the medal, the trip, and the lunch

See me smiling? Ear to ear! The American congress is giving His Holiness the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal! Well done yanks! President Bush was rather squeezed into acknowledging him but did so nonetheless, so well done there. The Chinese of course have their knickers in a twist, and are flexing their political global muscle by threatening to let Iran split those nuclei to their heart’s content.

I know, I know that I am behind on what I have promised you; but my life is running ahead of my typing speed. I am going to start from now and back my way into the rest.

I left Rabat at six a.m. on Tuesday morning and limped into the hotel this morning around one a.m. I don’t ever want to do that again. Everything actually went well – I mean I’m here and I’m not dead – always good. I had to sprint from one airplane to another and I spent a couple of hours sitting on the tarmac (in the airplane, which is better than without eh?), but all in all it came off well through three countries and two continents. I really didn’t expect my bags to arrive with me, what with all the close connections but one of them did; it was of course the one with all the stuff Q left in Morocco when she went to America in August! All my clothes and shoes (I was wearing my I-will-not-go-through-a-song-and-dance-to-remove-shoes-for-the-airport-security sandals) are in the OTHER bag. I have, so far, made three calls about the bag – it was coming this morning, it was coming this afternoon, now it is coming after midnight… I’m still waiting for it to arrive, but I am thinking positively, but just in case I am going to get the address of the nearby mall. They will have shoes yes?

When I arrived last night/this morning at the airport I was done in and then some. I picked up my bag (singular) and made my way to the taxi stand looking forward to not having to expend effort in giving directions yes? No. An ancient gnome, an ancient gnome who is a Sikh, in fact inhabited the first taxi in line. Shiva! His head came up maybe to my waist, and I was afraid if he lifted the bags he might die, so I put them in the back. Driving to the hotel was an experience in moving at the speed of dust! There were Canadian geese passing us on the freeway – they were walking! Again, good news is that we arrived and neither of us died.

Today I had a fabulous, conversational, and long lunch with jmb who treated me to lunch in my hotel – I couldn’t go out as all I have for footwear at present are sandals (not really weather appropriate). I can tell you she is even lovelier than one would think from her blog. I had a great time. But I am soooo tired, as I didn’t sleep last night, and was up at seven this morning. And so lovely readers I am off to bed. More on the morrow.

Ciao.