Category: Writing

The weather has changed in Marrakech, giving us colder temperatures and undulating clouds in exchange for the heat and haze. We’ve been waiting for the winter rain for almost a month, and two days ago, it finally arrived. I was teaching my AP US Government class this past Thursday when the speakerphone piped up, informing…

I turned 30 this week. It’s a strange thing to enter a new decade of my life, and one that is neither old nor young. (To older people, I’m still a kiddo; to younger people, simply ancient.) I keep thinking, though, not of being old or young, but of being here, and of being here now. By…

Last week I wrote about accepting my limitations, and even blessing them for what they can teach me. But limits are funny things: some of them are static, while others are wonderfully elastic. By that I mean that we can stretch them and grow stronger because we’ve challenged ourselves. Moving to Marrakesh has tested my…

A blurry view of my ride home. I took this picture on Wednesday this week. My contacts had not settled in my eyes correctly from the moment I first put them in that morning, and they bothered me throughout the day. It felt like an eyelash was in my eye throughout every class and meeting,…

Apologies to my fellow Americans for that ear worm, but it expresses the feeling I have when walking from the bus stop to my apartment. My employer provides transportation via bus to and from school every day, and so at 5:15 p.m. most days, at the corner by our apartment complex, all of Gueliz neighborhood…

The Atlas Mountains lie to the south of Marrakesh, about an hour’s drive from where I live. They rise nearly 14,000 feet above sea level, and are utterly gorgeous. But I didn’t get to see them from Marrakesh until this week. See, typically the summer haze and clouds completely shroud the mountains during hot weather…

I used to scan the skies Anxiously, like a sailorWho has seen too many stormsEyes a fickle-looking cloud or three.On any given evening You could find me watching,Leg bouncing out the very rhythm My heart beat in those tempests.And I did not do so foolishly.Many and recent have been the galesThat would seek to overwhelm…

Once upon a time, I believed that having dreams of my own was wrong. Now I dream incessantly. It does not matter when or why I believed such nonsense; what matters is that second part. I now dream without ceasing, and even act on some of these dreams. One of them is about to begin…

I’ve always loved fairy tales. I devoured all the retellings of these stories our library had growing up, and made good use of the interlibrary loan system once it was introduced in the mid-2000s. Even now, you can usually find me with some form of fantastical literature in my hand. While new authors find new…