Dear Families and Friends,

It is now December, and I hope that everyone is staying warm and happy. If some of you may recall, I wrote a Yak in early October in which I shared some of my sketches. So much has happened since then, and the course is now coming to an end. As I reflect on the past months, I think of the many moments that have moved me with their beauty. Though I have not been able to capture all of those moments with my pen, I have managed to get a few more on paper. The vast valleys of M’goun, the old Kasbah sitting amidst a green oasis in Kelaat M’gouna, a view from the courtyard of my homestay in Bougamez, a fleeting orange-pink feeling during sunset on the beach in Sidi Ifni, and the sunlit beachfront walk in Taghazout…here are some new sketches that I’ve done in the past two months.

Aside from sketches, poetry also makes me happy. I’ve always written poems for my own pleasure, and for the sake of expressing my emotions with words. Since I didn’t find time to sketch the desert, here’s a poem that I wrote one afternoon sunbathing on the dunes:

At first there’s nothing but color

Somehow I always find pink in the sun

The hole in my shirt

And the little bumps on my arm

Are pink

And then there’s the desert

Which holds many treasures

In the case that you bury three hours or so in the sand

The next morning you will find a well

Now it is pink, the desert, and a nameless white bird

Who has nowhere to fly

Because this poem has not given it a sky

So it disappears into a nameless blue

I have not seen the world

Until I’ve seen nothing but color, sand, and bird

Welcome to the day of my birth

I see nowhere, but here