"Roll With It"

We get so caught up in catching up
Trying to pay the rent trying to make a buck
That don't leave much time for time for us
And ain't life too short for that

This song from Easton Corbin's 2009 debut album hit #1 on the charts.  Not exactly earth-shattering stuff, but always good to remember.  Still getting adjusted to apartment living in the big city.  I got used to being out and about Casa last year, but now I'm actually living within the city limits.  The ol' bachelor pad is on the 4th floor of a 6-story building.  I've got a roomie, a fellow 2nd-year teacher.  The building is in a gritty commercial area filled with similar dwellings.  Many colleagues live in the area, and it is very convenient to anything I need.

I know I'll never have a problem finding my way home.  Heck, I can do it with my eyes closed.  Literally.  Oh, you scoff?  Well, I have a secret weapon - my nose!  You see, if I go to the Carrefour grocery store and then go straight down the street to find my corner to turn at, my corner differs from the handful of others along the way.  I start at Rue Ben Habbous, where a couple of friends live, then pass a few more corners that look like any in any other big city.  Then, I get to my corner at my street, Rue Al Kadi Bakar...

It's not as much a corner but a place to be used as a public toilet during broad daylight, as I've already seen, and smell, or as a place to catch some Zs, as I saw earlier today in the above photo.  If you look closely, you can see the graffiti image of the Monopoly dude.  Ok...

We took over the lease from a couple of ladies we work with who moved elsewhere in the city.  My roommate was familiar with this place, and when I asked him what it was like, he gave a very detailed description.  I didn't give it much thought; I knew it wouldn't be fancy, but that wasn't important.  The price was right.  Hmmm, maybe I should've given it more of a look.  I'm extremely low maintenance, but I was very unpleasantly surprised by a few things.

My apartment on campus last year was spacious and airy; I didn't expect that this time around, but it never crossed my mind that the appliances and the like would be so different.  The elevator, and I'm deadly serious, is about 3x4 feet, plus has the remarkably strong odor of mold.  The sign in the car rates it for 4 people or 300 kg.  4 skinny Moroccans would have to suck in their bellies to fit in this thing, not that I would advise that.  I weigh about 115 kg; my roomie would have to be in the same range.  We almost have to grease up to get in at the same time.  I just know we are courting disaster when we go up together.

Off the kitchen is the washer.  Note I didn't include the word dryer.  And this washer ain't exactly heavy-duty - it doesn't come up to my waist...

I should be more positive.  At least I still have that ocean view - oh, wait...
At least I go to sleep to the lovely sounds of animals and the waves - oh, wait...

But you never know who you will run into at the KFC...

                           One of the greatest soccer players on Earth, and Cristiano Ronaldo...

Yup, just another week in the White City.  The kiddies invade this week.  Living the dream...

And we'll roll with it
Won't think about it too much
Baby let's just go with it
And get out of this ordinary everyday rut 

"Wagon Wheel"

Heading down south to the land of the pines
I'm thumbing my way into North Carolina
Staring up the road and pray to God I see headlights
I made it down the coast in seventeen hours
Picking me a bouquet of dogwood flowers
And I'm a-hopin' for Raleigh, I can see my baby tonight

 

Hootie Darius Rucker gives us our first new post title of the new school year.  Here for 48 hours and it's like I never left.  Mike H. will be happy to know that I made it out of Newark airport alright, but then things went awry.  I had a 4-hour layover at CDG Paris airport and was a lil' tired, so I crawled behind some chairs in a corner at the gate for a snooze.  I woke up on my own to see boarding almost finished for my flight! 

 

I got into Casa just fine early Friday afternoon, and when I finally got my luggage, I went to get a train ticket into the city.  The lone ticket seller was mobbed and time was a-wastin', so I went to the kiosk, where a young woman was failing, miserably, to buy a ticket.  I've got mere minutes and this dumb !#$%&%$#! girl rapidly kept hitting the same button on the screen what must've been at least a few dozen times.  Don't think that's gonna work, sweetheart.  My first tantrum of the year ensues.  I wasn't even my usual snarky self - I went straight to a full-blown fit.  She didn't seem to understand English but she certainly knew I was peeved.  I saw I wasn't going to get a ticket in time to get to meet up with my roomie to go to our new place.

 

I don't have a cell phone here, and I didn't know where our place was, but we'd made plans online to meet at a major intersection.  I snared a (way more expensive than a train) cab and got into the city to the street corner in question...or at least I thought I did.  Of course, I inadvertently made a small error in my memory of which street to meet at.  Where is he?!?!  I beg/borrow a cell to call, and get a recording.  Where exactly am I going to sleep tonight?!?!  I take the tram to the grand taxi station and pay quite a bit of a fee to get to school, getting to the hilltop around 8pm.  The guards let me through the gates and I ask myself: Who do I want to bother to crash at their place?  Ah, I could just crash on a sofa in the faculty lounge, if it's open...and it is!  The price is right, and it comes with Internet - woohoo!

 

In the a.m. I awoke and tried to call the roomie and got a recording again.  I walked down to the ocean to kill some time and killed some skin cells instead as I fell asleep on the beach.  Not too bad a sunburn, fortunately.  Back at school I borrowed a cell phone from a guard and finally got ahold of my roommate.  Plans were made and we eventually got all of our stuff into our new pad...almost.

 

I am going to pre-emptively blame fatigue for this next mishap...We get all of our stuff into the apartment and go to get some stuff and a bite to eat before we unpack.  When we return, I ask: where is my other suitcase?  During the time we got all the stuff out of the truck, into the building, up the elevator and into the apartment, my roomie had only left the bags alone inside the building for the briefest time; there was no bleeping way someone had stolen one, but they had.  I'm freaking out, to put it mildly.  Eventually, I got to the police station, with a matching suitcase, and tried to explain what happened.  I cannot do justice to accurately describe what transpired.  My French isn't that good, and their English was worse.  The second bag confused them.  I said I spoke Spanish and they grabbed a man who did also.  Finally, things are straight and I borrow a cell phone (yeah, a recurring theme) and call the roomie to get him to bring my passport which I need for them to do the report, when he informs me that I left my stuff on another floor :(

 

The apartment set-up isn't quite up to snuff, so we set out today to get some stuff.  A nasty odor pervades the elevator.  Remember the famous quote by Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now? 

 

                                          "I love the smell of mold in the morning.  It smells

                                           like...allergy."

 

We decide to go to the mall.  The very first cabbie of the year is hailed...and he tries to rip us off.  Shocking.  I tell the guy to go f...um, we got out and hailed another petit taxi.  The song on the radio: Wagon Wheel, the current country hit by Darius Rucker.  I'm happy again, even more so when I get my chicken McNuggets soon after.  I suspect it's going to be another very interesting year... 

So rock me momma like a wagon wheel
Rock me momma any way you feel
Hey momma rock me
Rock me momma like the wind and the rain
Rock me momma like a south bound train
Hey momma rock me