So, on my way to Rabat for a yearly medical exam, I have stopped at my friend Liz's site near Casablanca to help her with a project. We have also had some time to make some freakishly delicious food. I know I talk a lot about food but I think it's because it's something I really miss a lot since I'm not at home for the holidays. Needless to say we've been making orange chicken, teriyaki beef, and most importantly today apple turnovers. Not only did we make applesauce to go into the turnovers but we were listening to Christmas music while making them. 

Liz enjoying orange chicken (which we called for sake of the dish, but it's actually orange turkey)

Watching Liz cook the turnovers on the stove. You never know what cool things you can do with a stove until you don't have an oven. 

Liz wanted to give a box of applesauce and turnovers to her shop keeper who lives nearby.

Well now that we gave the turnovers to the nice hanut lady, she invited Liz and I to her house. Hooray! She happened to have a bunch of family who lived upstairs and they had a baby. They let me hold the baby and I got to coo at it! I was stoked, haha. And then of course we watched the baby naming ceremony they had on dvd. Basically an Usbu3 (baby naming ceremony) is a party where everyone comes to the house and greets the newly-named baby. So, why are we watching a baby-naming party? Generally at parties or weddings there will be someone taping everyone and the bride and groom or baby and mother. Therefore, you can show every friend and relative who wasn't at the party what they missed! 

And thus ends another good day here in Morocco. :D

Girls Empowerment Camp

Since September, I've been working with my counterpart, El Jallali Abdelaaziz on designing and funding a Girls Empowerment Camp. I walked into the Dar Chebab (Youth Center) one day in September and we sat down and I asked him if he thought it was a good idea to make a camp whose goals were to encourage education, employment, and self-reliance among Moroccan teenage girls. The camp will be held at the end of January during the winter break holiday at the local girls' boarding school. The 50 attending girls are from my town and the surrounding rural villages, ages 15-17. Jallali and I have asked a female doctor, lawyer, and  leader of a carpet cooperative, all from my area, to speak to the girls. I have also asked 10 other Peace Corps Volunteers to come to the camp to help implement activities such as discussions on women's right's career development, women's health, and of course, dancing. The camp is also designed to empower more adult women in my community. I have asked for 10 women from the community to pair with a volunteer so that they may better instruct the girls through each activity.

Honestly, Jallali has been meeting me almost every day to help plan this camp and I'm pretty sure it could not have happened without him. He's helped me get this camp off the ground by turning in paperwork to the president of the community, arranging the camp space in the girls' boarding school, and talking to the ministry  of youth and sports about the camp. He's also been curious about writing his own grants, which in my opinion is fantastic. I am really looking forward to helping him make connections with various international and Moroccan organizations that will help him continue to do development projects. In my opinion, this is Peace Corps' goal number 1 in action (goal number 1 being: volunteers bringing technical assistance to interested countries).  

However, El Jallali and I are now looking for grantors, which happily, can be you dear reader! Feeling the Christmas spirit? Interested in International Women's rights? Why not donate to this camp and see the direct benefit to a camper's life? I invite you to donate to this project by clicking here: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=378-175

And of course, picture time: 

Here are the wall paintings that Rachel and I did during 3id K'bir (and talked about in a previous post). 'Bismillah' means, 'In the name of God.' You also say it when you eat and this is why we painted it in the kitchen. 

Here's the hand of Fatima we painted in Rachel's salon!

And here's me being ridiculous with Rachel's monster refrigerator. It's literally a monster. 

Do you see how ridiculously good our Thanksgiving was? It was SO good. Myself and a bunch of other volunteers celebrated Thanksgiving at Rachel's (another volunteer who lives close to me). We even had bacon-wrapped turkey! Egads!

And, of course, during 3id k'bir (the big holiday) I got bored and made pickles. :D They were delicious!!

So now you've seen some holiday fun with us. Please support our holiday fun by donating to my grant! You'll have my thanks forever, and if you tell me you donated, I can send you something neat in the mail! 

:D :D :D