Blogcember: Morocco
Dec. 6th, 2013 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI'm going out of order here, because the next Blogcember prompt was about pizza preferences (which I do want to write about!), and it felt a bit weird to have a serious post about Nelson Mandela that's getting linked to all over the place, followed by a post about pizza.
Anyway,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maeve66 asked: "What you're going to do in Morocco! Also, what is a VLPA or some gathering of similar initials?"
So! The background to this is that I've wanted to go to Morocco since I was a little kid. This is as a result of knowing someone who went and came back with photos of the architecture, and also reading way too much William S. Burroughs at far too early an age. MY CHILDHOOD TRAVEL DREAM AND I'M DOING IT, you guys.
I'm going on a tour, because that's the only reasonable way to see all the places I want to see in a short period of time and my command of French leaves much to be desired. (My command of Arabic is non-existent.) I'll be in North Morocco: Casablanca, Rabat, Fez, Chefchaouen, and Marrakech. What I'm doing? Seeing stuff. As much stuff as possible. Particularly architecture.
VLAP is the thing that makes the whole thing possible. See, when you're a teacher, you get crazy amounts of vacation (and need it). But it's only at Christmas Break (when it's expensive to fly and most people have some sort of obligation), March Break (a week long), and summer. You can't take vacation any other time. I'm not complaining, and I'm totally willing to pay more because the perks of my job are awesome, but the thing with Morocco is that the temperatures average around 90-100°F in summer. I am actually willing to endure that for the sake of my childhood dream, but the friend I'm going with is much more sensible than I am.
Now! Rewind back to the shitty contract we got enforced on us last year. As shitty as it was, like most neoliberal economic ideas, it was short-sighted and actually didn't save anyone that much money. (When we had 20 bankable sick days a year, the average teacher took 7—and I took way less than that until I got Maggie. Now we get 11 non-bankable sick days, and there is zero motivation to not take all 11, since we lose them otherwise. A supply teacher costs $250 a day. Your homework, boys, girls, and genderqueers, is to do the math.)
In another effort to save money, the Board started offering a Voluntary Leave of Absence Program (VLAP), where you can take up to five days of unpaid leave. That amounts to a substantial pay cut, but I saw that and went, "fuck it, I can attach it to my March Break and go to Morocco! Hells yeah!"
And that's what I'm doing. Because childhood dream.
Anyway,
maeve66 asked: "What you're going to do in Morocco! Also, what is a VLPA or some gathering of similar initials?"So! The background to this is that I've wanted to go to Morocco since I was a little kid. This is as a result of knowing someone who went and came back with photos of the architecture, and also reading way too much William S. Burroughs at far too early an age. MY CHILDHOOD TRAVEL DREAM AND I'M DOING IT, you guys.
I'm going on a tour, because that's the only reasonable way to see all the places I want to see in a short period of time and my command of French leaves much to be desired. (My command of Arabic is non-existent.) I'll be in North Morocco: Casablanca, Rabat, Fez, Chefchaouen, and Marrakech. What I'm doing? Seeing stuff. As much stuff as possible. Particularly architecture.
VLAP is the thing that makes the whole thing possible. See, when you're a teacher, you get crazy amounts of vacation (and need it). But it's only at Christmas Break (when it's expensive to fly and most people have some sort of obligation), March Break (a week long), and summer. You can't take vacation any other time. I'm not complaining, and I'm totally willing to pay more because the perks of my job are awesome, but the thing with Morocco is that the temperatures average around 90-100°F in summer. I am actually willing to endure that for the sake of my childhood dream, but the friend I'm going with is much more sensible than I am.
Now! Rewind back to the shitty contract we got enforced on us last year. As shitty as it was, like most neoliberal economic ideas, it was short-sighted and actually didn't save anyone that much money. (When we had 20 bankable sick days a year, the average teacher took 7—and I took way less than that until I got Maggie. Now we get 11 non-bankable sick days, and there is zero motivation to not take all 11, since we lose them otherwise. A supply teacher costs $250 a day. Your homework, boys, girls, and genderqueers, is to do the math.)
In another effort to save money, the Board started offering a Voluntary Leave of Absence Program (VLAP), where you can take up to five days of unpaid leave. That amounts to a substantial pay cut, but I saw that and went, "fuck it, I can attach it to my March Break and go to Morocco! Hells yeah!"
And that's what I'm doing. Because childhood dream.
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Date: 2013-12-07 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-12-07 01:17 am (UTC)How much more Orientalizing can I get?
Still - squeeee :D
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Date: 2013-12-07 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-07 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-07 02:39 pm (UTC)Egypt is on my list for places I want to go, though possibly I'm inclined to go for different reasons now, given the political climate there, than before.
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Date: 2013-12-07 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-12-11 04:09 pm (UTC)My Mum was British and had (and has) relatives and friends over there, and used to go back every so often for a visit. To get there (and back), she'd have to make a stop in Vancouver anyways, so when I lived in the Lower Mainland she'd stay overnight on the return trip and we'd have a bit of a visit.
One time she was on a trip back from a visit with old friends and school chums in England, and called me just as I was about to leave to meet her. "I hope you won't be too terribly disappointed," she said, knowing we had planned to spend an afternoon in the city together, "But I'm afraid I hurt my leg and can't really get around very well." She told me she'd hurt it in a fall (just a pulled muscle, luckily) and was having to use a cane to get around, and wasn't up for wandering all over as we usually did.
"No worries," said I, envisioning a stumble down some British steps and ensuing tensor bangades; "The visit is the main thing. We'll have a nice cup of tea and a chat." And I headed out to meet her at the hotel.
It ends up that my mother had not pulled a muscle in her leg while stumbling outside someone's door in England. It seems that, somehow, on this latest trip to England, she'd managed to fall off a mule. In Marrakesh.
"Well, I'd seen everyone I'd wanted to see," she said, so she and my "Auntie" Anna (actually my Mum's cousin and life-long friend) decided to hop over to Morocco. They shopped the market in Marrakesh (where she got me some very pretty silver earrings), and took a mule tour up a mountain. But they had to sit sideways on the mules, like in Joseph and Mary's trip to Bethlehem, rather than straddling them as a European would (the "saddles" wouldn't allow it) and the mule had stumbled over a loose stone ("Everyone always says they're so sure-footed," she'd said; "Well, they're not,"), and she'd fallen off, and pulled a muscle. A groin muscle, not her leg as she'd originally told me, as she clarified when I expressed some surprise at no bandages around her ankle.
So my Mum is the only person I know who pulled a groin muscle while falling off a mule in Marrakesh, during her trip to England. Heh.
Otherwise it was a fantastic trip, apparently, and she'd had a great time and loved every minute of it that didn't involve stumbling mules.
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Date: 2013-12-12 12:25 am (UTC)I will try not to get on any mules.
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Date: 2013-12-12 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-12 11:53 am (UTC)