My parents live in Minneapolis so I realize my definition of "cold" is probably highly offensive to my northerly friends and family members. But Louisiana cold is different. It's a wet, humid, windy cold that seeps in through every crack and crevice of these poorly insulated buildings.
My Peace Corps friends will have the best understanding of this as I'm sure some of you nearly froze to death (like me) shivering in a house made out of stone with constant gusts of cold pushing through under every door, through every window (no window panes, people, just wood shutters), through the walls themselves. I used to boil water and then put it in my Nalgene bottle and snuggle up with that for the night (outfitted with leggings, sweatpants, sweatshirt, hat, gloves, scarf, and teddy bear). Louisiana is, of course, very different from North Africa, but there are days when the similarities are eerie. This morning I was sitting on my floor (cold) nibbling on almonds and hard boiled eggs for breakfast, dipping my egg in a mixture of cumin and black pepper and I had the most powerful deja vu of my life. I remember sitting on a similarly cold floor, cursing similarly messy soft-boiled eggs, eating similarly too-salty almonds, and similarly wishing I could crawl back under the covers.
Such deja vu led me to thumb through my old lesson planning book from Morocco. I had maybe 150 lesson plans written out, half of which I never got to use. I am so blown away by my innocence, my desperation to save a little portion of the world. I was so brave! And strong and undaunted. I jotted notes in some of the margins after class, and my messages are so honest and silly.
"They hated this."
"This was incredibly dumb."
"I love it here so much! And they really like the Shel Silverstein poems."
"What was I thinking?"
"Need to learn more Arabic before I try this one again."
"I wish the girls would participate more."
"Abdullah cracks me up."
I am so surprised at how carefree, and yet terrified, I was. I haven't reread my journal much. I've picked it up a few times, thumbed through a few pages, but I've never actually sat down and read through it. I always thought it would be so painful. But now I think I refrain from reading it because that life seems so far away and that girl that I was seems so much more powerful and self-assured than I am today. I feel like I should have "improved" exponentially since then. It's been nearly four years. Shouldn't I be smarter, stronger, more self-aware today than I was in that village?
But then I think maybe that's a ridiculous expectation to have of oneself. Why "improve"? I do not know that I am better at anything since leaving Morocco. But perhaps I am better at being myself, and less prone to moments of self-doubt. I think maybe law school makes one forget how powerful a person can be outside their career, their school, their future plans. Everything here seems so dollar sign-oriented and success is predicated on some outsider's vision of wealth and its attributes. That seems so silly to me. My ability to make the perfect pizza dough using only Moroccan ingredients and the most ass-backwards "oven" on the planet is not exactly marketable. But it's special. And cool. And it kept me warm on chilly days far from home.
Keep warm, everyone.
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