Sorry for the Delay

I've been absent for the past couple weeks, and I feel bad for this because so many things have happened within the past two weeks that I don't even know how to begin describing them. Firstly, I had my trip to Rome and got reunited with Nick, my good friend from high school. It was wonderful. I spent the first three days walking around the Eternal City with Nick and a few of his other friends in the same program from Dartmouth, then spent the next three days exploring on my own. I saw all the standard things, like the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, as well as Villa Adriana in Tivoli, and Pompei, which I've wanted to see since the third grade. I also ate more pork than I've eaten in the past two years combined. Let me tell you, if living in a Muslim country doesn't make you appreciate a good slab of bacon, nothing will. I wished I'd written more about my experiences in Rome while it was still fresh in my memory, but instead I'll provide some pictures. This sort of trip was so wonderful, I think it can only be described in photographs anyway. Click here and here and here and here and here and here but not here

Another important event in my life occurred yesterday. I moved out of the Villa and in with a Moroccan family, as I've been wanting to do since the first day I got to Fez. The family is lovely; there's a mom, a dad, a sister named Kenza who's studying at the university in Fez, Hamza, who's 19 and studying to be a hairdresser, Meriam, who's 17 and wants to go to college in America after she graduates this spring, Mohamed, who's 9, and Abdu, who's 4 and always wants me to draw farm animals for him. They live in an adorable apartment in the Ville Nouvelle, about a fifteen-minute walk from the school. I've only been there a day, but so far it's going very well. The mother is an excellent chef, and yesterday she made the best chicken tajine I've ever eaten. My plan is to stay with them until the end of the term, which is next Friday, then off I go to explore the rest of the country I haven't had the chance to see yet. I can't believe the end of my journey is coming so soon How did this happen? Where did the past two months go?

In the next few weeks while I'm abroad, I'm going to try my best to continue blogging regularly. It's not much longer until I'm reunited with the things I miss most like my family, my friends, the promise of a western-style toilet, and bacon, wonderful, delicious bacon.

B'salama,
Doonyaa