House Hunting

    We currently miss the convenience of the "apartments for rent" section of the Morning Sentinel. Further, we miss the simplicity of being able to determine, for the most part, whether or not an available apartment suits our needs simply by doing a drive by scout of the exterior on our own. While we realize that we've only ever "apartment searched" one other time in our marriage, we feel pretty confident in saying that the process is much more time-consuming and difficult here. Here are some of the obstacles involved in house hunting here in Morocco:

• There is no public listing of "apartments for rent". Finding an available apartment entails talking to a local friend...who will then talk to their Moroccan friends...who will then talk to their friends who have heard of an available apartment. Then that friend will pass their knowledge back through their chain of friends, and then back to you.
• To look at an apartment entails an evening spent with one or all of those Moroccan friends who discovered the apartment on your behalf. A 15 minute glance at the apartment, or even a drive by scout for that matter, is unacceptable. Plan on being invited for an elongated Moroccan dinner of couscous where you will meet spouses, children, siblings, nephews, and cousins. Then plan on a 20 minute (or more) period of relaxation with the family while enjoying Moroccan mint tea and cookies. Eventually...you will get to see the apartment. But be prepared to pay a small fee to the person showing it.
• No matter how many times you insist on having an apartment with an American toilet, hot water heater, etc.... plan on being shown apartments that are still unfinished and are not even hooked up to running water. We think that this is their way of "amazing" you when they show you a second apartment that 'does' have running water (even if the second one is just as awful).
• Lying is a part of Moroccan culture. When a landlord says that his/her available apartment is within 5 minutes of where you want to live, don't be surprised if he/she tries to drive you 45 minutes outside of town. 
• It is unacceptable to ask questions about the apartment before seeing it in person. Therefore, all of those important questions (i.e. "does the apartment have running water?" or "how much is the apartment?") in which the answer would likely determine your interest in seeing the apartment in the first place cannot be asked. You just have to go look at all of them, and try to smile politely when they show you something absurd. 
• If you are white and don't speak the preferred language of Arabic, the landlords here will typically quote a rental price that is double what it should be. You will have to negotiate; and the negotiating never seems to work in your favor since you are incapable of either changing your skin color or miraculously obtaining fluency in Moroccan Arabic. So you will ultimately get ripped off no matter what...
• When you finally find "the" apartment, you must pay whoever showed you the apartment at least half, but up to a full months rent in return for their service of helping you (even if their help was minimal).

Wish us luck as we try to find our future home...

-David & Nicole

Victory

Nicole drove all the way to church today...without stalling once!!

-David & Nicole

100 Days Smarter

     Today was the 100th day of kindergarten. I spent my day wearing the most ridiculous hat ever while leading my class in 100 steps around the track and 100 exercise routines. We also decorated our door with 100 hand prints, wrote a class book about what we would buy with 100 dollars, created buildings using 100 lego's, showcased 16 different collections of 100 things, and read books about the 100th day of school. It was a good day...and I spent it with a great class.
    However, the 100th day of kindergarten also marks the date on which I can "officially" tell you that I will not be teaching kindergarten next year. While I have, for the most part, enjoyed the craziness of being a kindergarten teacher [and still am]... there has been some lingering areas of frustration with my current position. That said, I am ecstatic about the opportunity I have been given to teach third grade next year. My decision to switch grades was multifaceted, but I believe wholeheartedly that third grade will be a better fit for me.

     For Dave: We initially moved here with no understanding what-so-ever of what Dave's job would entail. 100 school days later, he believes that his position in the HR department is a very good fit. He has been making noteworthy progress in the HR department in regard to how payroll is managed and how employee information is maintained. It is likely that he will remain in the same position next year, with the possibility of promoting to a higher position in the future [should we stay longer than 2 years].

    There are 68 more days of school before summer vacation. 68 more school days to get my kindergartners ready for 1st grade [I'm sometimes scared that they wont be...] and 68 more school days until we "possibly" start packing our bags to go home for the summer...

    And in the mean time: There are 37 more days until we get our very first visitors from America. We have great things planned including surfing in Casablanca, 4-wheeling on the beach in Essouaira, and camel riding in the date palm groves of Marrakesh.

Who's visiting next? :)

-Nicole [& Dave]

P.S. - Dave's middle school soccer team did ultimately win the soccer tournament 6 to 2!

Paris

   We have just returned from a 5-day trip to Paris, France. In spite of the bitter cold weather and a minor point of frustration with our American bank, we thoroughly enjoyed our trip.

   We caught our first glimpse of Paris & the Eiffel Tower at night as our plane descended down to the Charles de Gaulle airport. From there, our trip began with a long ride on the train/metro to our hotel. Since it was late at night, our plan was to eat a quick dinner and then go to bed. Unfortunately, we were unaware as we were eating our dinner that our bank had frozen all of our accounts as a result of our previous "suspicious international purchase" of metro tickets. This happened in spite of the fact that we had notified the bank that we were going to be in Paris using our card. All this to say, Nicole ended up spending over 1 hour sitting at the restaurant while Dave ran several blocks back to our hotel (after trying in vain to get money from several ATM machines) in order to beg the hotel lobbyist to loan us money so that we could pay for our food. We stayed up until midnight trying to sort out the issues with our bank and finally managed to get our accounts cleared so that we could get money and pay back the lobbyist. Blah. We WILL be calling our bank soon simply to complain about their stupidity.
   We woke up the next morning to our very first snow day of the year! Nicole tried to make a snowman...

   Naturally, we spent the duration of our time in Paris being tourists and doing all of the typical touristy things. Our most memorable moments of the trip include: eating the yummiest (& largest) gyros in the world next to Notre Dame, going to the top of the Eiffel tower, eating salmon for the first time in 7 months, having a chocolate fondue date, seeing the Eiffel tower at night, and spending way too much money on good coffee, french baguettes, and pain au chocolat.

Eiffel Tower

Sacré-Coeur Basilica

-David & Nicole