Morocco Pictures

And here's the slideshow of Morocco.

(Pretty much I am too lazy to type out what happened. Maybe one day I will. But for now, just click the picture to see a description of it. As always, comments welcomed.)

Chamonix Pictures

I promised an update on Chamonix, but never gave one. So here's a slideshow! Enjoy.

Life in General

Being back home hasn't been the extreme reverse culture shock I was so afraid of. In fact, it's actually felt quite comfortable like no time has passed at all. If you know me at all, you know I like lists. So I created some more since I have nothing to do in Moraga.

Some things I still can NOT get used to:
1. The dinner bill coming right after you finish eating. Less of a hassel because you're in a hurry? Yes, but I miss being able to sit forever in the restaurant and not be bothered by a bill.
2. Cars that drive slow in the fast lanes! It bothered me before, but after driving in Italy and France, where you get ticketed if you're cruising in the fast lane, it's really annoying. And it's not just a personal bias, it's practical as well. I made the mistake of cruising in the fast lane (while trying to readopt American driving customs) and I didn't see the car behind me approach somewhat rapidly. He then proceeded to cut across two lanes to the right to pass a car, then speed up to cut back across to the left barely dodging a truck. All of this could have been avoided if I had just moved over to the right, and, if the driver behind me had a little patience of course. It's all about driving safer.
3. NOT Jay walking. It's so efficient. I don't understand why people don't do it as much.
4. Driving EVERYWHERE.
5. Where's the french bread before every meal? And my daily baguette?! AHH!

Some things that are absolutely amazing here:
1. Being able to buy anything on a Sunday.
2. Safeway.
3. No more digicodes, and normal doorknobs!
4. Toilets that flush completely!

And something that we can improve on:
1. Roundabouts! Like the ones in Davis. This eliminated stop signs and everyone gets to go where they want to faster!

Just when you thought life couldn't get any worse

I'd like to recount a story a guy named Philip, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Hotel Ali in Marrakech, once told me. It is a short one, so hopefully I will retain the shortest of attention spans. This story takes place in a town in the country of Libya. Philip was there doing Red Cross work at a tiny camp away from the city. The usual composed the camp, tents, lanterns, old picnic tables, and the latrines. We now come to the main location of this fabulous story, the latrine. The latrine was a little wooden shack with a rickety door and a rickety door lock. The place smelt of, well, you know what it smelt like, and was perched toward the outside of camp. It was built atop a large cement container, which houses, well, you know what it houses. Now one would think that it would need to be emptied every so often, or buried and a new cement container be built. But in this case, neither was necessary. How you might wonder? The answer is one word, maggots. Layers of maggots live in the cement containers eating away all the shit, so no burying or emptying is needed.

One day, a silly chicken, still a mystery as to how, wandered into the latrine and fell into the cement container. It's cries of horror lasted for 2 days straight, as it made new friends with slimy jr., slimy jr.'s brother, sister, family, and his other 1000 cousins. It also cried while it got showered on by poo. Sadly, there was nothing that could be done, except wait until the inevitable happened.

The moral of the story is, even when you think life is rough, JUST THINK OF THE CHICKEN!

Jon

Morocco is the place to be

I found internet1 Too bad I cant find the exclamation point or apostrophe.

Its Ramadan right now and EVERYTHING is closed so I decided to find an internet cafe and jot a few things down and say hello to everyone. Morocco is such an amazing place. There is so much here that I never imagined I would discover. Les gens sont très gentils1 They welcome me, but just as much as they do stare, but overall its a great experience.

If I had a penny for everytime I was called Konnichiwa1 or KOREA1 or NIPPON1 I would be a millionaire. Ive tried to enlighten these folks that Im not from Chine, and Im from America, but then again Im not too sure if I should say that. Then I say Im from Chine, and I dont know how to say anything. So Ive found what works best is to have a sense of humor and laugh, or say something to them in English like Hey buddy hows it going, hows those carpets selling? and then that usually shuts them up with a face full of confusion.

Last night I slept on the Terrace looking out on the main square, Djemaa El Fna. It was quite noisy, and I was awakened by prayer shouts every two hours throughout the night. I woke up this morning to an amazing sunrise behind the High Atlas mountains.

I must say its been quite a trip so far and cant wait to get home just to let it all soak in. I am in a totally different world and cant decipher what is going on around me yet. What I just wrote is just the tip of the iceberg. So much more is happening but it just wont come out right if I write it in a blog. You really have to come and experience Africa for yourself. Trust me, you wont regret it.

More to come on this trip, and pictures of Chamonix once I get back home.

Love, Jon

Chamonix

I bet you are thinking, my blog looks all weird. If you're wondering why, it's because I'm changing templates, and the new template has preset images that I have to change the size of to make it look nice, but I'm too lazy and tired to do any of that right now, and that's why my blog looks all weird.

Onto other news, Chamonix was amazing. The hikes and scenery were quite uncomparable to most everything I've ever seen in my life. I ended up taking about 420 pictures, 100 of them were repeats of scenery that I had shot 100 feet below, left or to the right of me. It took me a long time to sort through them, and hopefully you'll like them as much as I do. I'm off to Morocco for the next weekish, and after that will be back in the states.

See you back in the U-SofA.

Cheers,
Jon

I cut my hair.

It was long. And if you want to know how long, it was long enough to touch go to the end of my chin. Now, it's short. Again. Like in before I left in May. Now I feel like I'm not in Paris anymore :(

J'ai faim
On another note, I can't stop eating. I'm craving nutella almost to the point where I begin to salivate. I eat whenever I can. I eat whenever I see somebody selling food. Last week I ate 3 dinners (one at Jon's house, and 2 plats at the restaurant), a bottle of wine and 2 beers, but I couldn't finish my 2nd beer because I was too full and seriously, could, not, move.

Subtle differences 3

1- Kids can say "merde" and "plutant" in their elementary school classes.

2- Banks. It takes a day to open your bank account but a week to get an ATM card. Then another damn week to get your Visa Cleo, a credit card. Then when you want to close your account they hassel you and make you go to different places in Paris just to get your damn money.

3- Graph paper. There is no single ruled paper in all of France. Everything is graph paper, which is great for any type of design, engineering, architecture kid, but seriously, it just doesnt look right when writing a serious letter on silly graph paper now does it?