Monthly Archives: September 2013

I kicked off my 20s with friends, food and booze in the south of France. I finished them off with friends, food and booze just across the water in Algeria, with an almost-full moon rising over the water. Life’s not too bad, folks!

It’s always weird to know what to do for my birthday, especially when I’m in a new place with new people. So I sent out an email to a handful of fun people (OK, maybe a couple of handfuls of people), suggesting a low-key evening of drinks on my balcony.

Then I find out that it’s ALSO the birthday of the other American who lives in my building, and his friend was going to throw him a small party too. So obviously the only logical conclusion is to combine our “small” parties and create one big party! Mission accomplished. The punch was flowing, which apparently led to a dance-off on the landing (I missed this, sadly, while I was entertaining guests outside). Turns out when people have a dance-off without putting their cups of punch down, you end up with a really sticky floor.

Despite the stickiness, it was a lovely evening, with only minimal consequences the next morning. 🙂 Here’s to hoping for the same enthusiasm, friends, and frivolity when “the big 4-0” rolls around. (Or “the big 3-7” or “the big 3-3”)!

Concluding thought: milestone birthdays are what you want them to be. For me, it’s not about the number, but rather about my degree of satisfaction in life at the time “the big X-X” is reached. If I’m feeling negative about my life in general around the time of a birthday, then the fact that I’m getting older seems like something to be concerned about. If I’m relatively content with the trajectory I’m on, getting older just doesn’t matter. 28, for example, was eh. The job was fine, but completely lacked any forward momentum, and I found out the day before my birthday that I didn’t get invited to my second crack at the Foreign Service Oral Assessment. So that made 28 kinda blech.

BUT, cut to 5 months later, I get an offer from my FIRST crack at the Foreign Service test, forward momentum skyrockets, and suddenly 28 doesn’t seem so old.

2 years later, and I’m still riding high on the Foreign Service thing, which promises a plethora of options and too many potential career trajectories to count. Throw in a crowd of good people, lots of love from back home, and “the big 3-0” is pretty great!

Today was a good day. Not only did I learn I’ll be going on several consular outreach trips to various cities around Algeria over the next few months, but I had two very exciting deliveries today!

The first I was expecting – there is a guy here in Algiers who has made quite the business for himself delivering alcohol to expats. I placed my first order and it was delivered today. Basically what happens is you order wine/beer/liquor from a list he sends out and it appears at your door, usually within 24 hours. Very convenient and not actually all that expensive in the grand scheme of things. The only bummer was that I managed to drop a bottle of wine on my dining room floor as I was putting the bottles away. It looked like I murdered someone. Fortunately it’s a tile floor so it was, relatively speaking, easy(ish) to clean up.

On to the second delivery! At about 9:30 this morning I got a notification that my UAB (unaccompanied air baggage) had been released from customs and was ready to appear at my house! Hooray! The majority of my stuff is still on its way/in customs limbo, BUT for today I’m happy. And so are my Harrods Christmas bears, who were finally released from their cardboard box prison of the last 2.5 months:

Another huge bonus of receiving my UAB is that I put several framed photos in there – which makes my apartment less impersonal, which is awesome. I was particularly amused by this blast from the past, which I did NOT remember having in my UAB and which, actually, brings the title of this post full circle:

Labor Day weekend involved my first venture out of Algiers – a CLO trip to Tlemcen, a city in the west of Algeria about 20 miles from the Moroccan border. Tlemcen is quite different from Algiers; notably, it’s cleaner, the buildings are in better repair, and it has sidewalks! Big ones! You don’t realize how important sidewalks are until you walk to work without them. (Don’t worry, Mom, it’s safe – it would just be better with sidewalks) 🙂 Anyway, let’s start off with a view over Tlemcen:

A group of 18 from the embassy traveled together for this one; we left Friday evening and took a quick, one-hour flight. It would have been quicker if AirAlgerie wasn’t perpetually late, but you take what you can get.

When we arrived, our “minders” met us as we got off the flight. For any travel outside of Algiers, we have to have an escort. It is unclear whether this is for our protection or to make sure we don’t do anything bad. I imagine it’s a bit of both. At any rate, they whisked us off onto a bus and off to our hotel, the Ibis. Definitely a budget hotel. Didn’t really want to walk into the bathroom in my bare feet, but the bed seemed fine. We arrived around dinner time, so we ate at the hotel and headed to bed to rest up for the next day. I enjoyed the free wifi and watched some Downton Abbey dubbed in French. Which is strange, but easy to understand. It was the episode where everyone has influenza or whatever and Lavinia dies. It wasn’t a half bad night!

Next morning, the bus tour began. I have to say I’m not a huge fan of the bus tour thing – but it would be very difficult for me to do this trip on my own, so I sucked it up with minimal irritation that pretty much was kept til the end of the trip. The main issue with the bus was the diesel engine was REALLY loud so our tour guide could only be heard by people sitting in the first few rows, which was not me. So I didn’t catch many details about the stuff we saw. Ah well. Bottom line – we saw a lot of mosques. They were cool.

The first place we went was an old, 11th or 12th century set of palaces, plus a mosque. Pretty courtyard, tiles, fountain, etc:

Next up was another ancient mosque. This one involved us ladies covering with scarves – sadly no photos of that (although I’m sure I will have many opportunities to photograph myself in a headscarf over the next couple of years), but the prayer area was gorgeous, and the entire mosque complex was lovely and had a fabulous view.

Then it was off to lunch, which consisted of massive amounts of traditional Algerian food. Good, but way too much. The highlight of lunch was ducking out of the restaurant to take pictures outside a butcher, where a freshly chopped-off cow head hung from the door:

It was still dripping blood. Not kidding.

After we gorged ourselves at lunch, we piled back on the bus and headed off to a super cool cave outside Tlemcen, where we met about 1000 of our closest Algerian friends who were all waiting to get in. But we made it and it was pretty much worth it. Very cool stalactites/mites:

Apparently back in the day this cave stretched all the way to Morocco, but at some point during French rule, they decided to put an end to all the weapons smuggling that was happening through the cave, so they blocked it off.

After we got our fill of the cave and our PAO who was on the trip did an impromptu interview with a local TV station that happened to be filming in the cave that day, it was back on the bus again to head to mosque #3. This one was destroyed a bunch of centuries ago, but apparently is still the largest mosque in Algeria. (Although Chinese workers are building one in Algiers right now that’s supposed to be even bigger when it is completed…)

Anyway, this mosque was part of a city that the prince of Fez lived in back in the day when they (Morocco) were trying to take over Tlemcen. They failed and their city was torn down. BUT parts of the mosque are still standing and are kinda cool:

Next up, it was off to a lookout point where we could see all of Tlemcen (the photo at the beginning of this post), and back to the hotel for a much needed rest (all that on and off the bus stuff wore us out), before dinner at a FABULOUS Moroccan place. I had lamb cooked in a tagine. It was amazing. Then it was back to the hotel for sleep. No French Downton tonight, sadly.

Next day was a bit shorter. We went to a souq (market), which actually reminded me a lot of those street fairs in NYC where they sell a bunch of cheap clothes and crappy plastic toys. There were definitely a few cool shops with actual Algerian artisan-y things, but mostly I was surprised by how western the majority of the stuff there was. Interesting, though.

Finally, we hit up one last mosque. And not just any mosque. The GRANDE mosque.

I’ll post more photos of this on facebook if anyone is interested. In the meantime, that about covers my labor day trip – very interesting, but I think I’ll steer clear of bus tours for at least a month or so. Overall, it was a great way to get out of Algiers for a bit. It made me even more excited for next month when I’ll take my first Europe trip of my time in Algiers!