hey, we haven't eaten for 20 minutes! let's get gelato (subtitled: three americans go to morocco and never stop eating)

there were hamams, couscous, tajine. henna, mosques, kind children doubling as tour guides. street performers, world heritage sites and museums. fresh-squeezed orange juice, camels and sea-breezes. but, mainly, there was food and the card game grass. and it was glorious in it's splendor.

t-minus one month til re-entry

two nights ago i went out to dinner to celebrate my 5 month anniversary of being on the road. the ethnic food of the moment in budapest is apparently indian, so i obliged. two hours later, in the fetal position in my bed, i reveled in india. it tastes good going down, oh so good. but just wait.

now i am sitting on the floor of a packed coffee house. yesterday i found out i got into depaul. the thought of it still makes me feel a bit giddy inside. sometimes in the past 5 months i've woken up in the morning with an unnerving feeling of panic. one worry broke the dam and opened the floodgate to let each insecurity and inevitability in. but now the knowledge that i will be a student, a role i actually know how to inhabit, gives me some footing in the present. funny how the future can do that.

now i return to the also-comfortable habit of procrastinating the single thing on my to do list. today, in a sea of people getting on the metro, i heard a girl speaking english. i froze and almost ran into someone. i wanted to eavesdrop, listen, overhear. it was so foreign, this intimate connection forged with a stranger. the free entertainment of eavesdropping. what's going to happen to me when i get home? when i would rather shut it out for the romantic cacophony of exoticism? when i'll long to return to the world of courtney amidst thousands or millions of others. where i am a child, dependent on kind strangers, void of responsibility, floating.

perhaps the most interesting aspect of returning home after spending the majority of the past 3 years away will be finding the fittingness. that's always the question, i guess. you know when you bought a fish for a tank? you never put it directly into the tank. you left it in the little plastic sack, submerged it in the tank and then opened the sack and let it out after like 20 minutes. that's how the fish finds the fit. but how the hell do we do it? in a way i thought traveling for 6 months would do it. to an extent, it has. however, it's also created a world where i am even more firmly an outsider to everything. i've thought about loneliness, and i think what it really is is when no one can fully understand your experiences. in a way, that's fine. as long as i don't expect anyone to. maybe that's the biggest thing i've gained. comfort with solitude.

time in my sack, looking at the other side, has made me wonder what i will be like when i emerge. will i keep the new habits or will i return to u.s. laziness where i would go days without walking further than to the car (that's mainly in the winter, but still)? somehow, it's all more exciting than frightening. it's like a conscious fresh start. but, for now, i am going to revel in my last moments in the plastic. looking in.

blizzard in belgrade, thanksgiving in sarajevo

hi,i'mcourtneyitaughtataninternationalschoolinindiafortwoyears.yeah,i'mtravelingforsixmonthsonmywaybacktotheunitedstates wherehaveibeenwell,ididsomehikinginthemountainsinasia,thenontobhutan,morehikinginnepal,tibet,ghana,andnowturkeywhereamigoingnextwell,afterserbia,ontobosnia,morocco,spain.yeah,it'sbeengreatexcitinglifeenrichingblahblahblahblah.lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala. it's just filler. over the past months i've had this conversation countless times. it's the conversation that establishes the basis for any real communication. and the monotony of the conversation i could recite without thought single-handedly fostered some introversion in my generally extroverted demeanor. during each introductory conversation, i held in the back of my mind the rememberance that there are people in this world who know me and don't need the 5 minute speil. for that reason, arriving in mussoorie, ghana and serbia have all been like coming home.
waking up in the morning with ethan singing songs, jamie and i cutting veggies and fruit for breakfast and drinking coffee brings me back almost 2 years to the days of yore at mt. hermon. we picked up like cogs in a well-oiled machine, talking politics, literature and other dorky topics while we are pizza on a river barge the first night. last saturday we awoke to a blizzard that didn't abate until monday, cancelling belgrade international school and fostering snow hikes, sledding, "ghetto" skiing (on beer crate handles), snowman building and kuvino vino (hot, spiced wine) consumption. on monday night we staged a belgrade thanksgiving blowout, complete with a christmas tree, homeade pumpkin pie, rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and the charlie brown christmas.


after ethan and i patroned "grill uno" and consumed the "inevitable" gigantic beef patty, we took a snoring, freezing, boiling overnight bus to sarajevo on thanksgiving. sarajevo and belgrade are both cities i could not get my head around until visiting them. the site of the assassination of archduke franz ferdinand by a serb in sarajevo, resulting in world war i. the sites of two of the most recent confirmations of ethnic cleansing. and the dying battles of yugoslavia/ "a greater serbia" involving serbs, bosnians, croats, muslims, catholics and orthodox christians. countries where people my age lived through a war whose mark is still made clear in the bombed-out skeletons and bullet-pocked exteriors of buildings.

during a tour of sarajevo we heard tales of the almost-four-year seige of sarajevo from our twenty-three year old tour guide- men who left the city to fight against the bosnians returning post-war, sniper alley, civilians darting across streets to avoid fire, underground tunnels burrowing to the airport to move supplies, 5 euros for a single egg, a grenade exploding on her pregnant mother in her backyard (but who was only slightly injured), the two million books burnt in the bosnian national library, whole cemetaries dedicated to the 1992 and 1993 deaths of muslims in mostar, bosnia. but, despite everything, as seems to be the consistent case, the people remain kind, helpful and friendly in the face of the worst possible scenarios. men play chess with gigantic pieces in a sarajevo square. a rowdy cigarette-smoking crowd forms around the two players, yelling advice at every turn. others greet us and chat in whatever english they grasp.


somehow the sadness of the war in the 90s is heightened by the fact that sarajevo was home to the olympics in 1984. jamie, ethan and i spent a day skiing at jahorina, the site of olympic skiing events.
the mountains and countryside in bosnia are incredible. and of course, the skiing is outstanding. driving to mostar from jahorina we happened upon the shell of a building on the hill. against the warnings of the lonely planet (which we only read later) we walked through the crumbling structure. we found geometry and physics equations in the walls and graffitti of jesus on the cross on others. houses like these were typically used to denote the bosnian serb enemy lines and inhabited by snipers who fired at sarajevo below. as i left the building on the dilapatated stairway, i happened upon this little tree, rising out of the rubble. take from it what is to be taken. hopefully that's hope.










oh! also, thanks to jamie and ethan for a fab time in the east side (of europe, that is). you two are the craziest cats i know. i only aspire to your greatness.

turkish d-lite, as easy as abc

ataturk, the founder of the modern turkish republic, whose photo is hanging out apartment windows, adorning street lamps and boats all over the country

baklava (almost worth being obese for) and backgammon

cay (tea) served in dainty little glasses

doner kebabs at every turn and driving a scooter around the moon-esque landscape of cappadocia

eating home-cooked-by-mama 5 course meals in hostels and samples of everything in the egyptian bazaar

flames that inexplicably rise out of the rocks at olimpos and fishermen on the galata bridge in istanbul

gentle and wonderful turkish women, when i could find them (mobility isn’t exactly fundamental here)
hiking along the aegean sea

istanbul. one city two continents and a lot of awesome food, museums, byzantine art, churches, history, architecture, istiklal caddesi (a pedestrian street with a trolley that runs its length) and culture

just the most intense patriotism ever

kilims—traditional turkish rugs

lots of stray cats instead of the requisite stray dogs of the developing world. somehow it gives the world an air of mystery rather than an air of well, dog shit

mountains that rise out of the sea

norda, the brawny turkish woman who scrubbed my naked body clean as i lay on the smooth marble of a hamam (bath house)

old men drinking cay, gossipping and playing backgammon all day

produce like i’ve never seen. olives, oranges, apples, tangerines, melon, grapes, cherries, cheese, everything! that tastes like the freshness incarnate. oh, and food in general. obviously


quaint cities neighborhoods villages hostels

republic day fireworks over the bosphorous

starbucks (sorry). swimming in the mediterranean isn’t half bad, either. nor is sleeping in a treehouse

the call to prayer echoing all over town and turkish coffee, both of which really grow on you

unnervingly awesome and other-worldly cappadocian landscape


very lovely turkish porchsitting women who invited me for turkish coffee
wine tasting in a greek village. who knew melon and pomegranate wine were so freakin’ delicious

xylophone is like the only word that begins with an x. and i haven't seen a xylophone since africa

you whoever you are who dropped everything to give me directions or walk me to my destination

ze nargileh (waterpipe/ hookah)