In Athens, Greece!

Yesterday I arrived in Athens, where I'm presenting a paper at EACL. It's my first time in Greece, so I'm excited to explore!

Initial observations:

• So far, no real travel mishaps! This either indicates that I'm becoming an expert traveler, or that I'm running out of new things that can go wrong. ;-)
• Pollution and smoking. There's too much of both here, and I'm going to get a year's fix of exhaust inhalation within the next few days...
• The weather is beautiful... but HUMID so far! I hope that I packed appropriately. The forecast said high of ~75, low of ~45 each day this week, but it's definitely feeling warmer, especially as the trains don't seem to have AC. Lots of stickiness; hopefully it will go away before I climb up to Acropolis and the Parthenon later this week!

But I don't mean to sound negative at all. Like I said, I'm excited. :-) I've only walked around briefly, but wandering several blocks south of my hotel to catch a different metro line, I caught a glimpse of the Acropolis area. Lots to see! And I'll post pictures when I can.

Best of Morocco

I've finally gone through and organized all of my Morocco photos... check them out and share your thoughts!

• Marrakesh photos (5/26-5/30)
• LREC Marrakesh events (5/28,30)
  
• Ourika Valley hike and Jbel Toubkal Massif trekking (5/29,31)
  
• Fez photos (6/1-6/3)
  
• Casablanca photos (6/3)

Summary of above: Best of Morroco

Day 3: the conference begins

So, now for the reason I'm here: the conference.

Of course, no exciting pictures from the day... a lot of oral and poster sessions, some interesting talks, some not-so-interesting talks. And, the best part of conferences: running into old friends from other institutions, and making new ones as well.

Trying to arrange my post-Marrakesh travel, though it's hard to find time to sit down with my travel buddy Ves. I want to ask around a little to find others to travel with as well or instead; we'll see. They have a few organized excursions here, including to Essaouria (discussed in a great NYT article), which is supposed to be beautiful though not so traditional, and out of the way from Fes/Casablanca so I'd removed it from my mental itinerary. We'll see.

Tonight, LREC advertised that there would be a "cocktail reception", which sounded suspiciously like hors doeuvres to me. Rest assured though, the Moroccans were prepared to show all 1100 conference attendees a good time. It was literally an extravaganza! A huge outdoor event, with singing, dancing, fire eating, camels, food, drink, cannons, acrobatics (seriously)... the whole shebang. Beyond all expectations!

In Morocco!

A few months ago, I learned that a conference publication of mine had been accepted to LREC, the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference in my research field of natural language processing. Good news after months of hard work. And the even better news is... the conference would be held in Marrakesh, Morocco!


مراكش



So, here I am, Day 1 of a 10 day adventure in Northern Africa. While the conference itself is only three full days (Wed-Friday of this week), I have arrived mid-morning Monday, have all of Tuesday to explore, and then have Saturday through next Tuesday to leave Marrakesh and see what else Morocco has in store. Because I attended a wedding outside New York City this Saturday, it was convenient to fly from JFK to Marrakesh (through Casablanca) on Sunday. Convenient, but a lot of traveling, and less conveniently, my luggage didn't make it all the way there with me. The airline claims that they'll deliver the luggage to my hotel when it arrives, but we'll see....
(postscript: they definitely didn't. I had to make my way back to the airport and pick it up myself later; fortunately I was carrying around my passport or I couldn't have gotten into the baggage claim, which I hadn't thought of before)

I really wish I had brushed up on my two semesters of Arabic before I came. Despite the fact that I learned the formal dialect and parts of the Syrian dialect (far different from the North African dialects), it definitely could have come in handy. Instead, I'm left with a 1st grade reading level and a vocabulary which roughly allows me to exchange niceties and shoo away the shopkeepers but not much else. Definitely something to brush up on, but I'll have to do it by massaging my memory or asking around, since Arabic-English dictionaries at my level (vowels included) don't really exist, and definitely aren't sold in these parts in any case.

All in all though, I immediately loved the chaos and the newness of it all. I'm exhausted from the flights, but can't wait to explore. :-)