Surprisingly cold?

I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.

I should have brought my winter jacket today, I thought to myself. Yes, they had told me it was winter and it could get cold. But for some reason, I brushed the thought aside yesterday morning, not expecting it to get that cold. It was Africa, how cold could it get?

Apparently, cold enough to make it hard to concentrate on the tour guide. Apparently, cold enough to make me spend more of my energy trying to keep warm than to try and understand the Derija dialect around me.

After a much needed night of sleep, we got ready for our first day in Morocco on Wednesday. We had breakfast and then orientation. During orientation I got more and more excited about living with a host family. I cannot wait to experience full-blown Moroccan hospitality and feel like I’m welcomed into a Moroccan family!

We then headed out for lunch and then touring some typical sight-seeing places in Rabat. My group took thousands of pictures, but I took a couple (to make sure I could share them on the blog).

Mausoleum of Mohammad V

Ceiling inside of our restaurant for dinner!

Outside of the Chellah ruins

Walking the Dogs

I walked my friend Sierra's dogs with her a couple of days ago. Anything they did made me comment or ask a question.

"Do they poo once or twice?"
"Wow, they just sniff everything."
"Do they need to stay on their leashes?"

Clearly, I haven't had pets for years.

But as we walked and talked, I realized we ended up mostly talking. I noticed something beautiful about the dogs. They stopped to sniff absolutely everything. They'd get excited about a scent over here and then they'd scamper off over there. They'd wag their little stumps of tails and pant. They weren't too concerned about where we were going or if we were going in circles.

They simply enjoyed the journey.

And the simplicity in this reality was quite beautiful.So often, I'm caught up in where I'm going and what my destination is that it's easy to forget that the journey itself is a beautiful process. Sometimes, the journey itself can be more meaningful than the destination. We can become preoccupied with the ending that we forget the process, yet in the end processes are the ones that changed us, not destinations.

As I embark on my own journey to Morocco just four days from now, I want to cling to this image.
I want to remember the dogs sniffing the grass. I want to remember their little tails wagging with different scents they noticed. I want to remember how they eagerly pulled me from one tree to the next and how they weren't terribly concerned about getting to a certain place. They wanted to enjoy every step of the way.

While in Morocco, I will be keeping up a separate, more academic blog as well. You can find the link here. One of the scholarships I applied for requires I keep a blog, but I didn't want to link it to my personal blog, so I created a new one. Some posts will be repeats of these ones, but others will be different. I'd love comments or thoughts to any posts :)

Ready?

Last time I posted here, I was still living in Illinois. I was days away from leaving that home and embarking a new adventure and a whole new season of life.

I spent Christmas with Lucas and his family and it was wonderful. I love his family and loved getting to know them better of the holidays. We laughed and hung out and played games and enjoyed each others company. I soaked up his family Christmas traditions and tried to capture it all. And even though they were so loving and so wonderful, I still found myself feeling just a tad homesick on Christmas Eve as my family gathered together to celebrate Christmas. I knew that marrying Lucas meant that he would become my new nuclear family and I was excited to begin that stage, but it didn't curb the sting of homesickness I felt. I was able to Skype with them and loved giggling with my brother and joking around with my dad while my grandma and mom laughed in the background.

A couple of days later, Lucas and I hugged his family goodbye and headed to Colombia for a week. I can hardly believe it, but now, that week is also over. We spent tons of time with my family. We played Settlers and had some intense Uno games. We got lots of wedding planning done and enjoyed being together.

Three days ago, I hugged him goodbye. Goodbye for five months. Our last goodbye. The thought of not seeing him for five months and communicating across an ocean and struggling to find time to talk with an 8 hour time difference was enough to bring me to tears. And yet, the very next thought was always, "Its our last goodbye." Ah, how exciting. Next time I wrap my arms around Lucas, I'll be marrying him three weeks later.

And now, eight days from today, I'm off to Morocco. For a semester. I've been looking forward to this all semester, and now that my departure date is finally here, I'm in shock. I'm actually going to be living in Western Africa for a semester. I'll be communicating using my rudimentary Arabic and yes, I'll be living with a Moroccan family. The amount of changes that will be going on in my life are surreal, and I can hardly wait to board the plane.

Yet, when I return, life as I know it will be completely gone. I'll be done with university. I'll be getting married less than a month after my return. I'll be heading up to Canada to live with Lucas indefinitely and I'll be hoping to find a job. Wow. Typing it out makes my mouth go dry and my stomach feel a bit nauseous.

Am I really ready for all of this?

Ready as I'll ever be.