Buzz, the Mosquito

There is a mosquito.  He lives in my room.  At night he likes to come out and play.  He buzzes in my ear.  One.  Two.  Three times.  I wake up and my legs itch.  My arms itch.  A little spot on my back itches.  For a while I thought it was lice.  My host mom said we brought it in the house with the rugs Leah bought from Chefchaouen.  Then we realized.  The heat was making us leave the windows open.  I know.  First the house is too cold to function.  Now it is too hot to manage.  So we leave the window open.  What options do we have?  Is there a fan we don't know about?  Are there window screens hiding in a cupboard somewhere?  So the widow is open. Wide open.  And Buzz has moved in to stay.  I never see him in the daytime.  At 3 am, it is a different story.

Three weeks to go.  Almost exactly.

The buses are on strike.  It took me 10 minutes to realize no one was standing at the bus stop with me.  Clearly I am a little out of it.  Clearly I am becoming Moroccan because after 10 minutes I wasn't even slightly annoyed when I remembered about the strike.  I just walked away.  I am just a shadow of my former dramatic self.

Everything smells like flowers now.

Riding the bus is easy. It makes time slow down.

My English students.

They took a test.  Not excellent results.  Oh well.  1 more week of class.

The sun doesn't set until 8:20 now.

I like the sight of the minaret.

Finally got a picture of the royal palace gates.  Blurry, because I was on a bus.  But the guards can't stop you on a bus.

Bab el-Hed is now the hip place to hang out.  Now that it is 80 degrees and light out late in the evening.

My apartment building from outside.  I live on the top floor.

I live over an underground shopping mall called Ait Baha.  You can buy everything down there.  And I've only been there twice.

We have a tiny elevator.  Leah and I have spent more time together in elevators than anyone in history.  I just can't wait until the day it stops at floor 7 and a half so I can crawl into John Malkovich's brain.

Here are a few pictures of normal things.  My mom came and took pictures of Morocco through her eyes.  Now I am trying to remember what is unusual, so that there is nothing I forgot when I come home.