Five

     It's official: We will be returning to GWA for year five. Dave will be returning to his position as finance manager. He also hopes to commence working toward his masters. Considering Aliyah, Nicole decided to reject her offer to return to a full-time, third-grade position. Instead, she is debating between two different contract options: a 1-year leave of absence (implying our intent to stay even beyond year five) or a part-time elementary P.E. teacher. Since the details for the P.E. position have yet to be finalized Nicole has not signed a contract...but we're coming back regardless!

     For those of you who assume that it was easy for us to commit to longevity here in Morocco due to the fact that life here is luxurious and uncomplicated, you are severely mistaken. This wasn't an easy decision to make, and life here is full of frustrations and challenges. While we love most things about our lives here, we experience plenty of days where we hate it as well. The emotional intensity of this love-hate relationship is precisely what makes living internationally so difficult. Yet, we ultimately believe that our choice to live abroad is the best for our family right now. Our experiences here have changed us, for better or worse; and we are learning to appreciate and respect the challenges associated with adapting to this culture. But it's still hard...

     It is hard to squeeze our lives into suitcases, to expect horrible travel experiences, to be an ocean away from family, to watch the people we love in America move on with their lives without us, to miss out on big events (i.e. weddings, births, and funerals), to be away for the holidays, to not have any good church options, to know that the friends we make here might leave us behind, to say goodbye over and over, to speak and understand French. Living here, it is harder to stick to a schedule, grocery shop, pay bills, depend on businesses, run errands, and drive. We sacrifice so much to live here, and it is difficult to adapt to the many differences between Moroccan and American cultures.
   
So why are we staying? 

     1. George Washington Academy. The benefit to us both working for GWA is that we share all of the same work hours and vacations (and there's a lot of vacations since we work at a school!). Dave isn't a teacher, so if we were to leave it's likely that we will never find positions that are conveniently within the same "company" again. More importantly, we each have jobs at GWA which match our degrees and our interests. There are certainly frustrating aspects of our jobs... but, overall, we love what we do.
     Dave has developed a strong reputation as a GWA soccer coach. He and his co-coach, Dusty, led the middle school soccer team to their championship three years in a row. They were promoted to varsity coaches this year, where they hope to continue their winning streak. Dusty, along with many of our our other co-workers, have become close friends. We have developed more meaningful friendships here than we ever had while living in Maine.
     As a family, GWA is a great place for us as well. There is a creche (child care program) which is conveniently located on the GWA campus. For about $8/day, we will be able to leave Aliyah in the care of three dependable Moroccans. We can walk over to see her at any point during the day. Should we stay long enough for Aliyah to reach school-age, she will be able to attend GWA for free due to the fact that we are both employees of the school. This means that she would get a private, trilingual education at an American accredited school.

     2. Morocco. There are so many things that we love about Morocco. We love that we live so close to the beach (where there's great surfing opportunities for Dave), that living here allows us to travel the world so cheaply, and that life here is always full of adventures and new experiences. Most of all, however, we love the people. Moroccans are the most hospitable people we have ever met, and we cherish every Moroccan friend that we have been blessed with:
      We have made it evident through our blog before how close we are with our landlord and his family. Said literally changed his work schedule three years ago simply so that he could commit to playing soccer with David twice a week. They bring us food incessantly, and they are always looking for ways that they can help us (Said even bought Nicole maxi pads one time, thinking that this was the cause of an emotional "culture shock" day). They consider us to be their family...and we feel very much the same way. To Aliyah, they are "Jiddee" and "Jiddah" (Grandpa and Grandma).
     Even the random Moroccans that we see around Dar Bouazza have become familiar friends, of sorts:

• Our mechanic calls us each year to wish us a Merry Christmas. Also, his wife hand-sewed a beautiful jalaba for Aliyah and a Moroccan tunic for Nicole.
• Our seasonal neighbors commenced a friendship with us the day that they went out of their way to fix the flat tire on our car while we were gone, without telling us.
• The fruit and vegetable guy always greets us and tries to teach Nicole Arabic.
• The guy at the local pharmacy took a moment to pray for our us in order to ask that God would bless us with a healthy baby.
• Our incredibly talented tailor greets us happily every time we walk by his shop.

     George Washington Academy and Morocco are certainly two great reasons for renewing our contracts; however, the primary reason we are choosing not to leave is because we feel a peace about staying. For now, this is where God wants us to be....so this is where we plan to stay.

-David, Nicole, & Aliyah

Parenting

      We have been parents for three months now...and we still have absolutely no idea what we are doing. We've read a handful of great parenting books, but we've discovered that their advice is often contradicting. We are also surrounded by a fantastic support network, yet we have received dozens of different answers to each question we have asked. In the end, we've been forced to rely on our own instincts because parenting is simply not all black and white. God created Aliyah to be a beautifully unique individual, meaning she is never going to perfectly conform to what the books say. Sometimes we feel like we're awesome at parenting or that we've finally figured her out...and other times we feel like we've completely failed. Nevertheless, we feel thoroughly blessed to be able to learn and grow in our new life with Aliyah.

      One challenge that we did not anticipate is how much we would be affected by the tension between Moroccan and American parenting styles. Living directly above a Moroccan family, we been forced to wrestle with this cultural difference more than most:

• We hear "hashouma" (shame on you) each time we take Aliyah near an open refrigerator/window, or when we take her for a walk outside (regardless of how bundled up she seems to be).

• After hearing Aliyah cry for the first time, we received a lecture about how Nicole needed to ensure that she was switching sides when nursing because "one side contains water and the other side contains milk". They were concerned that Aliyah was not getting enough of one or the other. 

• We were told that we needed to put mascara and eye-liner on Aliyah in order to ensure that she grows up with dark features.

• We were encouraged to feed Aliyah over-sweetened mint tea almost immediately after she was born. 

• We received a shocked reaction to the fact that Aliyah sleeps in her own room, by herself. We were advised to let her sleep in bed with us each night instead. 

     We love our Moroccan friends, and we value their experience and wisdom; however, there will always be points of disagreement that they will never fully understand since they lack familiarity with our American culture. We've gotten really good about gracefully accepting their judgements and their well-intended words of advice. We've also tried to find humor in the cultural differences, as opposed to being frustrated by them. And in spite of our contrastive perspectives on parenting, we still consider our Moroccan friends to be "family". They love Aliyah just as much as we do.

     We may have absolutely no idea how to be parents, but we must be doing something right because Aliyah is growing well and has developed quite the personality. At three months old: She can belch and fart louder than most grown men, and she smiles all the time. She loves to stare at bright lights, her giraffe toys, and our Christmas tree (yep, it's still up). She spends the first 30 minutes of her day watching/smiling at Dave as he gets ready for work, and she spends at least 5 minutes "talking" to him when he gets home from work each day. We love her a lot, and we're pretty sure she loves us too. :)

1st time rolling over - caught on camera!

-David, Nicole, & Aliyah

A [Hypothetical] Marjane Nightmare

     A friend of ours wrote an incredible blogpost about what it's like to go shopping here in Morocco. Her details are perfectly accurate and I laughed out loud reading it. Ever since moving to Morocco, grocery shopping has always been the errand that I have dreaded the most. It has become the center of so many "culture shock" meltdowns for me. In the beginning, the difficulty of shopping in Morocco was compounded by the fact that I lacked the skill of driving a stick-shift. Dave would unenthusiastically drive us to the Marjane every week and listen to me gripe about my feelings of dependency and about the insane inefficiency of Moroccan grocery stores. It took nearly two years before I was confident enough in my driving to go shopping by myself. Dave was so releived. While I was also excited about having gained the independence of driving myself again, grocery shopping never got any less frustrating... And now that Aliyah is here, the difficulty in completing this errand has been compounded once again. I am terrified of bringing her with me on one of my big, weekly grocery-shopping trips. To help you understand why I am so terrified, I have compiled a collection of experiences that have actually happened to me into one worst-case scenario story. This is the hypothetical nightmare that I envision happening:

***

     By the time Friday is over, our refrigerator starts to look pretty bare and I know that I'm overdue for one of my big grocery-shopping trips. I usually plan out my my meals for the week so that I can minimize my trips to those dreaded Moroccan grocery stores. My lists are pretty long, as a result. I decide that I will tackle this big errand with Aliyah on Monday. At three months old, her eating/sleeping schedule has become pretty predictable. I'm pretty good about planning my outings with her "perfectly". If I leave immediately following her 9:00a.m. feeding, she is generally content and transportable for about 2.5 hours. Ideally, this is an ample amount of time to drive to Marjane (The Moroccan equivalent of a Super Walmart), buy everything on my grocery list, and drive back home before she starts to get desperate for her noon lunch. But leaving the house is not always so easy to do with a baby and things never go as planned...

     After feeding/changing Aliyah, I strap her into the carseat and start gathering everything I need for the trip. Just as I am double checking that I have everything I need (diaper bag, emergency bottle of milk, Bjorn, money, grocery list, etc.), I hear the sound of her predictable 9:00a.m. poop which I had wrongly assumed wasn't coming today since I changed her diaper at 9:45. It's an explosive one...which means I now have to unstrap her from her carseat and change her diaper again. She is also in need of an entire outfit change...which is going to delay my departure even more since I have the added task of rinsing out her dirty clothes before I can leave. My actual departure from the house: 10:15. I only have 1 hours and 45 minutes left.
     While I desperately want to speed in an effort to cut 5 minutes off from the 15 minute drive, the idiotic driver who unwarrantedly cuts me off at the roundpoint reminds me that I don't trust Moroccan drivers enough to drive hastily. I take my time...and yet I STILL manage to get pulled over at the police stop. They are probably hoping that the car paperwork has expired so that they can manipulate their way into a bribe. I pretend not to speak any French and hand them the entire envelope of car paperwork. Somewhere in that folder is proof that the car paperwork has not expired since my husband is amazing at keeping track of all those details. When the cop figures out that he pulled me over in vain, he gives me the ok to drive off. Finally, I reach the underground parking garage and automatically drive to the spot where I habitually park. I am down to just 1 hour and 20 minutes.
      Aliyah fell asleep on the car ride, as she so often does. I wish that I could leave her to rest peacefully, but I have to rustle her awake in order to strap her into the Bjorn. There is no other choice. Aliyah can't hold her head up well-enough to sit in a cart seat. In fact, even if she could...that's not really an option. Most of the shopping carts don't have child seats...and the ones that do are extremely unsafe. They have no seat belts, and they are attached to the cart so loosely that the probability of the seat collapsing under the weight of a child seems significant. Since it would be impossible for me to push a cart and a stroller through Marjane, you can see why the Bjorn is my only choice. I will have to manage bending over to load/unload my shopping cart while carrying Aliyah on my chest.
     Thankfully, Aliyah loves the Bjorn...so she falls back asleep quickly. Together, we make our way up to the Marjane entrance to grab a cart. With my luck, today happens to be the day that there are NO shopping carts!! Even though there are plenty of Marjane employees hanging around, none of them have been tasked with the responsibility of gathering carts from the parking lots. I wait for 10 minutes before I spot an empty cart being rolled in my direction. There are at least five other families waiting beside me for that cart...but none of them have a baby strapped to their chest so I aggressively push my way in front of them and grab it. One of the wheels doesn't turn, making it nearly impossible to push, but I don't have time to wait for another. It'd be pointless to wait anyways since the majority of the carts are broken.
   As if navigating the aisles of the grocery store with my rickety cart wasn't enough, half of the aisles are blocked off by oversized crates. This is typical since restocking happens during the store hours. I am forced to abandon my cart temporarily in order to squeeze around the crates and carry everything I need from that aisle back to my cart...all while Aliyah is remains strapped tightly in the Bjorn. There is no pizza sauce today, unless I want to purchase a 1-pound can of it. The shelves also lack peanut butter and chicken...two essential ingredients that I needed for meals this week. I will have to make my way to another store later to get these items. This is something I've gotten used to since moving to Morocco: I often have to go to two or three different stores in order to get everything on my grocery list.
     It doesn't really surprise me that peanut butter and chicken are missing from the shelves since this has happened all too often (sad, right?)...but what does surprise me is that I can't find the sugar. I need sugar. I decide to search for an employee in order to ask where all the sugar went. It takes about five minutes before I find someone to ask. My French is horrible, but he eventually understands and points me to an area of the store where they stock their dog food/promotional items. Turns out, they have relocated the sugar to this location. Marjane has rearranged their grocery layout so many times (which I hate), but the first time that the rearrangement doesn't make sense. Oh well... at least I can cross sugar off from my list.
     I always get my fruits and vegetables last, because this is the part of grocery shopping that takes the longest. ALL of the fruits and vegetables are coated in dirt, and some are even rotting on the shelves. It takes a while to pick through everything in order to select the "best" produce (best = the produce that isn't likely to rot after a single day). After bagging my selections, I have to wait in a line to get them weighed by the produce guy (who, thankfully, is actually standing at the scale where he is supposed to be). If you don't get your produce weighed, then you can't buy it at checkout. There have been times when I have accidentally forgotten to weigh one bag of veggies, and I've been forced to leave it behind. I double-check my cart to make sure this doesn't happen today since I really need all of this produce. And then...Aliyah starts to cry hysterically. I was faced with far too many complications which slowed me down, and it is time for her noon lunch.
     There are NO bathrooms at Marjane. There aren't any places to sit down either. I've never had to urgently leave the store in order to seek out a bathroom before.... but I suppose I have to now. I leave my cart full of groceries behind and pray that it will remain untouched until I can return. Feeding/changing can be a 45-minute process, so it's going to be a while. There is a lady at Starbucks who always recognizes me, and who is willing to give me a mug of boiling water so that I can warm up Aliyah's emergency bottle of milk. She won't drink cold milk, and breastfeeding isn't really an option (unless I were to feed her in the underground parking garage). It doesn't take very long for her milk to warm up...and by the time it does, Aliyah is so hungry that she chugs every drop. Then comes her afternoon poop, which comes on right on schedule. I head toward the bathrooms for her diaper change.
      The Morocco Mall bathrooms are ridiculously neglected. Of the 14 available stalls, only about two are not broken. Of those two, usually only one has toilet paper. Luckily, only Aliyah is in need of a "bathroom" so I am able to forgo the general public bathroom stalls and head to the ONE available family bathroom where there is a changing table. It's a good thing I don't need to use the bathroom because I would never be comfortable utilizing the toilet in the family bathroom. There is no toilet paper and the door does not lock. In fact, there isn't even a handle on the door...so anyone can just peek in at their leisure. The sole purpose of this room is to provide access to a changing table. There is no trash can for dirty diapers and no soap to wash my hands when I'm through. I utilize the hand-sanitizer that I always keep in my purse, and then leave the diaper on the bathroom floor where I believe a trash can should be. Back to Marjane...
     Luckily, my cart is still where I left it and it seems to be untouched. I'm pretty much done shopping, so I head to checkout. I choose the shortest line and attempt to bend over to commence unloading my cart (while carrying Aliyah, who is now wide awake, in the Bjorn). I have plenty of time to unload because it takes at least 10 minutes for the cashier to process a check-payment by the individual in front of me. When it's finally my turn, I ask the cashier to start scanning my groceries in order to free up some space on the conveyer belt for me to finish unloading. Problem: I'm expected to bag my own groceries at the same time. Again...even though there are plenty of Marjane employees hanging around, none of them have been tasked with the responsibility of bagging groceries for customers. Somehow, I have to do it all by myself.
     To make matters worse, the Marjane grocery bags are horrid. Over the past three years, they have continued to decline in quality. I am learning that I can only put very few items in them, lest they break through on the other end. I still haven't perfected this skill though...because the very first bag I that I fill (5 potatoes, 4 green peppers, and 2 bulbs of garlic) rips open, spilling my vegetables all over the floor. Too much weight. The cashier looks over at my frustration, smiles, and then reminds me to put fewer items in the bags. At least Aliyah isn't crying.
     I notice the cashier put my cans of corn and my cheese behind her because she couldn't get their barcodes to scan. I needed those items... but none of the employees who are hanging around doing nothing are going to "go out of their way" to get me a new can of corn or ball of cheese with a readable barcode, so I'm told I cannot buy them. Next, the cashier picks up on the fact that my tomatoes rang up improperly. 1,000DH ($100)!!! I'm shocked when I see her pick up the phone to ring for assistance. Maybe...just maybe...she plans to have them bring me new tomatoes (and corn/cheese). Nope. Turns out, she just needed a manager to remove the tomatoes from my receipt and I'm told I can't buy those either even though I had gone through all the correct steps by getting them weighed by the produce guy. I'm not in the mood to fight about their stupidity today, so I let it go and make a mental note to put corn, cheese, and tomatoes back onto my grocery list. I just want to go home.
     Every single time I checkout at Marjane, the cashier finishes scanning my groceries before I am able to finish bagging them. You'd think that, when this happens, the cashier would turn to assist me in bagging the rest of my groceries. No way. Instead, she sits back and impatiently waits for payment so that she can start scanning the next customer's groceries. That next customer is also giving me an evil glare, as if to tell me I'm the slowest bagger in the history of the world. Aliyah starts to cry again...and I have no idea why this time.
     I eventually finish bagging, pay in cash, and then rush to the customer service counter to get my parking ticket stamped so that I can leave. Now...all I have left to do is unload my groceries into the car, drive home, get Aliyah to sleep in her crib, lug all of my groceries up to our apartment, wash all of my produce, and make lunch. I can leave the eight 5-liter jugs of water, which I had to buy for our drinking water, in the car for Dave to get later. My actual arrival back home: 1:20p.m.

And then I still have things I need to get on my grocery list... 
   

Now you can understand why I've been homesick for Hannaford lately.

-Nicole