This is what happens when you give a Moroccan a camera!!

Hey everybody! 

My friend Rachel (a PCV) is over and I asked her if she wanted to see the bunnies that live next door!

Rachel says, "Before I even had mah coffee, I had bunnies in my arms!" (That's the Floridian accent)

My neighbor offered us an adult bunny to pet and hold but we weren't having it! We wanted baby bunnies and meant it! If I do get a bunny, I'm going to name it Jenkins!

That bunny is TINY! It's also resting on a recently washed blanket. 

This is a comparison for size. That is Rachel's hand.

The world's most chill bunnay. 

Rachel being delighted by said bunnay. 

This is me every morning!

So I gave my neighbor my camera. It's a plethora of bunnies!

 I knew I had a sheep next door, I just didn't know how close!

I was totally surprised that this showed up on my camera. Isn't he cute? I'm also realizing that almost all of my blog posts are about farm animals.....but that's cool right?

More Bunnies!

I really want the chickens to start laying eggs! I want some!

And that's been neighbor fun times with Aly and friends. 

Must...not...procrastinate....

Molly McNeilly, if you read this, I no longer have your email and I want it so I can talk to you!!! Miss you!

Anyhow, hey everybody! Nice to see you, sorry I've not written sooner. I just finished a training for the Volunteer Support Network and so now I'm going to be working on my counselor skills! Hooray! I'm really interested in working on mental health while I'm in country (and after of course).

In any event, I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Last week end, I took a fun trip to go see a good friend of mine for my birthday. We (plus a bunch of other great people) watched the superbowl and really had a rousing time. After I came home, I wrote a speech in Arabic, had my students and tutor look it over and then gave a speech to all of 10 people (most of them were my students). So...at least my community meeting is over! Right? Yeah...it's over for now. Haha, I'm considering doing another speech next month Inchallah.

This next week I'm definitely looking forward to heading off up north to go to my first big Peace Corps conference called PPST (that is to say post training training hah). I'm really looking forward to seeing some volunteers I haven't seen in 3 months! I'm not looking forward to a language test....which I should probably study for. Ha, I feel like a typical college student. In fact, I'm procrastinating right now from turning in an important document to Peace Corps in order to write this post....oh procrastination, you're totally going to make me stay up all night writing this. 

The good, the not-so-good, and the terrifying.

Hey all,

So, the good news! I got my computer back as you may have noticed.

The not so good: I lost a lot of information but I will slowly and surely put my lifeline back together again. My computer also took a little vacation without telling me. This is to say that, I had a miscommunication with the guy who fixed it (not his fault, he was after all speaking a language he knows well, and I was doing the opposite of that) happily though, everything turned out ok. I'm so glad to have it back!

The Terrifying: Sorry I've not posted recently. About that. I've been trying to put together a community assessment on my town, which is more or less coming together. The real problem is is just trying to make myself sit down and type it all out. I was reflecting today why I haven't just punched it out yet. Why can't this be like college, where I just spend endless hours on it? Oh yeah, because this isn't college and I am putting together a somewhat coherent and professional piece of work, which in itself is sort of a terrifying thought. Aside from that, I am also signing on to actually speak in front of the community I serve.

"What? No, you're joking," you must think. Au contraire, mes amis! Somehow, I am going to make a sincere effort and give a 15 minute speech in Arabic (more or less....) Hopefully, I'll just say it, and get it out of the way and then we'll have some sort of discussion after that about how I can better serve the community or about the needs I didn't address, etc. My Arabic is shwia (not so fantastic-but what do you expect? I've only been speaking this language for 5 months) but I'm going to give it the good old college try! Can't ding me for effort! We'll see how that goes. For now, I turn 23 tomorrow! First birthday I've ever had in a foreign country and I'm rather looking forward to it. 

Not a good day.

Today is the day I have always feared. So I was an idiot and looking for simple patches so I could fix my problem with Microsoft office. I downloaded a faulty patch. My computer thought it was a virus, cleaned itself and then shut off. I can't get it out of boot mode. I realized that since I don't have the OEM disc I can't even put that in the cd drive to see if my comp will take that.

So tomorrow I am taking my computer to the city to see if I can find a computer store. *sigh* I am really hoping it works because otherwise, it's going to be an interesting 7 months until I can come home and retrieve a new computer. Blargh.

 Thankfully I do live next to a cyber cafe which is where I am typing this, so atleast I can check email.  I think I would really lose my marbles without this place.

Schadenfreude

Happily I have been busy lately. For a while I was overwhelmed with things and so ridiculously tired that I would fall into bed and sort of wait around until I thought I should really drag myself from bed. 

So when I haven't been constantly buying and haggling over items in which to put in my house, I have been attempting to clean my house. Today I even put down a carpet and for some reason that makes my bedroom feel more like a bedroom and less like a room I sometimes use. Little by little I am buying things. One day I may even buy a dresser for clothes! Who knows what the future has install for me?  It's funny how fast your emotions can change here too. This morning I was feeling somewhat blue, so I began to clean. While I cleaned, I put my music on shuffle and on came Paul Simon's "Born at the Right Time," and it filled my heart with joy. From then on, the day was a breeze.

I went to work a bit later and I have picked up a new teacher who wants to help me. He watched me in class and spoke with me afterwards and told me I was too nice to the students. So I thought to myself, "What the heck? How? What? Mafhmch! (I don't understand!)" So I decided to watch him take charge of the class for a while and see what he did. He kicked two students out of the class! I couldn't help but feel awkward, but after discussing this with him, it seems to me that this was sort of a necessary step in me learning how to develop dominance over the students. I never thought that I would end up quite literally forcing students from the class but the rest of the class now understands that I mean business when it comes to teaching. I was proud of myself today when I forced students who were disrupting the rest of the class out. I talked to the other teacher who watched the whole episode and later he told me he was happy. Finally! Someone is happy with something I do! I can't help but feel the irony though. It's weird to feel happy about making someone suffer.....schadenfreude anyone?

After work, I went to my host family's house. I can't help but gush over them. They always make me feel sort of normal in a culture where I am constantly stared at. I am superbly thankful that my host father is interested in history and religion. Today he was asking me about what was haram (Arabic for forbidden) for Christians? I immediately thought of the Ten Commandments and then proceeded to list off all of them except for the last two commandments. Wait? What? What were the last two commandments? How could I possibly forget? So of course, I did the natural thing, which is to ask google. Wikipedia tells me that the last two commandments I had forgotten (For those of you who care, I didn't list them in a particular order)was the commandment to take the Sabbath as a holy day and the commandment not to lie. So simple it slipped my mind. Ah well, si c'est la vie!

Then my host father asked me which was closer to the true Sabbath day, Jews, Muslims, or Christians. I felt it important that I go with the historical answer that I know of. Jews have one of the oldest religions, so they have the oldest mark on the Sabbath day (which the holy day is Saturday). In fact, Saturday in Arabic (and I'm sure in Hebrew, or at least it's close) is sbbt. We have the Gregorian calendar to mark how old Christianity is. Also, I'm pretty sure that the last time I checked, Islam didn't begin a calendar until at least after the 640s c.e. 

I've also been holding out on you. I began a new book which is a great read, called, The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. 

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004E3XIAI/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0316011770&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1PBCBCX0JRSGT5BZ7C73

Fresh vegetables never tasted so good!

I HAVE A HOUSE! EYOW! It was a super crazy ordeal getting it but by jove it's mine for two years! After depositing an amazing amount of stuff in my house that I have magically accumulated in the two months I've been here, it occurred to me that at some point I need to organize this place. So on today's agenda was the following: buy organizing tools, tables, chairs, cleaning supplies, cooking tools, and let's not forget some vegetables! When I got home, I rinsed off those veggies so fast and then took a huge bite of a green pepper. I almost cried it tasted so good. I'm thoroughly convinced that buying and cooking my own vegetables was the highlight of today.

After buying all of the above, I taught for a bit at the Nedi Neswi and then to my happy delight, I came home and began to organize my kitchen. I did what I always do and booted up the old computer and turned on some country music! Somehow when you're all alone in your brand new house in a foreign land, listening to something straight from the heartland somehow makes everything feel better. I discovered that happily I have an abundance of spices that were left to me from the previous PCV. With spices in hand, I realized that I had the power to make (wait for it....) CURRY EGGS AND VEGETABLES! I even bought a little thing of olive oil. When I bought the bottle of oil I thought to myself, is that a big enough bottle? Then I realized the different rates of oil use that I had forgotten to analyze.  My host family probably uses about a liter of oil a week for cooking. I realized that I probably use about, oh say, a liter of olive oil over a period of about 4-6 months. But anyhow, I made myself dinner for the first time in little under 4 months. The first bite was pure bliss.

New Years, with a little help from my friends.

So two hundred people just heard me sing the Beatles' song, "Help." Poor people. The reason I was singing is because the town I live in threw a huge party. To start out with the kids asked me to come to the Dar Shebab by at least 4. When I got there, the room was filled with people and the most amazing spread of cakes, cookies and asundry other sweets. I was placed with a bunch of teenage girls who I know and like and then we played a quiz game for the next hour and a half. Somehow, someone took pity on the poor English speaking girl and happily the English teachers were sat at my table. They then helped translate the questions asked by the MC so that I could pretend to donate an answer to the table.

After a while, the MC asked all the tables to send one person to sing a song or tell a joke in front of the crowd. Of course, funny American girl is picked and sent off. After racking my brains for a few minutes, BINGO! I would sing "Help," (because isn't that just what I needed then?) by the Beatles. So, I closed my eyes and blared away for a few seconds and hamdullah, I made it through. And afterwards, somehow my hand was grabbed and then I was dancing in the middle of the room. Ah, the terribly awkward dancing! (I am such a self conscious dancer!) But overall, I'm really happy I went to the party, it was definitely a cause for fun and I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard or smiled for so long.