So as of May 5th (happy cinco de mayo!) I am officially an employee of sorts of the U.S. government as a peace corps volunteer!! We finished up our training in our village a few days before that. Our final assignment was to create a health lesson and present it to our specified audience. My PST site mates and I decided on creating a presentation on germ awareness and to speak to a classroom of 9-10 year olds. One of our site mates is a tremendously talented artist and created a wonderful poster for us. We had the kids play a game of "hot apple" and tossed around an apple that secretly had glitter on it to show how germs spread. Then we had extra apples and we practiced washing our hands and the apples, then afterwards we divided the apples and had a nice snack. Even with a bit of language difficulties, it was a really good lesson. The kids seemed to enjoy the activities and they were already pretty knowledgeable of germs and what they do. On our last evening in our PST site, we invited all of the families over for a going away/thank you party. We had no idea that we would end up hosting the whole village! people brought drums and various instruments over and our host moms dressed all of us girls up in the traditional wedding outfits. It was awesome! Fortunately we had enough cookies and fruit for everyone who came by. Leaving the next day was difficult though. The night before, my sister took me around to her friends houses for me to say good bye. There was a lot of crying and even my sister eventually broke down that morning that we had to leave. I really was blessed to have such a wonderful host family there. Luckily our PPST (another training session after 3 months of being in our final sites) will only be 30 minutes away from my PST site so I will be able to go visit them soon!
So I am finally at my site and starting to get settled in to the expectations for the next two years! My host family is really nice here, but definitely different than in PST. I have a much larger family; 2 sisters and 3 brothers ranging from 16 years old to 4 years old. My sister makes bread every day and it is soo delicious!! I have had so many different types of food here: Tagula, tasaht, tabaht, and I witnessed my first lizard tajine...and I know that I saw that same lizard alive the day before with a string tied around its waist and being played with...I'm still getting used to the way animals are treated here. I will definitely never be used to it, but maybe I will be able make a difference later on when my language skills are better.
So for the first week here in site, my site mate and I have visited the local medical clinic and the high school. The workers at the health clinic are very accommodating, which isn't always the case here. We hope to visit the other schools in the next couple of weeks. We have to do a lot of traveling for various PC business. I am going to visit Agadir next weekend!! It is a coastal city that is very modern, from what I hear!
More pictures are to come! Stay tuned!
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