Home....and Home Again

There are not many of us that can call more than one place “home,” yet I feel that I am able to count myself one of the lucky ones in this respect. Last week, I made a trip home-yet it was to a place I have never called home: the eastern US. I have to confess that as I exited the Royal Air Maroc flight at JFK, it didn't really feel much like home. Although I could understand pretty much everything that was being said, I have become used to a sort of polite greeting custom in Morocco that just doesn't exist in the States. I looked rather questioningly at the passport checker-surely he would ask me what I was doing in the States, why I left to live in Morocco, which one I liked better, if I lived with my family and what my marital status was-but no, he barely looked at me and waved me through. I clung to the Moroccans around me, preferring to ask them to borrow a cell phone, knowing it would be given with a smile, rather than ask any of the Americans crowding around the baggage claim...I figured I'd probably just get a weird look and lame excuse. That was probably an overly harsh judgment of the Americans, but I just didn't really know what to expect from them...I just felt more comfortable with and knew what to expect from the Moroccans (who did, by the way, ask me all of those questions I was expecting from the passport guy).

After sitting on a bus for three hours in NYC (at 5 on a Saturday afternoon?) traffic and asking many strangers how to find the way to Penn Station (really, who thought it was a good idea to put a train station under a stadium...talk about confusing any person not from New York), I found myself at the ticket line. I thought maybe I would just go talk to someone to buy a ticket, but realized there were electronic ticket machines right in front of me. I put my card in, bought the ticket for the next train to Philly and, amazingly enough, out came a ticket with my name and everything...I didn't even have to type it in. I was very impressed. The train itself was even better. There was WiFi and an outlet for every seat....I even updated my Facebook from the train. It was at that moment that I really began to enjoy myself. Although it had been more than a year since I had stepped foot on American soil, I could still navigate my way pretty well and nothing had changed so drastically that I didn't recognize it. It was pretty easy to just fall back into things, to remember how things were and to expect things to be a certain way. I was home!

My first stop was Philadelphia for a Mother's Day/graduation celebration with my mother, aunts, grandmother, cousins, uncles and friends. There's nothing to make a place feel more like home than a gathering of family. So it wasn't really home, but they certainly had good food. Whoever thought of serving a plate of many bite-sized desserts to each person deserves a prize. After the party, I had a few days of hanging out. It was great-I got to lounge and flip threw TV channels. Somehow, even after being gone for a year, I still have seen every Law and Order that they rerun on TNT. I rediscovered the existence of bagels (perhaps forgotten after my own disastrous attempt at making them in my Moroccan oven) and hummus, of going out at night and looking at old family pictures.

My mom and I headed to Boston next for my sister's graduation, to be joined later by much of the rest of the family. Boston has not always been my favorite city, but I certainly got a lot out of it this time, including Thai, Indian and Mexican food (didn't quite measure up to SoCal Mexican, but that would be pretty hard to do). I managed to physically get on every “T” car that my sister did and enjoyed my fair share of tastings at Harpoon Brewery. Best of all, I got to hang out with my sister and her roommates at their super-zwin apartment (thanks ladies!). We got to have some girls' nights out with many (rather embarrassing) videos and pictures. My dad and I got to check out Bukowski's Tavern and my mom and sister were champions with helping me get all my shopping done (I need just a few...ok, more than a few things to keep me going in my last year in Morocco). So as much as staying in a hotel on an extended vacation can feel like home, Boston did.

Before my trip back to the States, I had told my sister that I wanted to visit a Moroccan restaurant. In my mind, I would walk into this restaurant, start speaking Darija and the owners would clap and smile and give me tea and misimin (a delicious fried bread kind of like a tortilla). My first encounter with a Moroccan outside of the airport in the States was, to say the least, a little disappointing. I was getting my hair cut and my hair dresser informed me the the hair dresser next to us was Moroccan. After my haircut, I greeted him in Darija and told him my story. He answered in English, and while he was nice and told me that I was doing good work, it wasn't really what I was expecting and hoping for. As I walked into the hotel later, I heard one of the doorman speaking Arabic. I only caught a little bit, but I actually thought it was Arabic from a different country because it sounded kind of strange. However, later on, I greeted the man in Arabic and he stared at me. “How did you know I was Moroccan,” he asked me in Arabic. I laughed since I hadn't actually known but continued the conversation. He was amazed...well, maybe baffled is a better word. He stopped me and asked in English if I was Moroccan (he added that I looked like I was....score). I told him I wasn't but that I was living and working there. As we talked, he brought over another doorman who was also Moroccan and was from and area near my site. They were both so happy to be able to speak to me, some random American woman, in Arabic. And I was happy to bring a little bit of home to these men who were so far from their own.

Sadly, my trip came to an end, as all good things do. I flew from Boston back to JFK. Although my bag was 11 lbs. overweight, the woman at the JetBlue counter told me to keep up the good work and that she wouldn't charge me for it (this Peace Corps thing is starting to pay off). I learned that you can check into international flights 4 hours before the flight leaves. I was there with 6 hours before the flight so killed some time catching up on my shows and drinking my last corn-syrup coke for a year. Once the counter opened, I checked in. Not surprisingly, the Royal Air Maroc people didn't say a thing about my overweight bag...many of their customers are from countries where rules and regulations don't matter in the same way that they do in the States so I guess they figure they'll pick their battles (aka the 100 lbs bag, not the 60 lbs. Bag). I enjoyed my last hours in America eating pizza and drinking blue moon while watching CNN. The boarding of the plane ended up being chaos. I thought since we were still Stateside that there would be lines and orderly boarding. Not so. 

 Even this passenger:   (yes she was on my flight and I was super excited)

had to wait in the crowd around the gate. After a long and loud (somehow, it is possible for babies to cry for 5 hours non-stop) flight, we finally landed. I chose the passport line with 7 people that took longer than the line with 15 (welcome back me). I did finally manage to make it through, retrieve my bag and get on the train. I was on a bus back to my site by 9am (pretty much the only benefit to a flight landed at 6:30 am) and arrived home by mid-afternoon. I hadn't had much sleep or much food and my house was covered in dust. But it felt wonderful to be home.