Time flies

Hello again and another apology for the lack of activity in my blog as of late. In the past two weeks I have had over ten pages of spanish papers to write, a test, and two quizzes not to mention I have to figure out about another ten page paper and prepare for final exams. Its no excuse, i'm two entries behind and I know its my duty, since I am more or less impossible to contact, to at least send you guys a few messages to let you know I haven't fallen seriously ill, or joined a rebel army or any of the other things that young people abroad seem to fall victim too. Right now I am quite well, I am sitting by the pool on the island of Santorini in Greece, trying not to get too terrible of a sun burn, I have already watched two of the more lovely sunsets i can remember and everywhere I look are cliffs defiantly rising out of the water challenging its vastness and size with pure determination. Its really very beautiful. But this post is not about greece as I am far too behind to jump forward. First morocco!

I would describe morocco as two different places coexisting simultaneously. the two first cities that we visited were the old imperial cities, Fez and Marakash, and these cities are both quite famous for their medinas, a labyrinth of winding streets, many times without an exit, filled with shops and the general din of commerce. Of course this is not the United States so prices in Morocco mean virtually nothing, you are forced to play a repetitive and often exhausting game where they treat you like a king to create a feeling of obligation in you so you are forced to buy something then the give you a price that is outrageous, even in a western store, and you are transformed from a king to a warrior, battling your sense of obligation to get a price that is at least fair, if not a bargain. Certainly you can get bargains by this method of battle-buying, but it is tiring and the constant transformation of people from friends into fierce hustlers is emotionally effective and leaves you feeling a bit like the commodity the sellers are peddling. Still it is a sight to see, which is most likely the reason that hundreds of thousands of tourist flood these places to see this culture, which seems so foreign, in its natural habitat.
And here is where we find a duality; just outside of these medinas, these hearts of ancient arabic culture are skyscrapers and sky rise hotels, a modern city as western as any here in the united states and nicer and newer than many that I have seen in Europe. Even as you walk down the street you see two women walk past and one is dressed in a traditional burka and the other is wearing guess jeans, gucci sunglasses, and high heels. Its as if there are two cultures one must choose from, one antique, poor, traditional, one modern, flashy, and totally foreign, with no connection to their antique cultures. In marrakash there is a square, I posted some pictures of it in my last entry, which is filled with snake charmers, story tellers, food, almost out of a movie depicting medieval arabia, but when you look closely the mouths of the snakes are sewn shut, only tourist gather at the hundreds of food stalls. The food, which seems so exotic, is all the same, all just a show for tourists. And you begin to wonder how much of these peoples way of life is a show for us? How much of this antiquity, this culture, is just being preserved to bring in more money and build the real cities, the cities that are just like every other city in the world.
Besides these musings the country is very interesting, again you find duality with the people because half of them are as I described above, interested in only making a few bucks at your expense, the other half is genuinely warm, loving welcoming, and happy to show kindness to any stranger. The trick is you don't really know which one is which, who wants your money and who wants to help, and you end up treating every one with suspicion, even those who are genuinely kind. Bad people ruin the world for the good people, such a simple realization but true, and good people make the world livable, create a possibility for trust to be broken. A shame.
I don't necessarily trust myself to describe adequately the sights and sounds and smells, the smoke rising from the fires cooking food in the square in marrakash, the smell of the man sitting next to me for four hours as six people were jammed into a taxi to take us from Meknes to Chefchauen. Chefchauen, the blue city, halfway between a fairy tale and a water park, a city of cement painted blue to make it aesthetically pleasing at the base of a mountain you can hike up and see the electric blue starkly against the green countryside. Its honestly too much to describe, but I will try to post more pictures and keep people up to date this way.
I will be sending an email to you soon Grandma, I'm sorry again for not keeping up with this thing. To all the rest of you I love you and will see you in about a month, not much time. Isaac finally sent me an email and we have made amends. I hope all are well and will write again soon. My next entry will be about semana santa (holy week), then greece.

Pictures

Hello all, a special hello to Grandma, I know you've probably been worried but i returned safe and sound from morocco. My digestion has been on a bit of a roller coaster, but roller coasters are fun! And all in all i'm doing very well. Thanks also to any and all for the birthday wishes, if anyone see's matthew tell him I wish i was with him and I hope he's having the happiest birthday he can muster (I think this is the first birthday we haven't been together and it feels wrong). And also if anyone see's Isaac tell him he's a rat fink! He still hasn't contacted me so I can talk to him about being an uncle and that hurts my heart, but I'll probably have to cave and talk to him myself. Anywho I have a big test tomorrow as always and more work than I care to speak about so I'll make this a bit of a picture tour and write about it all soon. Promise. Grandma I love you tons and I'm sorry for being so late with the post. Talk to you all soon.

Granada

Every one who goes to granada feels the need to mention the alhambra. Specifically the nazareen palaces, which were sort of palaces for the moorish kings then kinda where emperor Carlos V stayed once or twice, then really just the place where thieves and vagabonds from the city spent there time and planned their crimes and cried when they were heartbroken and did all the things that people always have done and always will do. Only 400 people an hour are let into the nazareen palaces so theoretically, given about 16 hours of being open less than 7000 people a day are allowed to see them. Which isn´t really that much considering its one of the top five most visited palaces in the world. Its impressive. Most impressive are the fine plaster carvings that cover every wall in the complex. Mixtures of arabic writing from the Quran, the most delicate calligraphy I´ve ever seen except more important because a sixth of the world think its god speaking just for them, and geometric designs that are so well integrated into the caligraphy you can´t tell where one ends and the other begins.
Its perfunctory to discuss these palaces, they are impressive, yet as you move from one spectacularly decorated room to the next spectacularly decorated room it is difficult to keep up your excitement, you begin to feel as if it you have seen it all before, and at least for me i remember being a small child and thinking about heaven and how even something perfect would lose its splender if thats all I had and I started looking for something different, even something ugly to reground me so I could appreciate the beauty around me which was so like the beauty that was around me in the room previous.
For me, my favorite part was not the palaces. Next to the palace is a fort, its soul purpose was to fight against invading christians, who were constantly invading as Granada was the last muslim stronghold on the iberian peninsula. It was not made to be beautiful, or even kinda pretty. It is a blocky structure full of stone passagways and dank holes to hide and wait for enemies. It is where hot oil was dropped on invaders and where cannons crushed archers hidden in their turrets. It was impressive in every way that the palaces were not. We climbed to the main patio of the fort where all the towers where connected then to the top of the highest tower we could find. The torre de vista. The tower of the sight. It was a sight. Below us stretched all of granada and beyond mountains, some naked and defiant, others guarding their form with snow, giving them a look of purity that doesn´t exist outside of nature and children. I stood there and looked from one side to the next, then back, and around again hoping to ingrain it in my memory. After the ugliness of the fort this view was so much more spectacular than the palaces. It was our payoff, our reward for enduring the haphazard stones. It was the only heaven I´ve ever known, fleeting and only visible after seeing everything that heaven is not.
I´m probably writing in an even more melodramatic fashion than usual, mostly because I feel more emotionally confused than I usually do. A friend of mine at UNC was shot and killed on a street off of franklin street, our main road at UNC. Her name was Eve Carson and she was 22 years old. She laughed with her whole body if you were lucky enough to make her laugh. She started by leaning back slightly than the force of her would bring her forward, doubling her up as she laughed in a way that would make any prisoner feel free if only for a moment. She was the first person I met at UNC. She was the first person to remember my name. She wasn´t my closest friend, but she was many peoples closest friend and there is no fairness or justice or silver lining to her departure except that there is a chance that now we are hurting more than she. But I don´t understand death and dying enough to know what more to say. I hope if heaven exists it is better than I imagine it. I hate that she is gone because I selfishly don´t want to have to think about no one ever seeing her again. I don´t have any more words.
Sorry for this somber ending. As always I love you grandma and I hope that you are well. I´ll be going to morocco soon and I´ve taken every precaution I can think of to keep me safe. I have no desire to get sick or injured, I just want to see whatever I can while theres still time to see it. Everyone take care of yourselves. I love you all. I miss you all. I wish you all to smile even at innapropriate times. See you soon.

Madrid

"!Un euro! !un eurounerouneuor!" This was the call of the street vendors as I walked through the largest flea market in all of spain, my friends had left me, choosing the comfy and significantly more expensive high speed train to return to sevilla while I had elected to take the six hour bus ride. I walked from stall to stall looking through the assorted antique spanish books and half finished coloring books for anything that might actually be worth something.
"its very nice!" said a particularly ambitious salesman with a designer coat that didn't match his pants. "yes" I said "very". "Five euros, for something so nice it is a good price" he bellowed, smiling all the time. His teeth didn't match. "I agree" I replied. "for a girl you love?" he ventured. A swing and a miss, I am currently quite single and being reminded of it isn't the way to sell me anything. My face soured as I brooded over the lack of romance in my life. His moment was slipping away, he had made the wrong move. Quickly, another tactic "for your mother?". Ah, the guilt sell. After all my mother has done for me, birthing me and clothing me and putting more money in my account if it gets to low which it will soon so heads up and sorry in advance, how could I not buy this obviously high quality...um...I didn't know what it was. Maybe an earing tied to a shoe lace? " Sorry"I said, "its fine but I don't actually know what I'm looking at and I have a rule about buying things that may or may not be a keychain wrapped in chicken wire. Adios."
Each vendor had their own knick knack to sell, some were really quite lovely, others were torn barbie heads reattached to a plastic fish. There was something for everyone I guess.
The flea market marked the end of a very relaxing trip to madrid. I went with four other very nice, very southern kids from my program and we all stayed together in a cute little apartment in madrid, very close to the center of the city. I arrived with much enthusiasm ready to make the most of my few days, but I was soon overpowered by the lackadaisical dispositions of my southern companions. We would set off in the morning with the intent of seeing three museums, a place and a show and would return to the apartment at lunch time having done only one of the things we had planned and chat about this or that until we had forgotten all the things we had already missed our opportunity to do. It sounds a bit wasteful of our time i know, but it was actually very relaxing and I did get to see a few museums before all was said and done, including the museo de reina sofia, which houses the largest collection of works of Picasso in the world and is also home to guernica, a massive ten by 18 foot masterpiece depicting the destruction of guernica with the exaggerated impartation of pain that makes picassos almost cartoonish style so moving. The whole thing is in black and white and the figures are very unrealistic, but the faces and the hands are so clearly expressive that one can fall headlong into the work, into the characters who can show the pain every one of us has known but don't have the power to convey because our faces are bound by the rules of physics.
All in all madrid was very nice, but not the most impressive city I've eve seen. It would certainly be an interesting place to study as they have more theater, dance, art, and political goings on than the rest of spain combined, but it was just a bit too new for my taste. Everything seemed a bit sterile without the spirit of history that is so characteristic of other places in spain. Still it is worth seeing, and the live version of beauty and the beast is playing there (in spanish) so if you go soon you can catch that, though I'm a big fan of the movie.

You're a joy grandma!! Thanks for the email again, I'm glad you are enjoying the blog. There actually was a lot of political unrest in madrid when we were there. A group of rioters staged a rally outside of our window and shot of fireworks into the plaza. There were riot police around and everything, though it never got too out of hand. Regardless we were all safe as can be and we are always very careful when we travel. My brother is going to have a baby, which is insane! so I will soon be and uncle and grandma will soon be a great grandma, though she's already pretty swell as she is. Otherwise all is well. I'm going to granada next weekend and after that north africa which should be amazing. I know I will get six emails telling me north africa is dangerous and I shouldn't go and if I do I BETTER be VERY careful, which I am and will continue to be. It is a trip that others have told me is really fun and not dangerous as long as you stay with your group so I will be just fine and I promise the pictures will be worth any risk. Take care all, especially you grandma, I'll be back with more soon.

Help Me Rhonda

Gorges are the product of natures infinite patience. There is little urgency when you have no goal, no clear start or finish. Nature acts because the laws that govern it require it to and will continue to do so until movement becomes more painful then stillness. Chemically speaking stillness is impossible wherever energy exists, particles must move as long as the have energy to lose, so perhaps the patience of nature is not necessarily a lack of urgency as we know it with patience in humans, but an abundance of energy. Without fear of losing energy to stillness, as all humans are born with, nature can sit patiently and allow its movements, the slight pressure of water, wind, and moving earth, and with those movements it can create structures more grand and fabulous than any humans have ever been able to, with all of our attempts. With all of our urgency.
Rhonda is a city situated on two sides of a gorge. On one side is the old city, apparently named so because, well because its older, and on the other side is the new city. The two sides are connected by two bridges aptly named the old bridge and the new bridge for similar reasons as specified above. The city itself is quaint, full of little shops and neighborhoods with old men who sit and talk about when the old city was the only city and th new city was no city and how both bridges are older than the old city and it should really be thought of as oldest bridge, old bridge, not as old city, and really pretty new city and so on and so forth forever and ever amen. The city is interesting but unspectacular except of course for the land around and under it. The gorge under the new bridge is over 100 km deep (300 ft and change) and the bridge extends all the way to its bottom stopping just short of a waterfall where jets of water stream out like a fountain made by man and nature in one of their few cooperative efforts. The hills to the side are covered in flowers that bloom all year long so the beauty of the greenery is contrasted by the bleak and barren walls of the canyon.
We walked down into the canyon (you have a to pay a nice man about a dollar to walk through his yard but it really is worth it and he seems like a nice guy) and were surprised by how different the little city looked from the bottom of the gorge. From the bridge the town appears to spread out endlessly around the gorge, challenging it to expand into the thriving community that had mastered it with its bridges, but from the bottom the town was all but invisible. The gorge seemed to take no notice of them, as if it were more of a passive acquiescent then a conquered prisoner, not caring one way or the other what went on above it, waiting patiently as only nature with its boundless energy can.
We walked out of the city into the surrounding hills and were impressed by the view of the mountains to one side and the valleys with other little villages to our other side. As we looked on at these seemingly quaint little places we thought about how different they really were than any other place in spain or anywhere else. Inside those quaint houses they were probabl watching dubbed american tv, while their kids played the newest playstation games. They probably new as much about what was going on around the world from the news as an new yorker or businessman in tokyo. It made me look at the villages differently, part of their innocence and naivety was gone. Maybe that is the price of being connected to the world around you, a little bit of your individuality, your naivety, is released as well. Still I wonder if the miss the simplicity of ignorance. Not knowing about wars in africa or terrorism in the north of spain. I just don't know. I've never known a world without those things.
Sorry again for m long absence, i've been a bit swamped at school lately and have been trying to figure out some traveling, of which there will be much very soon. By the way I do have new glasses and a cell phone here (thanks mom for reminding me I hadn't mentioned that yet) and they are both working pretty well especially considering how inexpensive they were. This weekend I'm planning on going to madrid, which is apparently the capital of this place and will have lots of museums and culture and other boring stuff that I'm supposed to experience (just kidding, I love culture, ask anyone!) I also have to begin a ten page paper in spanish about theater in modern spain which wouldn't be too bad if I was familiar with theater in spain and I spoke spanish, but both of those are really not the case so it might be a grueling couple of weeks. A special thanks as always to me Grandma who sends me kind emails and tells me nice things. I love you more than kittens, and I love kittens a bunch, I hope you are well and that the weather is starting to normalize a little bit more. Much love to all and I will write again soon. Pinky promise. My next entry will either be about madrid, or Jerez the birthplace of sherry. I guess you'll just have to wait and see. Ta ta for now.

Cathedrals

This is not my first time in Europe, a few years ago My twin brother matthew, my friend Ryan, and I all traveled from london to berlin, stopping in france, italy, austria and other places in germany to see the sights and eat cheap delicious bread and be treated rudely by the french and really quite kindly by the rest of the world. So I've seen a few cathedrals in my day, the cathedral of notre dame in paris, the duomos of florence and milan, a basillica dedicated to saint peter in the vatcan, but no matter how many times you've seen gargantuan and lavishly decorated churches you still have to stand and wonder when you walk in and look up at the ceiling hundreds of feet above, the wood carvings as large as small houses, enclosing pipe organs whose arrangement is in itself a work of inspired creativity, the pulpits with images of biblical stories depicted with gold and silver and all around people of the worlds most advanced age wondering at the things that we have lost.
Interesting things about this cathedral. It was all about the benjamins (money), no surprise there. As in the mequita of cordoba, wealthy families would pay probably vast sums of money to be able to secure for themselves small sections of the cathedral for their own personal sanctuaries. The arrangement of these sections were like small chapels with a pulpit and grand art work, but they also served as a burial ground. As a caveat I have never understood peoples obsession with the meat left over when they pass on. Whatever is eternal and unique in each person is not kept in their fingernails or hair which will soon be devoured by creatures with twelve cell nervous systems, so paying absurd sums of money to protect a shell of ones self seems like a poor investment. Better to spend it on something that might affect the part of you that's eternal by enriching your life which is marked by the presence of a soul or your life's affect on others which is souls reciprocally affecting one another. But I'm off on an opinionated tangent, the point I meant to make is people with money could own what they desired, the church, the state, other human beings which is and was terrible but resulted in some of the most beautiful architecture and artwork ever commissioned. So its another mixture, a hypocrisy, something else to keep things interesting.
At the end of the tour we climbed thirty flights of stairs to the top of the tower known as the giralda and looked down on the city and we felt like the angels carved into the tower, looking down on the city and appreciating how hard it is to see beyond the wall in front of you when you are confined to the ground. Maybe this was a taste of the clarity with which god sees the world, the whole picture at once with the knowledge that everything fits together like a puzzle, but even with clarity of height I found myself nostalgic for the ground, the big picture is too vast. I'd rather let god handle that.

Thanks for the valentines day wishes from mom (I love you too, and don't say it enough) and Grandma (thanks also for the pictures, you live in a meteorological wacky land), Sorry i use this blog to reply rather than with email, I get easily sidetracked from emails but i will try to be better. Happy belated valentines day to all those I did not talk to. I hope everyone is well and felt loved that day.
My next entry will deal with the city of Ronda. Take care, I love you guys and will be in touch again soon. (Pictures are coming.)

And Another Story Too

The entry about the castle is below but I just finished revising this other "story" that is based on a memory from when I was very young and is also written in the first person as a child. No need to read if you don't want and the real entry is below but if you care to its here.

So I finally got to go to the state fair and I’m really excited and I’m looking at this yellow and red striped tent and its really big. Really, really, real big and I want to just go see it ‘cause dad is always saying stay close and I say there’s nothing cool close. Everything cool is far, there’s always big red and yellow striped tents and stuffed animals and trucks that can change into robots that shoot missiles out of their arms and I always have to stay close and they stay far away and that’s how it is.

So I’m not trying to be bad, ‘cause I’m really good, really, really, real good and everyone always says, “you are just like a little grown up” and I make my face look like a grown up; I turn my head a little and pretend like I got something sour in my mouth so my face puckers up all serious like and they look and smile and their teeth are bigger than mine and fill their mouths and I use my tongue to feel the gaps where there are no teeth and its soft and it hurts when I press hard but I press anyway because I don’t know why and then I remember I’m being a little grown up and I squinch up my face again and press with my tongue when they aren’t looking.

So this tent has a high counter and I can’t see over it but I want to so I walk backwards and then I see over the counter and there are balloons and a man and people throwing pointed nerf missiles and the balloons pop. Pop!! And it makes me jump a little and I look around to make sure no one saw ‘cause Matthew makes fun of me and calls me a girl when I get scared and dad says don’t say that but he does when dad’s not there ‘cause he’s a jerk and I call him a fart face when Michael and I are playing ninjas and Matthew’s not allowed too play with us but one time Matthew hit me so hard I started to cry and he saw me and I tried to pretend I wasn’t crying but he saw and said I didn’t mean to he started to cry and I didn’t know why he was but I would have given him my plastic Siberian Tiger to keep forever if he would just stop and I hugged him and he hugged back and we didn’t know why but we kept on crying.

So I kept moving back and watched the balloons pop and they were red and green and yellow and a color that looked like my moms car she used to drive before she moved away to Colony Lake and got a new car. And I look around to tell Matthew ‘cause he really likes balloons and wants to be a clown and can do magic and everything, except he’s not there and neither is dad or Isaac or anyone and I don’t know where they are ‘cause everyone is walking really fast and I can’t see their faces ‘cause they’re all bigger than me and they look like this one movie I saw when I wasn’t supposed to be watching tv and no one had faces and I went to bed and had nightmares and it was like that and I am real scared like really, really, really, really, real scared and I start feeling that feeling before you cry when your throat gets really hard and you can’t breath right and I cry and try not to talk to anyone ‘cause I’m not supposed to talk to strangers especially if they have candy, but people keep asking where’s my parents and I don’t know where my dad is and my mom is in Colony Lakes and I just can’t stop crying and then my dad says “David” and he’s running toward me so fast but I know its him because his hair is the color of metal and his voice is only his and he picks me up and I hug him and I would hug Matthew and Isaac too, but Dad won’t let me go and I don’t care I just keep holding him and I’m still crying and he’s crying too and I didn’t know why he’s crying ‘cause I’m not lost anymore but it doesn’t matter and we cry there and I hold him and he smells like cotton and trees and I’m more happy than I’ve ever been just to hug him and cry without knowing why.