Moving to Morocco – A Hometown Guide
My husband and I moved to Morocco three years ago where he now manages a large fruit farm, and we live in a village roughly an hour’s drive south of Agadir. The region is steeped in Berber culture and history and its people are fiercely proud of their roots. Moroccan Berbers were the first known inhabitants of the country and their numbers are still fairly significant today, with those claiming Berber identity making up 40% of the current population,... Read More
Surviving without Driving
I’ve had a car with me throughout my life, in high school, through college, down to my first apartment in Washington, DC, and certainly to my new place in North Carolina (where life was simply not survivable without one). Yet now that I’m settling here in Chicago (where gas prices are very quickly nearing $5 USD per gallon, may I add) it’s time to realize that I simply don’t need a vehicle. I gave my beloved Toyota Camry away... Read More
A Tale Of English Charm, Donkeys and Breast Enlarging Cream
When my husband accepted a job as the manager of a large fruit farm in rural Morocco, we moved there with no preconceptions of what our life would be like, and not because we chose not to think about it, but because we really didn’t have a clue what to expect. We certainly weren’t under any illusions as to just how different our lives would be, though, and we were both prepared to make significant changes not only to our daily routines,... Read More
Boxes, Baggage, and New Beginnings
Life comes full circle after your heart breaks. In May, I proudly packed up all my remaining belongings at my parents’ house and shipped them to the east coast, only to come back for the holidays to find those same boxes now once again in my childhood bedroom. I forgot why they were there. Oh, that’s right, I got my heart broken and was living on a boat at the time, so of course they got sent back to my folks’. But I take it as a good... Read More
Chicago…That’s My (New) Hometown!
Chicago is a big city. Maybe not as big as New York or Beijing, but it’s still a good size. As a new resident to a lot of places in the past few years, I’ve done this dance a few times– making friends, looking for a job, getting situated. Now that I’ve officially been here for three months, I’m not a sparkling clean newbie anymore. I’m actually meeting people who have arrived here more recently than I have. And,... Read More
Reflections on Home
Home is a funny thing. For the first 18 years of my life, home was the one bedroom apartment I shared with my mother, father, and sister in Manhattan. And that was it. I never went to summer camp, and my parents didn’t have a “country house” like some of the other families. We didn’t spend vacations with a grandparent or rent a cottage somewhere every August. In those 18 years, we never moved. My parents have lived in the same apartment for... Read More
Chicago: The City That Smells of Chocolate
We’re on the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s river tour looking at the Willis Tower (which will always be the Sears Tower to me, by the way). And suddenly, the smell is as strong as if I had just walked into Hershey Park: not river pollution, not air smog, but chocolate. I look around. Maybe there’s a Ghirardelli shop nearby. Maybe there’s a chocolate factory that we’re passing. Maybe it’s obvious. But there... Read More
Goodbye, North Carolina
A view outside from our bedroom. Paradise. I’m resting in my bedroom at night. It’s cool out and there is a light breeze, the benefit of living on the ocean. You can see the lights lining the dock outside. Tonight there is no one there, and the water is still. I try to sleep but can’t. As I have grown older I’ve become unable to find comfort on a hard floor. Despite my already-present nostalgia for the bedroom I painted and... Read More
When There’s No Time to Write
Editor’s note: Life has changed (again) for Beth since writing this. Here are some of her notes, as written back in June: This is the Go Girl crux: We tell you that a Go Girl is someone who jumps on the back of a mule at the market, who rides a motorcycle taxi to her destination instead of the tour bus. We tell you that a Go Girl is a woman on the run – always moving, always adventuring, always seeking. She takes the world by storm and leaves... Read More
Yellow Fever
T-Minus four days until Peru. And what an insanely busy two months it was leading up to this trip. I can barely contain my excitement at the thought of this grand adventure, especially with the culmination of the 8-week ruckus– a move. With the help of four fantastic boys, my apartment was cleared of all of my belongings and transferred into my boyfriend’s place. I scrubbed my old apartment to sparkling clean and left the keys on... Read More
