1 airplane down, 2 to go.

Hey All!

As per usual I've been busy. Busy finishing up Ramadan insomnia (You get so used to being awake at night that being awake during the day is weird), finishing doing nothing (people are coming back to town?), and finishing meetings held in the big city. For the last week, I've attended a volunteer training session, did some serious shopping, then went to another meeting for all the volunteers in the region. It's been busy and I think it will continue to be busy because so many people have returned, school has started, and the feeling of efficacy is in the air. 

First of all, I'd like everyone to rejoice in my purchase of a drip coffee maker. Many of you know that I have a serious coffee drinking problem, but am unwilling to change it. Therefore, in order to celebrate being in Morocco for ONE ENTIRE YEAR, (minus the two weeks I went home) I enabled my favorite vice. Point for me. 

Other cool things to update about: I'm really getting back on the saddle fast; I'm in the works of setting up a girl empowerment camp to take place in January. Inchallah, it'll be fantastic! I'm sincerely blessed by amazing  counterparts who want to work with me. 

Second, I may be doing an trash education project (or as I like to say, 'trashcation'), but more to come on that next month. 

For now, I'll leave you with a post I wrote in the Rome airport while freaking out about how to get to my next terminal and get a boarding pass. Proceed with caution as it was 7am and I still had two more planes to go before reaching home.  

August 2^nd, Rome Airport-on my way home to see the ‘rents.

Here are some important lessons from today’s not-yet-finished adventures.

First lesson: The ONCF train is so awesome for going straight to the airport and not giving me extra hassle when I’m already stressed out.

Second lesson: I found out through empirical means that the Casablanca airport is open and quite busy during the night.

Read: I arrived there at 9:30ish and left at 2:25 in the a.m.

Third lesson: try and get all yo boarding passes.

I think I’m going to give the Casablanca airport one thumb down for not giving me boarding passes all the way through. I mean, I’m only giving them one thumb down because they tried but were unsuccessful for some reason for not getting me my passes. However, half a thumb up for sending my luggage directly to Seattle. Good move there Casablanca.

Fourth lesson: Drink wine when it’s free.

The airline Alitalia is probably the coolest airline I’ve ever been on. Ten thumbs up for giving me free white wine.

Fifth lesson: Don’t panic and bring a towel.

Due to lesson three's occurrence, me getting off a plane to be ferried around by random buses going random places did not make me feel secure. Also, the fact that I knew I had to go talk to some desk at some terminal in which I did not have that information in order to get a boarding pass, did not make me feel good. In fact, it made my heart race. And then I tried speaking Arabic to everyone because doesn’t everyone in Rome speak Arabic? Needless to say, I’m having a really hard time not speaking in other languages while I’m in this airport. I definitely had a moment where I had to go, “Pull it together, Williams!”

Also, washing your face without a towel is uncomfortable.

Sixth Lesson: Cappucinos in the Rome Airport are delicious.

I’m pretty sure that doesn’t require explanation.

So, in conclusion, I think the best way to make me have an anxiety attack is to put me alone in the airport in Rome, when I know that I have to somehow check in and don’t have flight numbers or airline carriers etc. Check.

However! Rome isn’t as bad as I’m making it seem! I mean, if you’ve got the logic powers of a 10 year old, you too can triangulate destinations plus times in order to arrive at the correct gate, sans panic attack. C’est bon, no?

Hope you enjoyed that.
I wanted to put a picture of the Charles de Gaul airport in here....but I realized I already posted that...haha new picture? Ok! Here's a picture of me and my buddy Simo at a birthday party. Yay!

The rough life.

I finally got to experience a really big holiday here in T-town. I passed the end of Ramadan here, called Eid al-Fatir. Finally, on August 30th, everybody got to eat during the day! Hamdullilah! Interestingly enough, my good friend Rachel wanted to visit me for a while and came two days before Eid. Unfortunately for poor Rachel, due to the holiday, transportation shut down and she couldn't get out of town. However, she did get to Eid with me and made the holiday extra special.

During a big holiday like Eid, it's important to go out in the morning and visit all your family and friends and eat tea and cookies at everybody's house. Rachel and I ate at so many peoples' houses that we had to come back to my house and nap through the major sugar crash we had earned through our cookies. 

Here's a picture of Rachel enjoying the company of my baby host sister. 

During the Eid, Rachel and I got snagged into eating couscous at a friend's house. 

I am trying to intimate by my face how ridiculously huge this plate of couscous is. 

What a glorious day it has been! I've been gradually recuperating from traveling and being gone from T-town for two months and I'm really starting to feel myself again.  

Today began productive. I washed my clothes in the bathtub, dumped about 5 buckets of water down my three flights of stairs to clean them, and then squeegeed after. But then, I took a turn and watched about 2 hours of tv. Hah, summer and free time makes me lazy. I'm sort of just kicking around until work starts back up! Lo and behold, I think a little bit of work came my way this next week with people realizing I'm back in town and I'd love to teach English. 

However, I can only do so much alone and so I eventually came out of my house to go visit some friends. When I knocked at her door, my friend wasn't there but I did see that her neighbor's door was open. I walked over to their house and knocked on their door to find out if they knew if my friend was home. They said that they didn't know but then they invited me to come inside, which eventually turned into, "Come see the fields!" How could I not love seeing the fields in the late summer afternoon? Everything smelled rich and earthy and the fields were green. My hosts were kind enough to gather up figs, grapes, and mint to give to me. You should smell the mint! It smells like sweet candy you could just eat then and there. 

We came back to the house after we had wandered around the fields for a while. There my new friends made me mint tea and cookies. After a bit, the girl I had been looking for came into the house  and found me happily nestled in pillows, drinking tea. So everybody chattered for a while until my friend took me to her house for more tea and cookies. 

It's a rough life. 

Stormy afternoons in the dog days of Ramadan.

Okay, I will admit that returning to America was probably bad for morale. You go home, you see all your friends and family, and then return to isolation. I'm probably making that sound too harsh, considering how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many nice neighbors and friends but I can't help but sincerely notice that I am alone. There's also the fact that I haven't been alone for two months. But maybe it's good to be alone; how else do you notice the condition you're in but when you're alone?

And maybe here's another signal that told me that I needed to do some self critique. I went to souk (outdoor vegetable and fruit market) today, bought my vegetables, then came back and slept for another two hours. It's not superbly hot outside. I've been noticing I've been sort of skipping my usual coping mechanisms of exercise and guitar playing. So it occurred to me that I need to talk to other volunteers in country. For the last couple of days, I've been holed up in my house, trying to ease back into the swing of things.  However, it's Ramadan and I don't think I've explained what that is or how that affects T-town. 

Ramadan is an Islamic religious holiday where Muslims abstain from both food and water during the day and then eat at sunset. To know more about the holiday, I shall point you here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/practices/ramadan_1.shtml

Therefore, during Ramadan, this means that T-town is affected economically and socially. Shops are open in the morning and close in the afternoon, only to reopen after lftor (the breakfast meal, held after call to prayer for sunset). Many people sleep during the day and then stroll around town after the breakfast meal. Many children run around the streets in the evening, playing games and socializing. It's a unique part of the year and I'm glad that I get to be in T-town for this experience. 

But why name this post stormy afternoons? It's quite literally storming here, even if it is the edge of the Sahara desert and 99 degrees Fahrenheit, it's raining away. The weather is making me nostalgic for my moody cafe days. Who knew that it rains during the summer here? 

I'm really looking forward to the Autumn months. It'll be nice to get back to work and let the order of a schedule pull me forward. And, thanks to the marvel of cell phones and internet, I'm not that isolated that I can't just call a friend. :) 

And just for kicks and giggles, here's a picture of me, other volunteers, and campers from summer camp!

Home, and back again.

Okay, yes, I have been gone for a month and a half out of T-town, but I have not been just sitting down contemplating life! Let's cover where I've been first. Starting July 3rd, I packed a big suitcase, and went straight up to the capital Rabat, where I worked in an orphanage. Eleven days after that I went to another city named El Jadida, where I became a camp counselor for Summer Camp. And then lastly, I did another 5 days at an orphanage in the same city. So that takes care of all of July, which I had patiently worked through in order to get to August, where I took vacation to go to AMERICA. Oh man, I teared up just walking through JFK. I'm confident people thought I was nuts. I bought my first Starbucks in eleven months and told the barista, "This is the best coffee you have ever made." 

Sweet-sweet America, I can't say enough good things about you and how much I missed you. Your entitled-mid life crises, your barely legal mothers, your mountains of unattainable paperwork, your processes, your legal system and encumbered way of life, etc. The amount of infrastructure that America has is staggering. I mean, it seems as though EVERY road is paved! There are trees and flowers and greenery everywhere. The weather in the Seattle area was a nice cool 68 degrees Fahrenheit the entire time I was home. I was totally unused to it anymore. I got to wear jeans for the first time in two months! Holy cow! This was unbelievable. What a change from the upper 80s of the coast I had been enjoying, and the intense 108 degrees I was getting in T-town. 

Visiting America was an enormous blur. Basically, I went home, ate as much ridiculously good food as I could, shopped, and hung out with friends and family. I even saw a movie in a theater! Egads! Not to say that Morocco doesn't have movie theaters, it's just that they usually have Bollywood, Arabic, or French films. Occasionally there will be English speaking films, but they're usually from a few months back. So, it's a toss-up. But anyways, two weeks in America felt like an ice-cold shock to the system. I think I acted normally but inside I kept thinking that there is American life and there's Moroccan life, and they are two separate worlds. Or rather, one place has my American family and friends and the other has my Moroccan family and friends. I don't even know what to think. On the way back from America, I had a layover in Paris. So I had about 5 hours to kill and I was relaxing in the airport lounge, drinking coffee. While I was trying to put back together my broken heart after leaving America, I heard a mysterious airport voice calling passengers, and there indeed, was a certain 'Williams' called. But I thought that couldn't have been me, my plane wasn't leaving for two hours still. However, I went upstairs after a fair amount of time just looking around and minding my own business. So I looked at my gate and saw that boarding had just closed. So after I about started crying, jumping, and falling on the floor all at the same time, I had to go talk to the airline and switch my tickets, and blah blah blah. Happily though, there was a flight only two hours after my original flight was supposed to take off. I did indeed make it to Morocco only to fall into the arms of my beautiful friend Jolie who let me sleep at her house for the next four days. That's all I'll write for now. More soon. :) 

So, I thought that Charles de Gaul airport had fantastic architecture. 

Here's a picture of Jolie's dog, "Mushkil" (a.k.a. Problem) being adorable as per usual.

And let's end, of course, with some food porn. We made excellent pretzels!

Water is Life

Hey there,

So I know I've taken about a month and a half's worth of hiatus but before I start giving you the lowdown, but before that I'm going to give you some culture time!

As many of you know, T-town is a full on Berber (technically, the dialect Tashlhyt (Tash-l-heet)) town. I sort of forget, now that I'm hanging out with some friends in the North of Morocco that Berber culture is not as prevalent here. I realized that it was time to share with you and everybody else the daily blend of culture I experience. I can't even begin to give you the details on Arab and Berber culture, but click here to get an idea of Berber history and culture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people

Now that that's covered, I want to show you that the rabbit hole goes deeper. Some friends of mine recently introduced me to a band called Tinariwen. This band is Tuareg (meaning, that they come from the interior of the Sahara desert). Also, to learn more about Tuareg people, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people
I love this band's sound, and it is somewhat similar to the music that's played all the time in T-town. Therefore, I want to share this documentary I watched with you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOu4fdlPiWI
And in case that that link doesn't work, youtube: Tinariwen, Aman Iman

Also, just for your information, 'Aman Iman' means 'water is life' in their Tashlhyt dialect. Curiously, I found out that you can buy Tinariwen's cd at Target (wow, the world is small/ recording companies leave no stone un-turned). And haha, yes, that is a shameless plug. Enjoy! BssHa! (To your health!)

Also, special thanks to Rachel Rubinski for this photo! :)

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!