Last post of the sabbatical

We walked into Oxford for lunch today and all got a bit wistful about leaving. We're ready to go but we dearly love Oxford and we'll miss it. Ally and Liv went back to school one last time to say goodbye, turn in some books. It felt good to them to reconnect briefly with these generous kids who extended themselves and made them feel part of something here. I am very thankful to those sassy and boisterous Cherwell children who took good care of my girls.

I'm posting one last picture from the memorial fountain for Princess Diana in Hyde Park. It was one of the first photos I took in England, taken before Chip's dad passed away. As our time here has been somewhat defined and shaped by this loss, it feels good to end our journey on a memorial note. Larry had a finesse for slowly extracting key information from Olivia and Allison through well appointed questions during one of their television shows or over a snack at the kitchen counter. He'd take his time, amass his facts and put all the pieces of the puzzle together for himself (and us) later. It was very reassuring to get the report card from Grandpa that all was well with the girls. I don't go much for the finesse approach because it takes patience. I'm more of a Guantanamo/Spanish Inquistion type. I am keen to know what Olivia and Ally will reflect upon when they return home, what things will stand out for them, what things they will miss, etc. But I think I'll take a lesson from the master....take a breath, give everyone some space and let things settle before trying to take everyone's emotional temperature upon wheels down in O'Hare. We'll see how I do.

Where does my blog go from here? Will I keep going? I haven't a clue. The computer cord is fried and frayed and there's no juice left so I have to sign off from England for the last time. Thanks to all who've read because it kept me good company when I was lonely, knowing you were reading.

It's all gone a bit pear shaped

Breathe
The renovations to our house have begun and we're stuck in the middle of it. This morning, Chip and I sat in the front sitting room trying to enjoy our coffee and pretend it was the start of a regular day as we heard above us, the sound of the radiator being pried off the wall and the beginnings of plaster demolition. Within the hour, water began pouring through the ceiling into the sitting room. So ended any illusion that it was a regular day. The leak was quickly fixed, and the rest of the wall did come down as planned. The ceiling remains intact for the moment. The plaster guy hauled water back and forth through the house and up the stairs and mixed and mixed buckets of what looked like coffee gelato. The exposed brick looked nice, but was eventually covered by dry wall then plaster within a matter of hours.

Meditate
There are only four rooms unaffected by the mayhem and so we move like hamsters in a Habitrail, feverishly running from room to room. I'm sure if we had any cedar shavings, we'd all be burying ourselves in them until Friday. The workmen are really pleasant and do all they can to accommodate the squatters living here while they renovate. It would be so much funnier if it wasn't actually me.

Our milk sits out on the ledge out back, with our cheese and yogurt. All the rest of the food sits on the living room mantle. We wash dishes in the bathroom sink and rest them on the side of the tub to be dried. It's vaguely nauseating that our dishes are bathing where our dirty bodies bathe but I can't become paralyzed by the little stuff at this point. As Kate Winslet would say, "Gather."

The beauty of being a teenager in this scenario is that you have the ability to sleep right through the adult work day. Allison slept until after 1pm, declaring that it's actually good to start getting on CST. We finally made it into town around 3pm and managed to kill some hours gathering last minute must-haves like British pop CDs and fashion accessories. It does feel a little frantic to be leaving behind some beloved things about the culture and wondering what we can buy and stuff in our suitcases so as not to forget those things. The truth is, we can't buy these things, but we try anyway. We're scared we'll forget what we love here.
Channel
We return to a fine layer of dust everywhere that I suppose most closely resembles anthrax, but at least it's relatively quiet with only one workman left. The evening feels pretty normal, but it's an early start again tomorrow as supposedly all this work is to be done by Friday. It seems impossible that we will actually get to Friday. Three days and counting....

Palace Badii and its storks

My eyes were always drawn to the storks of the medina. So exotic and yet a bit bedraggled and weary looking living in the middle of the madness. They nest atop mosque towers but primarily atop the walls of the ruins of the Palace Badii, once one of the greatest palaces ever built and then stripped of its grandeur within twelve years and left to what you can see. Honestly, the buildings of Pompeii looks better than this poor palace. But one Sultan falls out of favor and another moves in and decides to move all the palace riches to another part of Morocco. What can you do? But the storks took up residence and since believed to be reincarnated humans, live in relative peace amidst the chaos of the medina. It certainly is calmer above the city and there is a certain majestic quality about the birds which makes the palace a fitting aviary. The nests are five and six feet in diameter and almost as tall. At dusk, they gracefully fly home to this palace from all other high spots in the city. It's beautiful to see.







Our last night in Marrakech, it's so cold. We are so done with the cold. It's making me grouchy for sure. I think the Moroccans are grouchy even. We take a short walk in one final spin around the old city. As the final two prayer calls go out from the mosque, we sip our last coca-colas (will be glad to get back to the land of heathen infidels where beer and wine flow from the taps) and enjoy comfort foods done quite well in Morocco--pizza, spaghetti, ice cream and chocolate cake. Leave it to the Hunters to find the junk food even in Africa.





Monday, we're home safe in Oxford, I've got the laundry going for the last time and we are all dreaming of home for real now. Four days and counting...

Maddening Marrakech

Tonight, we ate in the open air under a full moon in the Jemaa-el-Fna food stalls. Each night this open air restaurant of hundreds of food stalls opens to locals and visitors for cheap and fresh meals served fast. McMorocco. Everyone wants you to sit at their tables. There's lots of shouting and pushing and bright lights and food and smoke and we have got to go home and rent Hideous Kinky.

If the kebab chicken won't kill us, will the scooters? We feel like we're living on the edge every minute of every day that we're here. Our dining partner at the food stalls (he's one of the chefs at the Mamounia Hotel, making our food stall at the market seem all that much safer) told us that roughly four thousand people annually die from scooter related deaths. We're not sure if that's just Marrakech or Morocco or if that relates to being hit or being a driver, but it all seems quite possible ten minutes after you leave the airport. Two, sometimes three people riding together, children clinging for dear life, old ladies driving, guys with propane tanks. Like China, there are no rules of physics that seem to apply when it comes to hauling ass on a scooter.

The alleys and streets are never much more than five or six meters wide and yet scooters, motorbikes, full on motorcycles, regular bikes, donkey carts and even little cars will often race down them at 20 miles per hour or more and it is the pedestrian's responsibility fully to get out of the way. We're like kittens crossing a highway every time we step outside the Riad and we sort of have to psych ourselves up...have a huddle, say a silent prayer, drink Red Bull to increase alertness...whatever. When we return to the Riad door each night, pupils fixed and blown but with all our limbs still attached, Mohammad hands us our keys as we fall to the floor and kiss it, sobbing, shaking, lips moving but no sound coming out...


But the color of everyday life is bolder, richer and more plentiful than anyplace I've ever been. Perhaps it's the stark contrast to the grime and crumbling buildings and complete poverty that is its backdrop. I wonder if a Moroccan traveled to Madison, would he feel lonely, or that the quiet was crushingly solitary and would he be as afraid as I am at times? Or would he be bored? Or does he know that there is any other way to live? I can't quite understand what it is here that would make it feel like home except the madness--the good and the bad of it.

A day in the souks

I've seen Monty Python's Life of Brian. I thought I understood haggling. The souks are a labyrinth of alleys, claustrophobic at times, beautiful and full of color at other times, but certainly the beginning of a bad acid trip in a lot of ways. First, there are the smells of spices, incense, leather and oils. Then, there are the hordes of people, mostly locals, with entreaties in many languages. "Ola" "Bon Jour" "Where you from?" "You want look?" "Say hello to Denzel Washington, and Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie for me. I like her." "What is your name? Sara? Sara?" Sort of all over the map, sometimes just for their own amusement.

A guy reached out and touched Ally's hair and a monkey jumped on her arm. Tough travel for blondes.

The precious baboushes

So here's the haggle in a nutshell. He brings you a chair. You must sit before you can properly haggle over the baboushes. He starts with a price written on paper. It's too high (although by US dollars, it's only about 100 bucks). You counter with what seems an insulting figure--it's not Western haggling, you don't meet in the middle--AAACK. He smiles. He counters, you counter and so it goes, until finally he gives the last offer. You take it. And you're still the loser. Everyone says thank you, money is exchanged and he shows you to his buddy further down the souk.

Chip watched from my key mistake with the baboushes and makes his second counter offer closer to his first. He ends at a price closer to what he wanted in the end. He also gets the ultimate compliment. "What, are you Berber man?" The Berber settled this region in 1057ish. I am bitter. No Berber compliment for me.






I felt sick to my stomach after a few hours in the souks. Even dizzy. A coke and a bird's eye view of the Jemaa-el-Fna and all the madness temporarily eases the feeling. In addition to the souks, there are the snakecharmers, the watergivers, the henna women, the donkeys, the carts, the scooters, the bikes, the monkeys, the acrobats.... For a person such as myself who learns by watching, it's just too much. I feel a stroke coming on.


What you can't see is the guy in the back of the cart is on a cell phone



Storks flying home at dusk



Back to the Riad for afternoon tea, the sunset and some rest.



Not bad sleeping tonight. I think I'll be fine. That's my room, by the way.

From Misery to Morocco

A beautiful sunrise on the ferry home from Ireland-Chip sleeping off the virus, missed it

We got back from Ireland and it's been misery. No more kitchen at our little Oxford house, the nation is in a deep freeze and all our Wisconsin clothes are in Wisconsin, and then the killer stomach virus that knocked us all off one by one. How Olivia made it to the top of Blarney Castle and kissed the Blarney Stone, I will never understand. A stomach virus will take a blogger out! Ally and I got it simultaneously, and all I can say is Wednesday was a "non-day" for us. We don't recognize it because we didn't have it.


All our kitchen just sitting on the dining room floor


The new kitchen as yet in boxes



I finally recovered this morning and it was off to Gatwick, a little flight on Atlas Blue flying for Royal Air Maroc and here we are, Marrakech. Do your worst, chicken tajine....I survived Finbar's revenge, and you are no match!



Our Riad is amazing. Riads are extravagant houses, often run by foreigners catering to tourists, that have few rooms and many luxuries and antiquities--not a great place for toddlers. We were greeted by Michelle, our host, who gave us a personal map tour of the city while we were served mint tea and dates stuffed with walnuts. Well, allright, now that's what we're talking about...




We walked through the Jemaa-el-Fna at night through winding alleys and streets, and it isn't an exaggeration to say it's frightening to be in a part of the world that does not resemble anything I know. There isn't a Western thing about this whole experience and that just makes it thrilling for me. Allison is completely panicked (our burgeoning worrier--she's yet an amateur but under my tutelage, she'll grow up a fine worrier indeed) about the food, the beggars, the night. As we sat eating dinner, they turned off the music in the restaurant as the last call for worship went out over the loudspeakers (the muezzin, Olivia tells me) in the city.

So much I don't know. Cous cous! I know that, so I ate it.

Kissing the Blarney Stone

Despite a "poorly tum", Olivia bravely set out with us this morning to Blarney Castle. We lay on our backs, threw the upper half of our bodies over the edge with support from the nice man and reached our lips out to where millions of lips have gone before. It was truly exhilarating to be held upside down at that height. I love roller coasters though so maybe it's just me.

As expected, only American and Australian accents were to be found. And nobody looked older than 25. But of course. Students and young people, already accustomed to traveling with no money, unaffected by the world financial crisis.



Blarney Castle is the "castley-ist" castle I've ever visited. Nothing's roped off and there are multiple stairwells and hidden rooms and little alcoves to explore, including the dungeons and the dog kennels. It's really awesome. We were sad that we forgot to bring Chip's sword from Edinburgh Castle, because he truly could have run around this castle with sword drawn for hours. Our favorite castle feature was the Murder Hole, a second floor grate just above the front gates, where hot oil can be directly poured down onto intruders' heads, should they manage to get through.



A fond farewell to Ireland. We're off at 5am tomorrow to Rosslare to catch our ferry back to England. One more big trip, but first a serious date at the laundromat. Our clothes are falling apart after five months, so the culling of the herd begins tomorrow--no sense washing what should go into the bin. My life in England shall ever be defined by my efforts around laundering.