Jerusalem, Days 4 and 5

So after we got to Jerusalem, this is us walking through the Cardo, which had just closed for Shabbat.
I checked out the place where the crucifix was lodged in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It made all of the Catholicism come rushing back, especially the part where I had to duck and cover from a tide of Franciscans entering the tomb. It literally follows me everywhere.
And the Western Wall, where I wore a paper hat and prayed a little.
We got up at 2am to go to Massada, where we sat on top of the ruins and ate our boxed breakfast. Actually, I ate my boxed breakfast after accidentally thinking that everyone else was doing it, when it turned out that they were waiting until after we got off the mountain. Whatevs, I had some challah and watched the sun come up. And when we got back to the bus, the eggs and cheese were suspiciously warm, so I think I won that round.
And these are the salt flats along the Dead Sea, as seen from the top of Massada. I dunno, they're vast.
We swam in the Dead Sea (and by "swam," I mean "floated," "got salt water where we shaved and screamed a little," and "watched a nun get chewed out by a lifeguard for submerging her head in the Dead Sea twice.")
And with our afternoon off, we went to the Via Dolorosa and walked the stations of the cross. It was pretty, but it turns out that I turn into kind of a bitch when trying to maneuver between market stalls, tractors, and tiny children trying to wipe popsicle on my pants. The moral of the story is that we read the Bible and that was kind of nice, and I also think I need a nap.
So instead, I took graffiti pictures. It's multicultural vandalism, and that is one of my favorite things.

Tel Aviv on Day 2, Jerusalem on Day 3

We had lunch at a dump-cum-recycling center outside Tel Aviv. It smelled delicious, as we had just been atop a mountain of garbage.

Um, so that's a security fence. I learned that it is not a wall, it is a fence, and also learned the useful phrase "man-bombs," which it has apparently reduced by 95%. I'm learning that Israel is a complicated place.

The Sea of Galilee (where I went jogging this morning!) taken from the Mount of Beatitudes (where I rocked the Catholic social teachings this morning!), right after leaving the kibbutz where we spent the night.

A snapshot from the Golan Heights, where we hung out by a minefield and talked about warfare. Good times, everyone.

I woke up in time to see the Bedouin settlements as we rolled into Jerusalem.

I dunno, it seemed pretty until it rained. Given Israel's water shortages, I guess that was pretty too.

I took this from Hebrew University, but we're actually going into the Old City tomorrow. And by "tomorrow," I mean about six hours from now. I'm incredibly sleep-deprived, and pubbling with Israeli students was probably unwise in retrospect.

Day 1 in Tel Aviv

So I'm absolutely fried - our flight out of Heathrow was delayed for three hours yesterday, and then I was seated next to a baby who kept trying to jam her fingers into my hummus, and then one of the guys on our trip was detained at the airport and we didn't get to the hotel until almost 3am. (On the upside, the hotel had a mind-blowing breakfast buffet that I raided with every residual drop of Viking blood in my body.) Today, we got a debrief about the sociology of contemporary Israel, went to a lecture and lunch with some students in Tel Aviv, saw the Hall of Independence where Ben Gurion declared independence in 1948, visited a hospital that does cardiovascular work for underprivileged kids, and then heard a lecture about defense and security over many, many courses of dinner. We were pretty much dead at that point, but we went down to play on the beach and grab a drink anyway. Tel Aviv is gorgeous (and warm!), but they're hustling us off to see the rest of the country tomorrow. (I've already lined my messenger bag with plastic to stockpile pastries at breakfast in preparation, so that should soften the blow.)

Up, Up, and Away (and Away, and Away, and then Back, and then Away)

A bunch of Team Hertford went out for tapas tonight at Kazbar on the Cowley Road, and then I got together with a bunch of Team America to say a quick bon voyage before we all go off for our fairly ridiculous breaks. (I know someone who may or may not be in Shanghai buying art at the moment - I don't know if this is true or not, but it was the highlight of my day.) I know my travel plans are insane, but I spent the better part of the past eight weeks sitting at this desk writing essays, so I refuse to feel bad about that. When you're reading journal articles on Saturday at 11pm and drinking generic, supermarket-brand instant coffee, it turns out that you don't only end up socially stunted, you end up with an awesome balance in your bank account. I think I could grow fond of this working hard and playing hard thing.

Anyway, I'm off to Israel, then Mexico, then the US, then back to Oxford, then to Croatia with Emma. I might not be online a whole lot over the vacation, but I'll at least try to get pictures posted. Photoblogging is my refuge when I'm too lazy to do anything besides snapping photos because I've worn myself out by actually leaving my desk. What can I say, the world is an overwhelming place.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I have four things that I'm ridiculously proud of, as recounted on the phone this morning:

- The essay that I turned around in 60 hours was a huge success - my supervisor seemed to really like it, and it turns out that a passing knowledge of witchcraft beliefs makes for awesome cocktail party conversation. (It's the next best thing to reading something by Michael Pollan, who has an unfair advantage because he writes about food and people like Michael Taussig write about devil worship. If you go to the types of parties that I go to, it's easier to chat about eating lower on the food chain than it is to slip in a few lines about appeasing the Tio.)

- I bought my mom a pair of earrings in Morocco, and it crossed my mind that since I'm naive and bad at French, it's quite possible that they're not actually silver. So I took them to two jewelry stores, and at both places, they were like, "hey, looks like silver." And at the second one, the woman was like, "wow, these are beautiful." I almost jumped the counter to hug her.

- At dinner yesterday, this guy mentioned that he was thinking of watching every episode of the British Queer as Folk in one sitting (and let's be honest, one of my favorite things to do is tackle the entirety of a series while pausing only to eat and pee), so after polishing off my lemon rice, that's exactly what we did. It only took us like seven hours, and now I know everything there is to know about gay life in Britain. Everything. (I only say that because we also watched the bonus features, and they had a panel discussion where one of the panelists was this guy who complained that nothing about the show - the drugs, underage sex, promiscuity, clubbing - represented his life. And I was kind of like, "no, nor mine, but I'd also understand why nobody would want to watch my life, at least not for seven hours in a row.") I've decided to treat QAF like a documentary out of spite.

- I just finished the New York Times' Sunday crossword for the second week IN A ROW. And not the kind of finishing where you shift your eyes and go, "...of course rolp is a word" and pretend you believe that, but the kind of finishing where I actually knew the answers. Either I'm getting smarter or Will Shortz is getting dumber, but whichever it is, I'll take it.

The Marrakesh Express

So two and a half days definitely isn't enough to lose yourself in Marrakesh and really get a knack for the place, but it is enough to go full throttle for the entirety of your trip, completely exhaust yourself, and limp back to the UK feeling totally reinvigorated. I don't really know how to sum up the trip, except that Abby was a fantastic partner for an Amazing Race style vacation and coped really well with my exhaustion on the first day, caffeine migraines on the second day, and impulsive decisions to go to a hammam and take us down very random paths through the souqs on the third day. And because we both went with the flow so well, I think we got a good blend of shopping and wandering, eating until we almost threw up, and sightseeing things that looked fairly cool, which is really all you can ask for during a quick-and-dirty two and a half days in Marrakesh.


Here's the minaret of the Koutoubia at sunset, from the Djemma el-Fna.

I'm eating head meat from a sheep in this picture. Basically, you eat everything but the eyes, and they were nice enough to put it in a bowl for me instead of making me eat it from a skull.

It's the Djemma el-Fna at night!

A fountain at the Jardin Majorelle (which is half-owned by Yves St. Laurent, which is sort of fabulous).

The Kasbah Mosque!

Here, I'm rockin' the kasbah. The captions write themselves.

A shot of an archway at the Saadian Tombs.

A row of stalls outside the Palais El-Badi selling metalwork.

The sunken orange groves at the Palais El-Badi.

The Palais El-Badi looking sort of imperial and imposing.

Tombs, where Abby and I got lost because they apparently just let you wander around down there.

And a view from the roof of the palace, where you can see the skyline of Marrakesh and tons of storks working their magic.

Shopping in the souqs, where we picked up pottery, boxes, jewelry, and a teapot.

The massive piece hanging from the courtyard of the Musee de Marrakech

The courtyard at the Ali ben Youssef Medersa, which was gorgeous.

And our last night in the medina, where everyone decided to start calling me Skinny, except for the guy who called me Tom Cruise and actually offended me. The guy who guessed that Abby and I were Greek was also kind of off-base, since I don't typically see a blond guy and a redheaded woman and think, "yep. Definitely Greek."

The Finish Line

Of everything I've done in the past 23 years, from teething to passing my driver's test on my third try to learning how to make omelets, this is probably my biggest accomplishment so far this year:

Austen, Ralph A. 1993. “The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History,” in Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, Comaroff, J. and J. Comaroff (eds.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 89-110.
Bohannan, P. 1958. “Extra-Processual Events in Tiv Political Institutions,” American Anthropologist 60, pp. 1-12.
Comaroff, J. and J. Comaroff. 1993. “Introduction,” in Comaroff, J. and J. Comaroff (eds), Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. xi-xxxvii.
de Sardan, J.P. 1992. “Occultism and the Ethnographic ‘I’: the Exoticizing of Magic from Durkheim to ‘Postmodern’ Anthropology,” Critique of Anthropology 12(1), pp. 5-25.
Douglas, M. 1970. “Introduction,” in Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, Douglas, M. (ed.), London: Tavistock, pp. xiii-xxxviii.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Favret-Saada, J. and C. Cullen. 1989. “Unbewitching as Therapy,” American Ethnologist 16(1), pp. 40-56.
Geschiere, P. 1997. The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, Charlottesville: University of Virginia.
Ginzburg, C. 1983. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Harding, F. 1990. “Performance as Political Action: the Use of Dramatisation in the Formulation of Tiv Ethnic and National Consciousness,” in Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in West Africa, de Moraes Farias, P.F. and K. Barber (eds.), University of Birmingham: Centre of West African Studies, pp. 172-195.
Malinowski, B. 1997. “The Role of Magic and Religion” in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, Lessa, W. and E. Vogt (eds.), London: Harper and Row, pp. 102-111.
Masquelier, A. 1993. “Narratives of Power, Images of Wealth: The Ritual Economy of Bori in the Market,” in Comaroff, J. and J. Comaroff (eds), Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-33.
Masquelier, A. 1997. “Vectors of Witchcraft: Object Transactions and the Materialization of Memory in Niger,” Anthropological Quarterly 70(4), pp. 187-198.
Moore, H.L. and T. Sanders (eds). 2001. Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft, and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, London: Routledge.
Nash, J. 1993. We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rowlands, M. and J.P. Warnier. 1988. “Sorcery, Power, and the Modern State in Cameroon,” Man 23, pp. 118-132.
Shaw, R. 1997. “The Production of Witchcraft/Witchcraft as Production: Memory, Modernity, and the Slave Trade in Sierra Leone,” American Ethnologist 24(4), pp. 856-876.
Smith, D.J. 2001. “Ritual Killing, 419, and Fast Wealth: Inequality and the Popular Imagination in Southeastern Nigeria,” American Ethnologist 28(4), pp. 803-826.
Taussig, M. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Taussig, M. 1984. “Culture of Terror, Space of Death: Roger Casement’s Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(3), pp. 467-497.
Turner, V. 1970. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

I'm proofreading as we speak, and then all of my assignments for the term will be done. I just screened Hedwig and Shortbus while putting the finishing touches on the essay (which, incidentally, is about four times longer than it's supposed to be), and I'm actually going to get a solid four hours of sleep before Abby and I catch the bus to Gatwick en route to Morocco. I'm not going to lie, I feel that I've earned it.