It's 4 am and I'm up again. I like the quiet of the early morning hours. I will prepare for my classes next week for a few hours before we go to Fes later this morning with a friend, Karen Smith. I was discussing teaching with some friends yesterday afternoon at the Forest Restaurant in downtown Ifrane near our apartment. I described teaching as interactive performance art. I really enjoy the dynamic relational aspect of teaching where the interactive relationship between teacher and students is always shifting and changing into something different and new. My days are never boring and always stimulating. It also helps that I really like my students and find their different personalities a constant source of amusement and enlightenment about Moroccan culture, Islam and what it means to be young in today's world; but, what I like best is that I see them each as a person without any cultural or religious label. I find labels impersonal, dehumanizing, dangerous and usually inaccurate. If you drop the labels and take the time to get to know the person, it is a whole different world. I find as I get older that life is more and more about relationships and less and less about abstract intellectualization. My life now is much more up close and personal - it's a better way to live for me and a better life.
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