A peaceful day.

I'm so thankful to be home! After my long trek home from IST (In-Service Training), all I really want to do is get back to my modicum of normalcy in T-town. I finally broke down and got out the fan I inherited from the last volunteer and I had it blowing the whole night and I slept so well. Thank God. Two nights ago while I was attending a meeting, I slept in a room where it was so hot I kept getting up to splash water on myself.

Today I feel so thankful to be home because I'm just taking a day to be quiet. I sometimes feel that I spend entire days talking, which is wonderful because I am blessed by so many interested people. However, I also feel that it's healthy to have inside health days in my house. I woke at 8am and decided I needed to clean my whole house and do laundry. The only thing I haven't been able to clean yet is my room (so typical) but I think I'll get around to that later. Right now, I'm just enjoying sitting on my balcony, watching my laundry dry in the warm wind (it's near 100 degrees Fahrenheit here) and reading a book. Later, I think a friend will invite me to go for a walk this evening.

I love my life here. Right now I feel so peaceful and that things are good. Haha, I hope this feeling lasts longer than a day. I have noticed though that my crazy emotions that were so uncontrollable at the beginning have sort of evened out. I'm able to rationalize my thoughts and feelings and I've been realizing that I have a lot more patience with myself than I used to.


And now for your viewing pleasure, it's me wearing genie pants in Marrakech! Also, in the background you can see a guy taking a siesta in the cart.

Meetings, meetings, Meetings, Beach, beach, Beach

Wow, I'm at IST (or In-Service Training), which means I've been in country for 9 months or been a volunteer for 6 months. I can't believe that 9 months ago I was in America, drinking iced coffees, wearing tank tops, and eating bacon whenever I pleased.

I'm so so very happy that instead of Marrakech, where IST was supposed to be held, we were moved to MeHdia. Mehdia is a tiny little beach town which is faaaaantastic. I sit in meetings all day and then go to the beach to go body surfing. Oh life, how I adore you right now. Actually, I pretty much always adore life because I'm in Peace Corps which means I'm accomplishing a bunch of life goals. Now I just need to figure out what my next life goals are. (haha, oh life goals. Well this is why I'm in Peace Corps....I know it's only 6 months into service, but it's never to early to start negotiating and navigating the other side...)

Anywho, I had quite the enjoyable time getting here to Mehdia. So I spent the night in Marrakech two nights ago with a bunch of lovely volunteers and then had the pleasure of their company on the train  the next day. Everything was fine on the train. It wasn't even hot! Hamdullah! THEN, tragedy struck and rocks were hit and some cylinder broke on the train. And then we waited for an hour outside of Casa. Then, once in Casa, we waited for another hour. Then once outside of Casa, we waited for ANOTHER hour. WHY?? If we had been on the train for truly 8 hours in any normal time, we could have made it to Fes instead of just Kenitra....*sigh* Ah well, hadi l' hy'att (That's life) or rather, this is the Moroccan life of mashi mushkil (no problem). It's almost dinner time so I gotta run. Ciao! Bslama! 

New job title: Baladeer

So have I told you I bought a guitar? Oh yes, and it has served to make me extremely happy. Since I don't have any guitar books really, I'm using youtube as my teacher and so far it's worked well. In fact, it's worked so well I've started taking the guitar to Dar Chebab and been teaching what little guitar I know. I realized that my students don't know how to read tablature so I figured this might be a nice intro to anyone who wants to learn about the western system of music. 

Yesterday while I was playing my guitar with a bunch of other students, one student wrote down some lyrics and started singing them. So I asked if he would like me to write chords to the song and make up a melody. He said sure and two minutes later we had our own song. Hooray budding songwriters!

Anyhow, that's the latest and greatest but I'd also like to tell you what I've been up to. So I went to the Rose Fest and helped out in a SIDA (the French version of AIDS) tent at the festival. A group of volunteers and I all attempted to talk to many Moroccan festival goers about SIDA. I felt pretty satisfied about it. In fact, it inspired me to have my own AIDS day event in my town. I was able to convince the local doctor to come to the Nadi Naswi (Women's center) and give a speech about STI's, SIDA, and other areas of women's health. 

It's nice to to be busy but I sense things are definitely slowing down. It's beginning to get warm here and school is coming to an end so we'll see what the summer holds in store for us!

Here's a particularly beautiful sunset that I decided to photograph from my balcony. 

This is my friend Marcus and I at the Rose fest.

When Marcus and I went to lunch, this little lady came out of nowhere and decided my olives were tasty. :)

 Of course, roses at the Rose fest.

I worked the morning shift at the Rose fest. You can just barely make out the snow on the mountains in the distance! Barely. Haha.

This is the AIDS tent where we worked for the few days at the Rose Fest.

I was lucky enough to stay at another volunteer's house who just happens to be friends with a French pastry chef. You have NO IDEA how delicious these were.

And then on an unrelated note, there was a party in my town that I was invited to! 3 hour dance-a-thon? Yes please!

That's all for now. Catch you on the flip side. 

Vascillating

Well today was funky. I began today by really thinking about what impact I was having here in T-town and I was sort of beating myself up because I felt stymied by natural ebbs and flows of population to my classes. I was talking to one of my students on the way home and I thought to myself, this person feels like the only person who cares that I’m here. I mean, I generally think I’m a happy person but these thoughts were rough. What impact am I making here? Does anyone care that I’m here? Why do I care so much about trying to please these people when I’m not sure they want me here? Isn’t this my life dream? Shouldn’t I be trying to give my all? Why is apathy becoming a more normal part of life?

Then out of nowhere, a group of teachers were sitting outside my house at a café when I came home from Dar Chebab. They called me over and started talking to me. As it turns out, they would really like to have me teach some English classes for them. Wow! I feel really elated by this.  I also thought it would be nice if I posted something aside from farm animals and me traipsing around the country. I work, I swear!

Now for a picture of me kissing a Triceratops. 

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!