Hey all,
Well, I have an hour before I have to be anywhere so why not put a blog up? So today my counterpart (Peace Corps nomenclature for a person with whom I work) told me to come to the Dar Chebab and pick out a color for my classroom. He said I could choose between the colors pink and purple so I was sort of excited to see if maybe I could sort of work around the color choices and see if yellow or orange was available. In any event, when I got there this morning, I saw that my classroom had been painted purple by the workmen. I was sort of peeved but, hey, at least my room has paint right?
I've also really expanded my work schedule lately. I've started to put in hours helping to catalogue a library, help teach English at a girls boarding school, start teaching a yoga/exercise class, and continue the schedule I was already keeping. Needless to say, by the end of the day I'm bushed and I have to sort of drag myself out of whatever chair I've fallen into to go make food. I'm really happy that I have work and I love working in T-town. I now have the challenge of figuring out how I can spend a little less time working and more time maintaining relationships with community members. I also have to figure out when I get 'me' time, haha. I somehow was under the impression that in Peace Corps I would have a lot of down time. So far, I haven't found that yet, and it probably was a misconception.
After lunch, I now find myself sort of hiding in my house for an hour and listening to music, trying to gear up for the rest of the day. I know I have the energy stored somewhere in me, I just have to dig deep for it! At the end of the day, I try to think about what I did and reflect on all my actions. Sometimes I feel like I'm having no tangible effect on this community and then I remember I'm an English teacher and that any work I do will manifest itself differently for each student. Whatever snow I'm shoveling as my manual labor is all intellectual snow. (ok, I know that's vague but I was thinking about a quote from Haruki Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance, where the main character writes boring articles for magazines and newspapers and compares himself to a snow shoveler.)
It's interesting to see how far I've come now that I'm past the 3rd month of actual service. I can't believe that just last September I didn't know a lick of Arabic and now I am pretty functional. I do feel a bit like I've been lazy in terms of language learning. I remember being so utterly terrified of not knowing any Arabic and getting ready to get shuttled off to a completely Arabic and French speaking country, but now that I'm here, I feel like I've reached some sort of language learning plateau and I really need to get back up and keep making the effort I know I can make. On the other hand, I have to remember not to be so hard on myself and not kill myself trying to become a workaholic (which is something I'm prone to do).
Now for something totally different!
In any event, next weekend, I'm off to go way up north to Fes for spring camp! YES! I'm pretty stoked about getting to see a new part of the country and I'm going to try and see if I can swing by a place called Volubilis on the way home. (Volubilis is an ancient Roman ruin.) It'll be really weird to be out of T-town for two weeks. Lately I've been trying to stay in T-town because I feel like I travel all the time and I wanted to make more of a concentrated effort to stay. It's actually worked out pretty well for me because the students like to take me on walks on the weekends. Last weekend we sat by a river in town and just hung out for a while. This is way better than tv.
Well, I have an hour before I have to be anywhere so why not put a blog up? So today my counterpart (Peace Corps nomenclature for a person with whom I work) told me to come to the Dar Chebab and pick out a color for my classroom. He said I could choose between the colors pink and purple so I was sort of excited to see if maybe I could sort of work around the color choices and see if yellow or orange was available. In any event, when I got there this morning, I saw that my classroom had been painted purple by the workmen. I was sort of peeved but, hey, at least my room has paint right?
I've also really expanded my work schedule lately. I've started to put in hours helping to catalogue a library, help teach English at a girls boarding school, start teaching a yoga/exercise class, and continue the schedule I was already keeping. Needless to say, by the end of the day I'm bushed and I have to sort of drag myself out of whatever chair I've fallen into to go make food. I'm really happy that I have work and I love working in T-town. I now have the challenge of figuring out how I can spend a little less time working and more time maintaining relationships with community members. I also have to figure out when I get 'me' time, haha. I somehow was under the impression that in Peace Corps I would have a lot of down time. So far, I haven't found that yet, and it probably was a misconception.
After lunch, I now find myself sort of hiding in my house for an hour and listening to music, trying to gear up for the rest of the day. I know I have the energy stored somewhere in me, I just have to dig deep for it! At the end of the day, I try to think about what I did and reflect on all my actions. Sometimes I feel like I'm having no tangible effect on this community and then I remember I'm an English teacher and that any work I do will manifest itself differently for each student. Whatever snow I'm shoveling as my manual labor is all intellectual snow. (ok, I know that's vague but I was thinking about a quote from Haruki Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance, where the main character writes boring articles for magazines and newspapers and compares himself to a snow shoveler.)
It's interesting to see how far I've come now that I'm past the 3rd month of actual service. I can't believe that just last September I didn't know a lick of Arabic and now I am pretty functional. I do feel a bit like I've been lazy in terms of language learning. I remember being so utterly terrified of not knowing any Arabic and getting ready to get shuttled off to a completely Arabic and French speaking country, but now that I'm here, I feel like I've reached some sort of language learning plateau and I really need to get back up and keep making the effort I know I can make. On the other hand, I have to remember not to be so hard on myself and not kill myself trying to become a workaholic (which is something I'm prone to do).
Now for something totally different!
Yay it's me and my students!!!!! This is us right now in a place called the Nedi Neswi. My older boys (and one girl) are using this place right now since my Dar Chebab is under construction. (as a side note, I did get all of their permission to post these photos.)