we wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year

hey kids,
sorry, sorry, SORRY!!! it's been sooooooo busy between thanksgiving and christmas that i'm just going to post pics with a short explanation underneath each one.
These are the fourth graders. We had a Holiday Program complete with trilingual performances. For their English performance they sang Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (they had learned it by singing with Randy Travis and they sang it with a southern accent. . .too cute!)





These are the third graders. They sang Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (they learned it by singing with Dean Martin so they were pretty swinging 60's in their rendition. it was also too cute!)



We (the girls of the Moulouk 2 apartment) were invited to a wedding party of one of our Arabic teachers. you have to get WAY dressed up for these affairs. I rented my kaftan and we all got dressed at our language school before going to Arabic dance the night away to some awesome Arabic music. It was one of the most fun times I've had here so far!



So, I decided around Thanksgiving (with the help of my sister and one of my best friends) to surprise my family by coming home for Christmas. I had a day and a half layover in Paris so I decided to stay with some friends I met last summer. They are learning French and lived close to the airport. Frances took me into Paris to visit the Musee D'Orsay and we stopped outside of the Louvre to see the glass pyramid. It was COOOOOOOOLD in Paris! I had a great time, but was ready to get back to the good ol' US of A.


I landed in Dallas at about 10:15pm on the Friday night before Christmas. My sister and grandparents picked me up from the airport. I was planning to surprise my extended fam too, but I had a delayed flight in Chicago so Caro had to tell my grandparents. After a quick stop at Sonic (of course!) for dinner, we headed to Texarkana. We got to there about 2:30am, and very quietly brought my stuff inside. It was LOVELY to be home. We got in bed pretty quickly, but I had started not feeling that great on the car-ride home. I ended up getting REALLY sick from the Saturday before Christmas until the day after Christmas Day. In fact, my mom discovered me walking in from the garage with a Sprite I was getting to settle my stomach down. Here's here reaction--she stood there squinting and not really knowing what was going on. Finally, she said, "What are you DOing here????" My dad had pretty much the same reaction. It was cute, and I wished I had my camera but I was just trying not to throw up. I felt better on Christmas Eve, but still wasn't sure my stomach could handle a lot of heavy Christmas-y foods. However, I really enjoyed spending time with my extended family, and it was really great to get to see their shocked faces.

These are pics of the Laycock Family Christmas Eve

The day after Christmas, Caro was a trooper and went with me to Fayetteville so that I could see my friends, Shannon, her husband Danny, and Josh and Laurel. Laurel also didn't know I was in America so surprising her was great fun. I didn't have my camera, which is sad, because her face was priceless. We had a great time playing games and hanging out.

After coming back to Texarkana I spent the rest of my time haning out with my family and getting ready to go back to my country of residence. I've missed parts of it and I think I can say I'm ready to go back for another semester! I'm excited to see what goes down this next semester and to see how my babies are going to grow and learn. It's almost my favorite part of teaching.

Consider yourself updated :] I'm heading to the Dallas area tomorrow to catch up with friends there. I fly out on Thursday, and my roommate, Katie and I are on the same flight to Paris so that should be fun.

As always, thanks for reading!

baby, it's cooooold ouuutsiiiiidddeee!

hey kids,
it's been a busy last few weeks! here are some pics of what's been going on. . . .

i woke up early on thanksgiving morning and peeled 2.5 kilos of potatoes and put them on to boil. then i bleached and got the green beans ready to cook. i felt very domestic! we spent thanksgiving at steve and judy's house. we had a lot of good american food (of which i got zero pictures--sorry!). we stayed around for the afternoon, called our families (cried a bit--dang you, caroline watson!), and watched part of the Bourne Identity with some of the high school students. it was a lot of fun and a good time was had by all.
laura and katie

steve and mel after thanksgiving dinner

janice and gene--our magribian grandparents


on friday, i enjoyed a lazy day. i asked jana and abbie (some older girls from the school) over to bake chocolate chip cookies with me for the fourth graders who were coming over on saturday. i didn't get any pictures, but we had a pretty good time. we ate a LOT of dough, forgot to put baking soda in the dough so the first batch of cookies were f-l-a-t, added the soda for the second batch, made that batch into a cookie cake, watched a lot of high school 1 and 2 music videos on youtube, and then they went home.

on saturday (today) the fourth graders came over for pizza and a movie. i had all the ingredients for the pizzas ready to go, and we made our own pizzas. the girls didn't want anything but ground beef and cheese on theirs, but mohamed and i wanted EVERYTHING on ours. they were reeeeeeeeeeeeally good pizzas! we had some of the cookie cake from yesterday for dessert, which they totally loved.


we had to watch the movie on my computer in my bedroom b/c our dvd player won't play american dvd's because they are from a different zone. there's a way to fix that, but we don't know how to do it. we watched Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Wedding. It was liked by all--even Mohamed.

most of the kids left by 3:30pm, but rita's mom was at a golf lesson so she wasn't able to come until later. rita got to help me make the christmas tree for our apartment. she helped put tape on the paper, hang the paper, and paint the tree.
here's the tree so far. the tree skirt--if you can't tell--is 3D with persimmon color polka dots :] we'll add some ornaments this week. we haven't talked about if they'll be painted on or made and then hung in some manner. i'll post pics when it's all done.


it's finally gotten cold-for-real outside so we finally feel like it's fall-moving-into-winter. been listening to non-stop christmas tunes for the past three days. it's been a good break all in all. just counting down the days until christmas--30 days until the Eve!

Happy Birthday to You!

Mel's birthday is tomorrow, but we had the day off of school today SO we celebrated her birthday last night. We ate dinner at a place called Vesuvio's and it was lovely. They have really good Italian food and EXCELLENT pizzas. We brought the party back to our place after dinner for cake, cookies, and hanging out. A grood time was had by all :]

This is Ed and Brian---or The Best-ies as we call them.

This is Soria, Najete, and Mel. Soria is the sister of a teacher at school, and Najete is a pre-k/ kindergarten aide in the Arabic classes.

Here are a bunch of the folks at the party: Hiromi, Omar, James, Carrie, and Laura.

I skipped my planning period on Monday to rush home to make Mel's cake. It was so good!!! Here's Kendra (a friend from language school) and Katie getting ready to cut the cake up. We had no candles so we put matches into the cake in the shape of a 27. It was QUITE an experience. Matches are NOT equal to candles!

This is one of my students and her brother. We went to their house for dinner a few weeks ago. They live close to where we go to language school, and their house is gorgeous.

I've been pretty homesick this past weekend. I've been here for almost four months now, and apparently this delayed culture shock/homesickness is a common happening around this period of being out of your home country. I'm missing the easiness of living in America, but I still really enjoy where I am. Thank you for caring and thinking about me this weekend. I'm so thankful for the videos (Bethany Ridge LG!!!) and emails from you guys. You've made me feel better :] Thanks for the awesomeness!

We started language classes again last week. This class we're taking is full of verbs so we'll finally be able to have whole conversations with folks. I'm trying to do better with making myself study for a minimum of 20 minutes each day, but I'd like to try for more like 45 minutes. Shwiuh-b-shwiuh (little by little) I'll work up to that. I'm still having trouble with this one sound--the "ain" sound. It's quite tricky to make, and you need it for two of the Arabic letters! Again, shwiuh-b-shwiuh I'll get there.

such great heights

Yesterday we went to Ifrane which is about an hour away from where we live. The weather here has been more spring-like (mid-70's to low-80's) than fall-like which is a bit disheartening since it's almost November (Where did this month go? Sheesh!). However, in Ifrane yesterday it felt very much like fall. Their leaves had started changing, and the weather was sunny yet cool. We were all pretty under-dressed though, and froze our wee toes off as the day wore on. Here are some pictures from the day.
This is Carrie and I in the city's center. they had beautiful, well-manicured grounds EVERYWHERE!
This is in the national park where we had a snack and a drink before heading back home. It was beautiful. and COLD!

We met an American kid in town who told us how we could get on the campus of the American University that's in Ifrane so we went there and told the guards that we were there to watch George Washington Academy (a school in Casablanca) play volleyball in the tournament. We were then escorted to the gym by a security officer. We didn't know we were being escorted, but I guess they didn't want us doing anything we weren't supposed to do. Good to know the security's tight! Here are some pics of the university grounds.
We decided to come home and make some pumpkin soup, but first we had to go buy the pumpkin from our veggie stand in our neighborhood. We go to this hanout about three or four times each week, and these guys know us pretty well by now. This kid in the picture is our favorite. This is what pumpkins look like here--you don't buy the whole thing. . .you'd be eating it for days! They are HUGE and called garaa-humbra (the red zucchini).
He looks kind of creepy in this picture, but he's very sweet and always helps us with our Arabic food terms :]

Back to You (old school John Mayer)

so, i realize that it's been a ridiculously long time since i posted anything, BUT it's because my computer cord finally bit the dust. i was having to borrow my roommates computers to check emails, and felt bad about uploading pictures to their computers and taking up their computer time by writing a blog. BUT thanks to a wonderful lady, who brought back a new cord from america for me, i'm all hooked up again. and i gotta say, it feels good :]

i'm not going to bore you with the mundane details of what happened over the last month, BUT you can know that 1) school's gotten underway very well and i'm really happy that i decided to continue teaching 2) daily life has been interrupted by the month of fasting, but it's over now (humdulillah-praise god) so we can walk about after dark as usual again, and 3) most recently we had to leave the country for a weekend to renew our tourist visas until we get our residency cards. we had a LOT of fun in spain, and can't wait to go back. here are some pics from the weekend.
This is Carrie and Mel waiting for our connecting train to come. Katie fell asleep like this for about five minutes. It was hysterical.
This is Laura. She teaches first and second grade. We were roommates this weekend (Cheri, she's the one who reminds me of you).

These are most of the girl teachers on the trip. Much salsa dancing ensued after this :]



THE RETURN FROM THE BORDER:
the border between the two countries is one that you can walk or drive across. we were walking back across to our neck of the woods when mel and i were detained by the border guard, who was checking us through. he told us that we would be considered illegal after october 27th when our 90 day tourist visas were expired (all of this in broken english with the random spanish and arabic word thrown in for good measure). this wasn't good news since the whole point of leaving the country was to get another passport stamp so we could have another 90 day tourist visa while our residency card applications were getting under way. we were a bit freaked out, but it ended up being a good thing because it forced ed to jump on helping us to get the residency application process started. we've been working on the paperwork this week, and will be most of the way through it by the end of this week, insha'allah (god willing).

mel and i have been waiting to hear from some friends, who live in paris, about spending christmas with them. they emailed us back, and told us we could absolutely spend christmas with them. it should be MUCH more fun than staying around here for the holidays. we've heard that it's a bit depressing. being with our friends will be closer to being with our families. after christmas we're going to do some traveling around france and spain. we're encouraged by our bosses to take planned vacations so that we don't get burned out from living here. we'll be doing it all on a shoe-string, and it'll be so much fun! i'm excited to get to see some great works of art in some of the most famous museums in the world.

VONAGE UPDATE:
so, as some of you know, our vonage phone died one week after it started working. we came home from school on friday, and it had died. i finally called the vonage peeps yesterday, and they are replacing our phone for free. katie (our third roommate) is going home next weekend for a wedding so she's going to bring the NEW phone back with her. the number will be the same. we'll "hope" that this one doesn't die. we should have it in approximately two weeks.

thanks as alway for reading! i love you guys and miss you!!!

haaaaaalllllellllluuuujah! haaaaaalllllellllluuuujah! hallelujah, hallelujah, haaalllleeeelllluuuuujjjjaaaahhh!!! (on your feet for handel's messiah)

we have the internet! YAY!!!!!!

i said i wasn't going to update until we had the internet, and i've been true to my word. . . .plus we've also been ridiculously busy finishing up arabic classes, and getting ready for school. school begins tomorrow, and i have to say this is the least stressed about the first day that i've ever been. this must be what it's like to work in a private school with no TAKS tests to worry about all the time. i don't even have bookshelves in my room so all the books are sitting in the corner on a table i scrounged up. i have two rooms, and both of them look pretty similar. here is a picture of each room. This room is my third grade room, and
as of today it has a lot more stuff
on the walls.

This is my fourth grade room. It's also a lot more decorated now, humdulillah!

i also see from my camera that i've taken several pics of random things pertaining to daily life so here they are with explanations of each picture to kind of explain what goes on around here--shweeah (arabic for "a little bit/sort of." hope you enjoy them! I thought Tootsie would like this one...snapping green beans for dinner :]

I woke up a couple of weeks ago to look out of my window to see this! She was cleaning the windows on the fourth story apartment across the way. Scary!!!

The three of us went up to the roof the other day.
This is what we saw. . .as far as the eye could see.

This is how we've been accessing the internet until tonight.
We stick our computers out on the window ledges to steal our neighbor's internet.
It's been iffy at best.

These are our water bottles for approximately two days.
It's disgusting that we are using this much plastic, however,
if we drink the tap water we'll get sick so we just drink the bottled variety.

This is Driss, my very most favorite Arabic teacher at my school.
He's VERY patient and kind, and explains things over and over again without getting mad. I told him after we took this that he was my fav, and he said that our class was his favorite b/c we loved learning Arabic as much as we do that it's a treasure for him to come teach our class.

some thoughts for me these next couple of weeks:
--the month of ramadan begins thursday or friday. we will most likely be invited to join families for their breaking of the fast after sundown each evening (they fast all day--not even drinking water!). this is a great time to get to know them, practice our arabic, and spend time learning about this month that is very important for them. it's a rich, rich cultural experience!
--the beginning of the school year is usually a pretty hectic one. you could think about my students and their acquisition of the english language plus their critical thinking skills. we are working to build the levels of both. they are skills that will help them move on to better lives and better opportunities.
--the weather has been pretty stinking hot the last few weeks, and a huge thanks to the BR Life Group for asking for cooler weather for us. it worked! it's even been raining, which is unheard of this time of year! ask for continued good weather, if you think about it! it's been lovely. . .esp. since we have to walk everywhere.

since we have internet, and will have our vonage phone tomorrow please call us! we'd love to hear from you. . .even if it's a voice mail. i'll send out an email with our number and address on it. can't wait to hear how you guys are doing! we've all three (katie, melissa, and me) started really missing friends and family more than usual this week. we're glad to be able to communicate with the outside world once again!

hallelujah (check out the jeff buckley song...it's worth your while, i promise)

hey kids,
sorry it's been a while. my computer's been in the shop (it'll be back on monday or tuesday), and i've been a little bit sick-ish the past week and a half. i've taken some pics, but haven't wanted to upload them to a computer other than my own so i just haven't posted. plus we STILL don't have internet at the house. it's coming. . . .maybe.

i wanted to leave a quick note to say that this morning (sunday) was an incredible time with the father, and i felt all over again his heart breaking for those who aren't his. this is usually in the back of my mind somewhere, but it was brought to the forefront today. i can't really describe it on the blog, but it. was. powerful. like, bring you to your knees in fear and awe and humble gratitude. amazing.

i'll post more often this week since i'll have the computer back PLUS some pics. it'll be good, i promise! and i'd like to give a big GOOD LUCK to all the teachers who are starting tomorrow (monday, august 27). i'm thinking about you guys tomorrow! you're going to do a great job!