Let's go ahead and update this thing!

Hey everyone! Yes, I know it's been a month since I've updated. Hashuma aliya! (shame on me!) But now it's time to give you the low down on what's been happening! 

First of all, I went away from T-town up north to a nice place in the middle of nowhere to participate in Spring camp! A rich and old tradition for all Youth Development PCVs. I had a brilliant time, only teaching English in the mornings and then doing activities in the evenings with the kids. We even had a talent show where my friend and fellow PCV Phil and I decided to sing our hearts out to Moulin Rouge's "Elephant Love Song melody." I'm pretty sure the kids had no idea what hit them. There was also some amazing dancing that the kids demonstrated and even one student who performed stand up comedy. Awesome. I was really sad to leave them and there was definitely a lot of crying at the end of all the festivities. 

So there was a whirlwind of traveling after my Spring camp. I decided to visit my friend and PCV in Errachidia, then the next day went down into Zagora province, only to make friends with a Columbian girl on the bus who didn't have a place to stay for the night. Unfortunately the place I was staying didn't have an extra bed, but happily we found a really sweet place for her to stay with a beautiful garden. We even ate with her the next day and it turns out she also does volunteer work in Columbia. What a happy coincidence. 

Last Saturday, I headed out to buy a guitar from my friends who are leaving the country. I realized that I was close to another PCV of mine. As it turns out, it's a nice 4.5 mile hike out to her douar (village) (that is to say, 4.5 miles in and out to a place where she can get to the nearest city to buy anything). On the other hand, now I can't put the guitar down and I carry it with me everywhere. I've been singing old Beatles tunes ever since spring camp and having a guitar to accompany myself just seems so right. I think the students really appreciate it too because they don't get music or much in the way of creativity in their schools. 

Eventually I came home and got myself back in the flow of things which has included going to the ministry to get them to open my Dar Chebab. Hamdullilah now it's open! YES! I even have a very nicely painted purple classroom. I'm just happy to be back in a space that the youth and I know is ours to be loud and proud in. 

Easter was also rather pleasant here, I'm happy to say. I went and hung out with a bunch of friends in the city and we all made a bunch of delicious food and had ourselves an all around good time. Sunday morning I went to a Christian gathering and we had ourselves a really fantastic service. Singing hymns made me very nostalgic but I'm glad I went and enjoyed some community time with other ex patriots in the city. 

So! At spring camp there were no bathing facilities, so my friend Liz (another PCV) and I jumped into the sinks in the courtyard and washed our hair and our feet. 

My students have been taking me out into the fields to get a better feel of the town and the surrounding agriculture. Part of me feels like a hick and the other part of me is inexplicably happy. 

This sign said Welcom Tamazirt (Tamazirt= Berber culture) when I first saw it. The English teacher in me made me and my students go add an 'E' at the end. 

Meanderings in my stream of consciousness.

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!

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.)

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.

And it's been six months in country now....

Hey there!

So here's an update of what's been happening. I and a friend of mine put on a breast cancer event in my town, which went over fairly well. I definitely had some communication issues but that's sort of to be expected. I've only been speaking Arabic for 6 months now. There is no way I could have done the event without the help of my students. They were the real masterminds and made it all happened. I just happened to be coordinating and I'm so thankful they were willing to work with me.

As a side note, I have a bunch of photos of my students and my current workplace for those of you who want them and Inchallah, I'll be putting those up soon!

My boss came this last week. He asked me to start trying to do more in the community and I'm happy to use my networking skills to my advantage! I felt happy that he came down to visit me in my little T-Town (this is my new name for my site, since I'd rather not reveal it's location in such a public space).

Alright, so my mom thought I should post this story, and it probably is sort of precious. The other day I was demonstrating yoga moves at my nedi neswi. I, of course, wasn't thinking and was wearing jeans. So I was switching legs while in a lunge and then hark! A sound was heard! Nope, not flatulence (I sort of wish it was in this case) but my pants ripped. It's a good thing I don't have any dignity left. So I quietly excused myself (God bless those women for not mocking me to death) and tied my jacket around my waist and walked home. Good bye jeans! Glad I bought you at a Moroccan thrift store. 

Speaking of yoga, I attempted to have my first yoga class in T-town. Sadly no one came except the girl I asked to help me in translating. Ah well, I'm going to try again this week and we'll see how it goes. I'm not too terribly worried about it. 

The really fantastic thing about today was that I found this awesome girl about my age who wants to tutor me in Arabic and Tashlhyt! Hamdullilah! I'm stoked that I have a new friend. :)

Aaaand just for you, here are some pictures of my birthday last month courtesy of one Hannah Beswick! Thanks Hannah!

Basically all of us ate this cake until it was in the shape of Africa. Waka Waka Africa!

An Average Day

I realize many of you have been asking what do I do on a normal day. Here's more or less a normal day for me:


A typical day looks like me laying in the fetal position. Haha, just kidding...sort of.

Thank God I'm actually home before 8pm! I might learn how to cook eggplant tonight. I never knew how much my palate was going to expand when I came to Morocco. Moroccans can cook man!

Anyhow, a normal day looks like this:

Wake up at 8:30 (no matter how late I stay up I always wake up at 8:30!!)

Check email and the New York Times website. If there's an interesting article I peruse it. 

Eat yogurt.

 

Do yoga.

Contemplate doing laundry in the bathtub/cleaning my room/writing letters and then generally default to writing lessons for my classes I'm going to teach at night. 

At around 10/11 I generally take my morning 20/30 minute walk to the post office, talk to the post office guys, talk to anyone else who is friendly and ignore cat calls. 

Upon returning home, I look up new games to play with my kids. Then I usually start thinking about lunch about this time and proceed to make, eat, and clean up. Unless it's Friday. If it's Friday, then the entire country (and I don't kid about this) goes to their houses to eat cous cous with their families. I go to my host family's and eat their cous cous or try to make myself scarce because thinking about eating cous cous isn't too appetizing right now. 

Anyhow, after lunch, I either get sort of tired and default to taking a nap or putter around my house until I realize I've just done nothing for two hours and then by this time it's around 3 o clock and I feel like I need to be productive. So I go to a cafe and study language or work on lesson planning or something to that effect.

When 4 rolls around, I wander off to my classroom (which is in a building where women go to get educated). I wait for a half an hour (even though my class technically starts at 4) for students to show up and I awkwardly entertain until I have more than 3 students to actually teach something. 

At 5:30 my older students (or more advanced English speaking boys) show up. I usually start with a game of some sort and then maybe do a scotch of legitimate English teaching and then resort to more games. After the last game, I kick all the younger students out and then I work with my older kids who have written essays. We usually correct and discuss them for a half an hour and then my students walk me home. 

When I finally get home at around 8pm, I'm usually starving so I throw my stuff down and head to the kitchen to make dinner. After I'm done it's usually 10pm and by then I'm under the covers watching a tv show or reading a book. I'm generally out by 12. 

That's a pretty typical day! All in a day's work. 

Alexander and the Terrible-No-Good-Very-Bad-Day

I think I may have figured out something. I don’t think I have such a major problem on basic communication skills. I think my problem may be with regular conversation skills. I literally encounter at least 7 non sequiturs in any one day.  I’ve realized it’s not as much the words that people are saying; I just can’t follow the logic of the conversation. For example:

Person:  Ah, Alyah, you’ve been gone for a while. You disappeared! (I get this about everyday, “I disappeared,” and I always think, ‘no I didn’t, I always know where I am.’)

Aly: Yes, I took a test near Fes, like I told you I was going to two weeks ago.

Person:  Did you do well?

Aly: Yes! I did just fine thanks. 

Person: So your mother’s name is Audrey?

Aly: What? Did you just say the word ‘Audrey?’ Wait, what does this have to do with what we were talking about?

Then I usually proceed to look flustered and go glossy-eyed because all of the sudden I realize I feel like I'm making mouth sounds and we have come to the impasse of: nous ne comprenons pas les uns les autres (we don't understand each other).

Here’s another linguistic anomaly I’ve noticed. People repeat things about 4 times in a conversation with me. Honestly I can’t blame them. I can barely speak their language so my conversation partner generally tries to make sure I understand what’s happening. On the other hand, people repeat things to me about 4 times even when they understand I’m not confused. For example:

Aly: I’m leaving for a week to go take a test and get technical training.

Person: Oh, alright. Will you take a bus to get there?

Aly: Yes, I’ll take a bus and return the Sunday after this.

Person: Great, so you’re taking a bus, right?

Aly: Yes, I’m taking a bus.

Person: You’ll be gone for the whole week?

Aly: Yes.

It’s definitely been one of those tear-your-hair-out sort of days. Do you remember the book, Alexander and the Terrible-No-Good-Very-Bad-Day? Well, if you don’t, it pretty much helped make sense of why the world was a not comforting place some days as a young child. In fact, it’s probably one of the big reasons why I want to go to Australia. Alright, I admit that does seem like a non sequitur, but trust me, read the book and you’ll get it.

For tomorrow, I’m going to do some yoga and then I’ll be all hearts, stars and rainbows until I realize I have to go figure out how to wrangle a classroom of 15 super stoked teenagers.

Yella! (Let’s go in Moroccan Arabic)

Laundry list

I thought you would appreciate this list. I will give you a better picture of what's going on right now but for now you're going to have to settle for this.

I just made these notes on my notepad so I can remember to do things, I thought you would like to read them.


write cile a letter
Find so and so on facebook.
Do laundry in bathtub.
Rinse half an hour later.
Update blog
See ministry of Health
CALL IMPORTANT GUY TOMORROW (I have to do that....oh responsibilities)
Make bagels
Start re-hydrating beans
Buy shelves
Be happy

It's a good thing they think I'm slow.

So, this day is deserving of another post. So, Rachel and I went over to this family's house for couscous. After lunch, the father asked me if I wanted to wear traditional Berber costume. Uh, of course! The following pictures are the consequences of such actions.

Who wouldn't want to buy me an appletini?

 Ah yes, gaze at my head dress while I look majestically to my right.

It's like we're the happiest little family!

And now comes for the second part of this blog. This is a much sadder story. So Rachel and I were on our merry way to buy things to make chili. All of the sudden I realized, I didn't have my keys.

W
H
A
T
?

So after a couple of minutes of frantically trying every key I had in my pocket (alas, not the right key, which I knew, yet tried them all anyway) into the lock to see if it would turn. I'm pretty sure I enacted the definition of insanity.

None of them worked, of course. After thinking of every way to break into my house, I gave up. So I went to my neighbor's store. I asked him if he knew of a locksmith. Well, of course he did! That locksmith turned out to be a regular handyman. He actually took a hammar and a peg and pegged out my lock. Yes, he practically beat down my door. Yay! I had an open door! Boo...I didn't have a way to close it. So then, me and this guy who was helping me ran all over town trying to find the perfect lock (why, I'm not 100% sure), but eventually we settled on one. When I returned to my door, my neighbor just kept clucking his tongue at me and telling me hashuma alik (as in, shame on you/why the heck would you forget something like that?)

This is the door that caused it all!!

In other good news: Hey! Cow hooves! YeeeeEESSS!