Layli Maria Miron

Writer, Educator, Researcher

The tamarins of Tel Aviv

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Layli Maria Miron

Rhea!

Blue sky, warm sun. The burbling hum of hundreds of excited children, the pungent musk of animals.

This is the second zoo I’ve been to in Israel. The other is in Haifa. My clearest memory of it is the single honey badger pacing furiously in its small enclosure, swinging its head back and forth, all in an eternal oscillating search for an exit. Oh, and the hobo kittens living with the otters. Then there were the pop songs pumping over speakers, because apparently listening to the sounds of the animals would be much too boring for zoo patrons. Needless to say, I wasn’t overly impressed, and I left feeling guilty about all those trapped creatures.

The Tel Aviv zoo, Ramat Gan Safari, however, provided a far happier vista. It boasts the largest collection of animals in the Middle East, a Noah’s ark in the midst of an urban sea.

To enter the zoo, we first drove through an expansive park where herds of African savannah animals roam–zebras, antelopes, elands, wildebeest, scimitar horned oryx, hippos, and rhinos, among others, including the greedy ostriches that poked their bald heads toward the drivers’ windows of the passing cars. It was pretty neat to watch a whole herd of hippopotami nap standing up like boulders in the sun.

Sleeping in, hippo style

The most impressive scene was, of course, the lions, which played, stalking and ambushing each other, even leaping over one another, in an exhilarating game of big cat tag.

Within the zoo, the most striking exhibit was Israeli family life. The paths were flooded with children and their parents to the point that I was concerned about moving too fast for fear of accidentally trampling a toddler. Then there were the frequent stroller traffic jams. I felt a bit out of place without a child, or at least a stroller, in tow.

The kids…haha, pun!

Besides the impressive collection of homo sapiens cubs, there were the monkeys–so many primates! Tamarins, baboons, capuchins, orangutans, gorillas, lemurs, colobus, monkey A, monkey B, monkey see, monkey do… One orangutan sat still on the edge of his enclosure’s moat with a hand outstretched as if waiting for a long overdue gift. On the whole, they were better behaved than the children.

Hand it over…

It was an apt time for me to visit a zoo, having finally finished an excellent book my mom recommended to me years ago called The Zookeeper’s Wife. The prose in this vividly written history was so delicious, I wanted to slurp it up. The story, on the other hand, is one of sorrow and struggle, as it follows the true story of a zookeeping couple in Warsaw through World War II as they survive the destruction of their city at the hands of the Nazis and help to hide Jews on the grounds of their zoo. I shan’t say more, because you should really just read it yourself, but Diane Ackermann’s painstaking research introduced me to the complex politics of zoos. For instance, even this Ramat Gan Safari has some involvement in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. After a Palestinian zoo in the West Bank, Kalkilya Zoo, lost three of its zebras to violence, Safari gave it several animals in a gesture of peacemaking. Animals are not spared in war, but their return can, it seems, help to rejuvenate a nation.

A caravan of three

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Layli Maria Miron

Crusader “signatures” in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

It is 5:45 in the morning and Haifa is still darkly asleep. This is a time I rarely see–only during the Fast, really. But today, we are on our way to Jerusalem, a caravan of three travelers.

We take a bus and then another bus, and have a layover at the central station in Jerusalem, which is full of young soldiers, fresh-faced in their fatigues.

“DONUTS!” I haven’t seen donuts in six months and I’m pretty excited that this huge bus station sells them. (Now I know where to go when craving hits, and it’s a mere three hours of buses away!) Jasmine and I share a big one with sprinkles that stain my lips while Sergey drinks some coffee sludge. Finally we make our way to a tram that takes us near to one of the gates of the Old City.

I have a plan of attack. First the Church, then the Wall, then the Dome, then the Mount. En route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we pass by several Stations of the Cross, and pause to touch the spot believed to bear the handprint of Christ.

“I touched this before,” I comment, showing off my worldliness. “Yes, I’ve touched everything in Jerusalem.”

“No wonder you’re sick,” Sergey replies. Indeed, I wasn’t the classiest travel companion, what with my wad of tissues and plugged ears.

When we get to the Church, we go through the various sites—the anointing stone, Calvary, the Armenian chapel with the Crusader imprints on the walls, that subterranean chamber… I try to recount the fragments of history I remember. Something about Saint Helen and Constantine.

Next stop: the Western Wall. The female side proves less interesting than the male section, where a number of simultaneous bar mitzvahs are happening. Lots of Torah scrolls, boys in yarmulkes, and tossed candy give the place a jubilant spirit. We climb onto unwieldy plastic chairs that seem placed there for the express purpose of letting female visitors ogle the masculine goings-on. I’m pretty sure I ended up in at least one lad’s bar mitzvah video.

Bar mitzvah(s)

But the stop I’ve been eagerly awaiting is not the Church or the Wall—it is the Dome. If I learned anything from the documentary that eased Jasmine into dreamland, it is that the Temple Mount is super important historically. I hadn’t gotten to see the Dome of the Rock on my last visit because its hours are so limited, but this time, I was ready.

After a long wait in line, we walk up a sheltered bridge to the mount, where we find ourselves in a large open space with a long mosque to our right, the al-Aqsda. Like moths to a flame, we are drawn up some wide stairs to the Dome itself, resplendent with delicately painted greenish blue walls and its shining gold dome. Inside (off-limits to non-Muslims) is the rock from which it is believed Muhammad ascended to Heaven during His mystical night journey; apparently His footprint remains.

We wander around the huge plaza, which dates to the time of King David. The area is surprisingly casual—some young women in hijabs study in a circle on the ground, while boys kick around a soccer ball. Four young boys, munching on their lunch in an alcove of the wall, beg Jasmine to photograph them, then come to assess the result. “Facebook!” they demand happily.

Facebook! WordPress!

After lunch, we headed to the Mount of Olives to visit Gethsemane and the Church of All Nations…or the Agony, I’m not sure what its proper name is. It is quite a different experience from last time, when it was thronged and someone came over the loudspeaker repeatedly to instruct “Silence”; this time, I feel at peace sitting in a pew, looking at the nighttime garden scenes on the huge mosaics around the walls.

It is sunset by the time we entered the Valley of the Dead, which is between the Mount of Olives and the Old City. A funeral unfolds with Jewish men swaying in black robes; the muezzin pipes a call to prayer.

Eventually, exhausted, we got on the bus back home and realized with sighs of relief that the most comfortable seats had been reserved for us: the floor. Yes, apparently it’s a-ok in Israel to allow people to stand for two hours on the highway. After about 15 minutes of swaying over an IDF soldier and watching another passenger giggle at cat videos, I succumb to gravity and wedge myself and my backpack down into the narrow aisle, with my cohort following suit. Soon, at my offer, two sleepy heads loll against me. In a weird way, it was cozy, the three of us snugly squeezed onto the floor with views of people’s shoes, the lights through the windshield, and the diminishing kilometers to Haifa.

Guess who’s back?

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Layli Maria Miron

Thus I return shamefacedly to the blogosphere after a truly prolonged one-month absence. It has been far too long, my friends. I know you’ve all been biting your nails to the quick, desperate for news of my life. Has she been wandering in the desert of Israel? Dallying with her hordes of suitors? Or working in an office by day and doing more Bahá’í activities by night?

Ok, all three have been a little true, but mostly the latter. But I did have a very important break from my routine: Jazzy came!

That’s right, and I’m just now recovering. As of a few days ago, no longer does putting on my jacket chafe my elbow wound excruciatingly. No longer am I partially deaf. Just kidding, Jasmine, it was precious to be with you and suffer multiple physical privations together, one of them the cold that you brought for me (imported from the good ole U.S. of A.!).

The elbow–ah, yes. When I knew that Jasmine was coming, several months ago, I started planning our itinerary. She would volunteer while I was in the office, and then when out of the office, we would go to the Bahá’í Shrines and then explore Haifa and Israel with my boundless energy. Seriously, this was the most amazing, compulsive itinerary, with a full spectrum of color codings.

Jasmine gets a taste of Israel

One of my goals was to have Jasmine visit the Dead Sea. It was such a strange, otherworldly experience for me to float upon the water and look across the sea to the mountains of Jordan. So Jasmine would float there too. Thing is, it’s rather far from Haifa–three hours one-way–and I’m too dangerous a driver to rent a car here. So I organized a ten-person sherut trip.

I had been the concerned about the temperature. I mean, “beach in January” sounds rather unappealing, unless you’re a penguin. But thankfully, the temperature was as cooperative as possible. The real problem was the wind, which stirred up waves–not whitecaps or anything, but still, steadily rolling, hyper-saline waves.

As we walked down to the beach, we passed two other members of our group.

“How was it?” I asked.

“I would not recommend going in,” one replied. “I got water in my eye.”

After that ringing endorsement, we went in. I think we managed to get at least a few moments of calm floating in, although the waves made me nervous. Jasmine glommed onto me and we floated side-by-side like a human raft.

We were actually moving quickly away from our point of departure, pushed by the waves. “Let’s try and get back to the shore,” we decided. So we “swam” Dead Sea style, doing a slow, splash-less backstroke.

Five minutes later, my friend Reggie, who was accompanying us, said, “Hey, remember when we said ‘let’s get back to the shore?’ We’re actually farther out now…”

And now I was tired. Thankfully he offered us a lift back, grabbed my leg, and pulled me (with Jasmine in tow) back to the shallows, where I managed to get water in my mouth and eye. We at last hefted ourselves out.

My other friend joined us onshore. “You’re bleeding,” he pointed out.

“Oh, interesting,” I said. There was a scratch on my back, scrapes on my elbow, and little scratches on my forearms from a run-in with a salty rock formation. And poor Jasmine’s feet were wounded, which was not helped by the extremely painful barefoot journey across the sharp stones of the shore back to our things. I clenched my teeth and pretended I was one of those silly people who test their resolve by walking across hot coals. Actually, hot coals might have been preferable.

Eventually, two freezing public showers later, we got back in the sherut. I examined my wounds. “Souvenirs,” I concluded.

“Well, I’m glad I got to see the Dead Sea,” Jasmine said, “because now I know I don’t need to go back there.”

I smiled, dabbing some dried salt off her cheek. That’s my girl.

Jerusalem

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Layli Maria Miron

Cat near the Western Wall

Jerusalem. A city precious to the three major Abrahamic religions, and still a magnet for flocks of pilgrims and the occasional sherut-load of Bahá’í tourists.

Once again, I am straining to understand the explanations of Abboud, the sherut company owner/tour guide extraordinaire who is shuttling us around like a flock of ducklings. We are approaching Jerusalem on a highway that apparently featured in the Six-Day War in 1967. Several hollowed-out army trucks stand in the median strip as a memorial to those lost in the fighting.

The newer parts of Jerusalem look much like any other larger Israeli city, with sandy-colored buildings and wending roads. We stop to visit All Nations Church by the garden of Gethsemane. From here, on the Mount of Olives, we have a clear view of the walls around the Old City, the golden bulb of the Dome of the Rock peeking above, and the Valley of the Dead below. Abboud tells us that according to some tradition, the people buried in this valley will be resurrected half an hour early come Judgment Day, so spots go for $150,000 a pop. “I ask, ‘What can you do in that 30 minutes that you couldn’t do all your life?'” he quips. In Islam it is believed that on Judgment Day a bridge as thin as a hair will stretch between the Mount of Olives and the Dome of the Rock, and everyone will walk across. The unrighteous will fall to their deaths in the valley below. I’m probably too much of a literalist, but does this valley really look like it could fit all the unrighteous?

Valley of the Dead

We get into the Old City through a thriving marketplace in the Muslim quarter. Here is what I mean by thriving. At first, it is merely bustling, a mixture of tourists and residents going about their shopping, vendors hawking their wares in loud Arabic. But then we take a turn and the crowd grows thicker, until we are squeezed shoulder to shoulder, barely moving. I hang on to the person in front of me, wishing that we had one of those ropes preschoolers hold on to to when they walk outside to keep everyone together. This recalls riding the Metro at rush hour in Santiago, when there was always a distinct possibility that, unable to push through the packed bodies to the door quickly enough, I would miss my stop. Now barely moving turns to unmoving. Eventually the culprit behind the traffic jam appears, a young man pulling a cart loaded with what seems to be about ten giant boxes, three times his width, shouting hoarsely for people to get out of his way.

We saw the Dome of the Rock from a distance, because it is not open to non-Muslims. But we were able to see the holiest places for Jews and Christians, the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, respectively.

To get to the heart of the Holy Sepulcher, we wove our way through a maze-like succession of chapels. Various sects have a (tense) agreement to share different bits of the church. After we had touched the spot believed to be where the Cross stood and gone down to the underground chamber where St. Helena discovered the buried Cross, we went upstairs to a different chamber with a short passageway, where Abboud invited us to look at some tombs. The first clump of our group clambered into the small space. I stayed outside and watched a priest we had encountered energetically waving his censer near the Armenian section reappear. Apparently this was also part of his scenting territory. He approached the little tomb grotto and nearly yelled at our group, “EXCUSE ME! What are you looking at?” Then he swung his censer around in front of the cavern, as if trying to smoke out some unwelcome moles. Soon he swept out of the room, leaving us baffled and smoky.

Guess he was incensed about something…

Now my turn came to go into the passage. This was the second time I whacked my head on a low overhang, so to be honest I couldn’t really gather what Abboud was saying, other than that there were four tombs around us, carved into the stone. Two were open and empty; two were closed. “Wait, so does that mean someone’s in there?” someone asked. “Yes,” he said, causing her to whimper. “Don’t worry, they don’t bite!” he said. I wonder what zombies from the years BC would be like…

In the end, it’s as much about the little things as the super famous sites. For instance, at lunch we were brought falafel fixings. Among the various dips was fool, a bland dip of mushy cold fava beans, which I would not recommend. “What is this?” someone asked. The server, a young teenage boy, responded monosyllabically, “Fool!” The inquirer heard “Food!” and burst into laughter. But even if he had heard right (fool!) it would still have been hilarious for us poor fools.

Skipping town: Galilee

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Layli Maria Miron

The past month, my mild case of wanderlust has also pulled me out of Haifa. First there was the Dead Sea. Next there was Carmel Forest, where I observed picnicking Persianly: kebabs, backgammon, and tea. (My take on picnicking requires Bananagrams.) And next came Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee, where the disciples of Jesus fished.

Galilee is a region with many sites associated with the life of Christ, many of them in the form of ruins encapsulated in grand churches like the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, which holds the house of Mary. Across the way from the Basilica is St. Joseph’s church, which holds the remains of his carpentry workshop. There we observed an ancient wonder of Israel, the money pit flooded with eery green light.

Actually this is a view down to the original level of the structure, or something like that…

We drove through Cana where Jesus turned water into wine. We saw the Sea of Galilee (actually a lake). We saw the boat of Galilee (it’s a super old boat). We saw Capharnaum where Jesus lived for a few years and where the ruins of an ancient synagogue still stand. We saw the church built where Jesus preached His Sermon on the Mount. And we saw so, so many pilgrims, massive groups on tour buses.

Our final stop was the Jordan River, which to me proved the most interesting item of our busy itinerary. Christians come here for baptism. I watched a number of these baptisms, the pilgrims in white tunics having a private spiritual experience in a very public place. I felt guilty for ogling them like zoo animals, but I have never before witnessed a baptism and I was intrigued, especially when a Nigerian ruler and his entourage showed up, giving all us onlookers something else to watch.

Do you see the guys chilling and fishing upstream?

Baptisms at lower left; Nigerians, upper left; dudes chilling and fishing, upper right.

Eventually someone in our group had the innovative idea that we should go down to the river (cue “Down to the River to Pray”). In the water were enormous slow-moving catfish and dense schools of minnows in the shallows. We took off our shoes and let the minnows tickle our feet with their hungry mouths.

It was a full day, and I felt we must have exhausted all the sacred Christian sites in Israel. However, Jerusalem beckoned…

The home of the spider

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Layli Maria Miron

There is a flâneur inside all of us. If I recall my art history classes well enough, once Paris was Haussmanized–many of the charming little streets were converted into wide, orderly boulevards–a new species of pedestrian emerged: the flâneur. The flâneur was a window shopper, an idler, an urban vagrant who did not necessarily set out with a destination in mind; he walked around to see the city and maybe stop for a croissant every once in a while.

My flâneurism (which sounds like a dangerous combination of flan and aneurysm) manifested in some exploration of the Hadar, a commercial and residential district which, according to the map, my street borders. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent examining maps of Haifa in a fairly futile attempt to commit the general layout of the city to memory. There’s the tourist map I keep in my purse at all times, and the one on my bulletin board at home, and there’s even one up in the office. So I had my route planned out, and I successfully found the main shopping street with its endless noisy clothing stores and the department store wherein I found this happy couple. Please take a moment to note his rakishly angled spectacles and her receding hairline. Aren’t they cozy.

They do say love is blind…

And this–jeans as art, or maybe the dryer broke:

Artists’ house

Once I had procured some houseplants and a muffin tin, I decided to retrace my route. If I could accomplish that, I figured that would mean I actually knew the Hadar.

I did not accomplish that.

I suppose I was distracted by the unusually cool weather, the streets damp with rain, or maybe it was the dead cat in the street. Anyway, I forget to take a turn and found myself in an unfamiliar area. Unwisely, I decided to keep walking. I suppose I hoped my “intuition” would lead me aright and my apartment building would suddenly appear in front of me. Eventually, I swallowed my pride and found the friendliest looking person around (not a particularly easy task–Haifans are not the smiliest bunch) and asked for help.

“English?” I asked. Over the course of the morning, I had gotten accustomed to the answer to this question being a shake of the head. But it turned out she spoke very good English. After she explained where I needed to go, she pointed at my map and asked, “Does it help?” Good question. As soon as I pull it out, I mark myself as an outsider, a foreigner. But when I try to navigate without it, I end up seeing more of Haifa than intended. Perhaps trying to make me feel better about my orienteering failure, she said, “The streets in Haifa are like the home of a spider.” A very messy spider, I might add, the kind who eschews neat webs in favor of tangled nests where he stores his victims, including young women carrying Tourist Board maps.

The sea below the sea

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Layli Maria Miron

I’m back in the office, and my back muscles are sore. It’s from all the floating over the weekend.

That’s right: for the first time since my train pulled into Haifa, I stepped foot outside the Haifa-Akka area. When I signed up for the Dead Sea trip, allured by the promise of adventure, I knew one thing: it was salty. And also dead, as anything that tries to live in the sea would probably become quickly pickled. I had a feeling it had some biblical significance, like, wasn’t that where Jesus walked on water? Or where Moses parted the sea? (I assume your Bible knowledge is better than mine and you know that would be the Sea of Galilee and the Red Sea, respectively.)

It was a rather long ride in the sherut, as we must avoid the West Bank. I plugged in my earbuds and listened to Devendra Banhart. I wish I had chosen someone more pronounceable and less indie to listen to, because when questioned about my music choice, my response provoked raised eyebrows. “Dev-end-ra-ban-heart, have you heard of him?”

If I didn’t pay too much attention, it would have felt much like the trip from Verona to Chicago–wide highways, green signs (except in Hebrew, Arabic, and English), gas stations en route. But after a while we entered the desert. I knew I had entered a strange land when I saw the camel crossing signs, and then the camels, a few clustered by the side of the road, probably waiting for a sherut with open seats to come pick them up.

“Alright, we’re about to go underwater,” Abboud, the sherut driver famed among the Bahá’ís, said. “You all ready to hold your breath?”

We were going below sea level, deeper and deeper “underwater.” The Dead Sea, Wikipedia tells me, is the lowest point on dry land in the world. It’s a sea below sea level. Interestingly, because of the great atmospheric pressure, you’re safer from the sun’s harmful UV rays there, despite the constant clear skies.

Hiking trail up to Masada. No thanks, I’ll take the cable car.

Our first stop was Masada, the ruins of a fortress and palace built on a plateau by Herod the Great. When the Jews rebelled against their Roman overlords, they made their last stand there, kind of like the Alamo except less Texan. In short, the Jewish men decided to commit mass suicide and die free rather than allowing themselves and their families to be captured and enslaved by their foes. When the Romans entered the fortress, they were greeted by hundreds of lifeless bodies.

Ancient columns. A key part of ruiny décor.

Mainly what I learn from visiting places like Masada is that I don’t have the mind of an archaeologist. I have a hard time looking at stone walls and envisioning Herod or the Jewish rebels. But the panoramas of the alien landscape were something to behold.

At long last, we reached the shores of the sea. The beach, which was more of a rocky hill, was full of tourists, some of them painted with mud, some of them floating. I could see that some of the rocks on the shore were actually covered with large salt crystals.

I tentatively stepped into the water. My flip-flops escaped my feet and shot to the surface. Ok, new plan: unshod, I waded into the water, wincing over the bumpy rock bottom. I crouched down, then let myself float up to the surface. Now, I’m not much of a beach goer. As you know, the double threats of sunshine and drowning prevent me from getting seduced by that scene. But I have found my perfect body of water in the Dead Sea. You can’t swim, but only float–perfect! I don’t need to fear going past my depth because I physically cannot sink! You can’t put your head underwater unless you want to damage your eyes–wonderful! I dislike the sensation of submersion. I let myself float a little deeper, watching the pink, dry mountains on the Jordanian shore and the quiet desert sky above. The water was warm and oily–I could see the shadows of the oil projected on my hands underwater. Once I actually wanted to move, this proved complicated. I tried a few strokes, to little avail, and started to wonder what would happen if I just never got back to shore, floating immobilized, a victim of buoyancy? Finally I found a very slow breaststroke worked.

And I must have gotten back to shore eventually if I’m writing this now.

Office star

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Layli Maria Miron

Dear rock stars of the world,

While you might feel pretty cool shredding your guitars onstage, I’m rocking out admin style, shredding these papers…like Jagger?

Love,

Layli

Actually, when it comes to office tasks, I’m anything but a star. A simple trip to the shredder reminds me that while my Mount Holyoke BA covered everything from the epidemiological paradox to sestinas, it failed to educate me on the finer points of office supplies. So I find myself once again repeatedly jamming the shredder with an overload of documents. The shredder chokes for the fifth time in the past four minutes.

I kneel down and tell it, “Hey, you should know I’m not such a dunce–I graduated summa cum laude, alright?”

The shredder considers, wondering how my fancy diploma would taste, and how it would look digested into strips of Latin.

A colleague asked me how I was doing with my new duties. I hesitated, considering how much time I had spent struggling to fix a stapler or to coerce the photocopier into submitting to my will. (It won.) Or how difficult it had been to find that room where according to legend there would be stacks and stacks of bond paper. After wandering around one building, asking everyone I encountered about “the room with lots of paper,” I found one sympathetic soul who joined me for my quest. Up the elevator, down the stairs, I got my first thorough tour of this building. It was an actual paper chase.

Does anyone know where I can find the big boxes of bond paper?

“Enough with this Socratic nonsense. Does anyone here know where I can get ten reams of bond paper?”

There are these simple tasks that aren’t so simple for a newbie. And then there are the bug traps–or, as Catchmaster calls them, “adhesive pest control products”–and the unfortunate lizards that stroll inside. I saved that first one, yes, and a few more. One of them I only partially saved, as in his eagerness to escape me, he abandoned his tail, which flailed around on the ground in front of me until I tossed it into the bushes. But there are those tragedies when I’m too late. Or the ancient bug traps I’ve found when I explore the creepier passages of my building, that were set out years ago and have been collecting diverse little bodies since. I enacted the story of Pandora’s box with one such trap. I just had to know its contents, so I unfolded the box cautiously and found a desiccated gecko and what I swear was a fossilized tarantula. Shiver.

Oh, Pandora…

But these brushes with kingdom animalia have endowed me with a certain prestige in the office. One day I was doing something administrative, possibly wrestling with some staples, when I heard a cry for help: “Is anyone here not afraid of lizards?” Already excited, I stood up: “I’m not!” My colleague led me into the ladies’ washroom where a tiny lizard was hiding behind the toilet. I got down on the floor and after a little graceless scrambling around caught it by its tail and, cradling it in my palm, took it out to the garden to release it. When I returned, the women I had rescued greeted me as a hero. Literally, “You’re so brave! You’re our hero!”

Really, folks, it’s nothing. All in a day’s work.

Orientation

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Layli Maria Miron

There is a single ant running in circles between my arms right now. No wait, he’s crazily scrambling across my keyboard…now exploring my power cord… A small contingent of ants recently left the kitchen to reconnoiter my room. Maybe this one is monitoring my computer habits.

Orientation is nearly over. I’m not sure that I can call myself oriented, at least in the geographical sense, considering that today as the bus sped down an unfamiliar street I assured my friends that this was merely a shortcut (it was not). For that matter, I got lost yesterday too when I went on a mission to see the Shrine of the Báb at sunset. Thank goodness for my map.

(It was totally worth getting lost! And we spotted a jackal going down a staircase in the gardens, so cool! I have yet to see the wild boars that apparently roam around…)

There are now two ants scurrying across my laptop. Time to invest in some traps.

I had lunch with my supervisor today, and afterwards got a glimpse at the office where I’ll work. There it was–my desk, resplendent, in a room with windows! I can’t wait to decorate it with paperclip necklaces and pictures of my kids…or whatever adults usually do.