Our Kitchen!

This was part of our kitchen for 15 days. Some friends of ours had just bought this stove the day before we lost our kitchen. They needed it the day after it was done. Talk about timing! This is our hallway. We kept kitchen items in the guestroom/office, food in the fridge in the kitchen, and washed the dishes in the tub. Not many people can say they have 4 kitchens!

Attention Ladies and Gentlemen! Announcing our NEW kitchen!

No, red and black are not the colors I would have chosen for my kitchen, but nonetheless, it’s beautiful! I have never before had a kitchen that one would want to photograph! Sometimes I just go in there and look at it :)

Here’s the timeline for how this all happened:
Wednesday, January 4: Kitchen is torn out (without our knowledge) and we return home
January 4 - January 10: Nothing happens
January 11: The cupboard guys come. They take 6 hours to assemble what Gerald says should have been a 3 hour job. They take multiple breaks (including a prayer time), smoke in our house and use our internet to watch a movie while they ‘work’ - both of which we put a swift end to.
January 12-17: Nothing happens
January 18: The counters, stove, and sink are put in
January 19: The grout is all dry and I can put things away and use the kitchen!
January 20: They re-grout and say I can’t use it until the 21st pm

As you observant folks will note, there was a lot of ‘nothing’ time (during which the other four kitchens were getting their work done). What was essentially a 2 ½ day job took 14 days.

This was certainly a low point in my cross-cultural attitude. First of all, the workers from Fez (not the university workers) lied and lied and lied. They said they would send 5 teams. They sent one. They said it would take 2 days. It took 14. They said they would come weekends. They didn’t. For 14 days they said the work would be done
“Tomorrow - God willing” with the full knowledge that it wouldn’t happen. I don’t think God appreciates getting blamed for human laziness and dishonesty.

That is the part that was the most frustrating. If someone had told me that it would take 15 days to use my kitchen again, I would have been annoyed, but I would have been fine. But to hear “tomorrow” every single day was like being on a roller coaster of expectations and disappointments. I managed to have a good attitude most of the time, but definitely had some low moments of anger and frustration.

A friend of ours summed it up beautifully. He said that when you go to a restaurant in the States, they tell you the wait is 15 minutes when it is actually 10, so you go to your table happy. Here, they always tell you what you want to hear - so they tell you the wait is 5 minutes when it is actually 30, so you go to your table mad. Here they hate to give bad news so they always tell you the best-case scenario while we prefer to hear the worst-case scenario so we can be prepared for whatever happens.

A few side notes - they didn’t plan the counters all the way to the wall, so we have an ugly, open spot. We have one sink instead of two (which we had in our previous kitchen), and the stove is smaller. I guess in the upgrade, we managed to get a few downgrades for financial reasons! But hey, we didn’t pay for it, and we didn’t have to deal with the workers, so we shall be happy!

And now it’s (almost) history. And it makes a good story!

December

Gerald's cooking assistant who comes running whenever there is a slight chance of meat!

At a fancy hotel we went to in search of Christmas lights on Christmas Day.

Our school celebrated Ashoura (Muslim New Year), Christmas, and Hannakuh in the same week! I was in charge of the Christmas part and divided the kids into 6 groups who rotated around to centers. Here is one of them led by our art teacher. It's such a change from the French system which is so secular that you can't talk about anything. It's refreshing to be in a place that acknowledges each of our cultures/religions!

Decorating the tree with a German teacher who was happy to talk about the origins of the tree!

Saying goodbye to a great group of students. Most of them are military kids who would normally go to Egypt or Jordan to study Arabic but can't because of the problems there. We have really enjoyed these kids and been very impressed with them.




Lessons and Carols. Gerald rebelled against the jelaba (Moroccan sack) option, and ended up having to wear a scarf instead! You should have seen the look on his face! The girls sang with us this time which was extra fun. Gerald was also part of a fabulous brass quartet which added so much.

School Christmas party in our home - on the left is Kendra's teacher. They are from England so Kendra is picking up a few phrases. It's funny because I grew up with British teachers too and haven't heard some of this stuff for years! Again, it was so nice & healthy to have a staff/teacher party - something the school has not seen for at least 5 years.

November

At one of our favorite spots - where 40 huge springs join together to start one of the bigger rivers in Morocco.

Happy birthday Gerald and Trinity!

My class - they are the best!




Thanksgiving picture at Ron's. Only a rural devolpment guy would happen to have bales of straw in his backyard to use in a straw house project!

Class field trip to discover our fascinating landscape around here - Karst formations with springs, caves, sinkholes, disappearing springs, etc. I love connecting science to the world around us and to the One who made it!

October

Before I start this update - I ask for prayers for my brother, Daniel, whose heart ablation Monday was much more complicated and painful than expected. He is recovering now, but little sister is still worried :(


Kendra and I were pretty proud of our drip castle!

Ms. Frizzle for Halloween - from the Magic School Bus series. She's a crazy teacher who takes her students on impossible field trips. They are warned what the next one will be by her outfit!

Socrates shares some wisdom

My friend, Deanne from my student teaching days in Brazil came to visit for a day as part of a cruise trip. It was fun to get together after all these years!

Beautiful Berber women. The middle one has a tatoo on her chin - a Berber symbol

Extreme Makeover - Ifrane Edition

What do you want when you’ve been away from home for a week? A home-cooked meal. A real shower. Your own, comfortable space.

When we arrived home last week some neighbor kids told us there had been a mess in our kitchen. I immediately figured the university had finally put in a new kitchen as was promised a long time ago to replace our moldy tiles and breaking cabinets. I ran into the apartment saying, “We have a new kitchen! We have a new kitchen! . . . We have NO kitchen!”

Yes, friends, this is the sight that met us. Our kitchen was GONE. Our dear friend, Asma, had moved all our kitchen things into the office/guestroom. The mattresses in the office had already been moved into the living room because we sold our furniture right before Christmas and there are problems with the replacements so we are sitting on the floor indefinitely for now. The guestroom bed frames were covered in dishes, pans, and the unbelievable amount of things we had stored in our kitchen. It reminded me of a raid the guys did to us in boarding school where they dumped all our possessions in the middle of the floor.

And my reaction was the same. I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Asma (who had come back to look for the cat who had wisely run away) asked me why on earth I was laughing. I told her we have an expression in English that says you can either laugh or cry. And I had chosen to laugh.

To top it all off, they were in the middle of painting the bathroom ceiling so paint chips were all over the bathroom floor and for some reason two of our sinks stopped working and were leaking all over the floor.

The next day I did six loads of laundry and hung them out to dry (thankfully the weather was nice), scrubbed and scrubbed all the floors Cinderella-style because they were so filthy, watched my kitchen get destroyed even more, had an allergic reaction to the paint, and broke the wash machine (on the last load), and tried to ignore the fact that none of the rooms in the house look normal.

Yesterday was much better. The sinks and washer got fixed, some kind neighbors lent us their camping stove, and we got dishwashing set up in the tub. My Mom has made many wonderful meals in far worse circumstances, so why can’t I?

The kitchen should be finished by Tuesday. Inshallah (God willing).

It’s like Extreme Home Makeover gone wrong. Terribly wrong. It’s like the family came back too early. As Ron says, “Move that bus! No wait, move it back! Move it back!”