My solution? I went into the grocery store right next store to the bus station and came out with only one item which I then put on the table in between 3 very stressed out girls. It is not physically possible to be stressed out when reminded that here we can buy a good bottle of wine for 2 euro. Immediately the other girls relaxed, we made a plan, bought dinner at the grocery store, drank 2 bottles of wine from a nalgene on the bus on the way to Beauvais and decided to spend the night at the airport. Bad idea in theory and in practice as the airport closes at 11:30pm. So we took a cab to the hotel we had booked, but the front desk was open. Luckily, we found a hotel that had a machine that let's you buy a room and we all squished onto a full sized bed for a few hours, before getting up to catch the latest bus to very narrowly make our flight. Funny enough, I made it through security with a razor, hand sanitizer and shampoo, but my friend got stopped for her adapter. Isn't airport security fabulous?

But who cares because we made it on the plane and got to Fes!!! When we got there, 2 of my friends were looking to me for direction and help, but as I had only been there once on a bus with my program (which I had mentioned to them several times) I turned to them and was like "So where do you want to go?" It may have scared them a bit... but needless to say we got lost, which is not uncommon in Fes as it's such a HUGE city. But we found a wicked cheap hotel eventually after going to what was probably the most expensive hotel there and asking for directions. We had a nice time in Fes, but I have to say I was soooo relieved when we left. When we got off the train in Rabat I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I felt like I was home again and you couldn't wipe the smile off my face.

We stayed one night in the Hotel Majestic, which was where I had my orientation the first week I was in Morocco. We showered, then went to the medina. I got to see almost everyone I had been missing. Youssef, Nabil, Fatiha, but most importantly, I got to see my host family and spend some time with them. The coolest thing, I think, was that I was actually there the last day of my host mom's mourning period for her late husband. I didn't even know it until the next day when she wasn't wearing white anymore and I asked Chaimaa what was going on.

I took my friends to the kasbah, we walked along where I used to go running right by the coast, we ate chocolate covered almond balls, rif, tajine, couscous and drink tea while eating pastries with my family. I don't think I can even begin to describe how happy, content, overjoyed, and overwhelmed I was to be with them again, in the same place I had lived for so long. It meant so much to me to show my friends where i'd lived, what I'd done and give them a little look at what my life was like. I know my friend ashley thought it was the coolest thing that she got to meet and eat dinner with some actual moroccans rather than just being a tourist.

While it was incredible, good byes were inevitable and always seem to come too soon. I felt my heart being ripped out of my chest as I hugged Chaimaa, Ahmed, Hamza and finally Tara, my host mom. She and I were in hysterics as we said good bye and as she told me to come back any time... to come back soon. I had to run down the stairs to force myself to leave, with ashley trying to catch up as she said quick thank yous and goodbyes. I took a moment at the bottom of the stairs, still kind of hidden from the street, to just cry for a few moments. I was blown away by the fact that there I was, again, having to say good bye to people I love and care about, who took care of my for months and let me into their lives. Except this time, there was no promise of coming back. I have no idea when I'll see them again. All I know is that I will. I will get there again someday because they are now my family as well.

The next morning, after randomly bumping into a moroccan friend at an internet cafe, I got onto the train to the airport. Off to Spain!

I got to Spain and as soon as I landed, I called my friend Lisa. I haven't taken Spanish since 7th grade and everyone seemed to be saying things with a lisp which I later learned is unique to Madrid (at least I think it is...) Lisa and I had an excellent night finding my hostel, figuring out how to get me to the airport for my insanely early 6:30 flight to beauvais and eating these little sandwich things which were delicious while drinking a combination of wine and lemonade and talking about life in general. We went to a bar and had a drink (which was the coolest thing ever! the bar we went to was cave-themed and the drink we had was directly translated to panther's milk which came from a thing in the ceiling), then walked around until it was time for me to get back to the hostel. By the time I got back, it was 2am. I made my bed, got into my clothes for the next morning, got all of my stuff packed, set my alarm and slept for 2 1/2 hours. At 4:30 I stripped my bed, brought my sheets downstairs, asked for directions, then walked 20min to get to the bus which then took another half hour to get to the airport. I got through security just in time to get in line for my flight, then before i knew it, I was back in France!

At this point, I had to take 2 buses and a train to get to Charles de Gaulle as Jason had landed there an hour before I had even landed in Beauvais. Luckily, he spotted me running around trying to find him! We took the RER into Paris and found the hotel. The rest of the weekend is kind of a blur of sites... we went to the Arc de Triomphe, walked along the Champs Elysee and saw Notre Dame at night and during the day. We had coffee in a cafe and people watched. We went to the Louvre, then walked to Place de la Concorde. We walked up the Eiffel Tower, went to Shakespeare's first bookstore in Paris (my favorite bookstore of all time), had a crepe next to Notre Dame and met up with Ashley and Katy who had stayed an extra day in rabat. We set out for rennes early monday morning so that I could make it to my class. It ended up being somewhat of a mess and he waited for 2 hours by a bus stop, then there was some confusion about the hotel room.... but in the end, it all worked out. We spent an awesome day at Mont St Michel, he got to meet and go out with my friends, we had an excellent and incredibly entertaining dinner with my host parents while I played translator and he loved Rennes more than Paris and St Gregoire more than Rennes!

After Jason left, I got sick. I think it may have been the constant adrenaline rush, but my host mom is sure that it's because I didn't wear a scarf to mont st michel. either way, I had an awful cough and woke up several mornings drenched in sweat from a fever the night before. My host mom told me what medicine to get and I was shocked that it cost me 3 euro to get better. I couldn't believe medicine was so inexpensive! Within a couple days I was feeling much better, only for my health to nosedive as it was Ashley's 21st birthday AND St Patrick's Day... We had a crazy night that suffice it to say kept me in bed until noon the next morning, at which point I got out of bed and saw that I had 5 missed calls, 3 new text messages (one of which asking if I was alive) and a green shamrock on my face while still in my dress from the night before. We're calling it a success because we don't really know what else to call it!
since then I've had no interest in going out.

My friends and I are planning our second break (we have 2 weeks!) which we'll be spending in Nice for a few days, then taking an overnight ferry to Corsica. We'll spend 4 nights at a hotel in Corsica where we have a kitchen, a terrace and plenty of beach. I told my friends... my sole goal for this vacation is to spend as much time as possible on the beach with a couple Jane Austen novels, a trashy magazine or two and a bottle of wine. After Corsica, we have 2 nights in Pisa before we fly out of Pisa into Beauvais, then take the train from Paris to Rennes. It's a 10 day trip which should be incredible!

Lately I've been trying to figure out what to do with my summer and my goal right now is to apply to do research on organizations for male abusers, kind of picking up where my independent study in Morocco left off. My adviser gave me a name of a potential sponsor and the next step is to see if he has time this summer, then to write up an outline and abstract... all by April 8th! wish me luck! if this works out, I'll be in VT for the summer living off a $1500 stipend. If not, I have several back up plans, all except the very last consisting of staying in VT, starting a job and volunteer work that I can continue next year.

Alright and now that I've written a novel, I will once again try to get into the routine of writing... Like I said, I enjoy writing and I always feel good after I've done it. It's just so hard to motivate!