Hi everyone! Merry belated Christmas and happy new year! I hope everyone is staying warm and enjoying time with family and friends. Tata is a pretty nice place to spend the winter. The days stay around 80 and the nights don’t get below 50. But given that my house is made of cement it turns into a fridge that stays at 60 or so throughout the day. I have to put on warm clothes when I am inside the house. Work is going along pretty nicely. I’ve been teaching health lessons inside the schools every month and also at the sbitar. The principal told me that he wants to create a health and environment room to do lessons in. He wants all kinds of technology things like a tv, dvd, projector and what not. That may end up being my main project for the time being.
During the month of December I celebrated a holiday by climbing up a mountain! Not a very big one, but it was certainly a workout  I’ve been doing a lot of biking these days a coupld of weeks agio I traveled to see some other PCVs. The total trip was about 44 miles and I did it in two days! It was really fun to bike around my site because I pass camel herds all the time.
Christmas and new years were very nice. I went to Tata and some other PCVs joined and we made nachos for dinner ad had a white elephant gift exchange. For new years I went to agadir. I was able to see fireworks and danced in a club until 2:30am. I love agadir!
January was a pretty mellow month. I went on a lot of picnics with the girls in my site. We packed a mule with supplies and walked about 1 mile away from the village. We basically set up a camp and cooked breakfast and lunch out in the middle of nowhere. We had tea and coffee and I brought a soccer ball for us to play with. In the village the girls don’t play soccer, so I was so surprised to see how much skill these girls had! They made teams and goals and were calling fouls and taking penalties. It was amazing to witness!
February has been one of my busiest months! I had another regional meeting at the beginning of the month. It was really nice to meet volunteers from other sectors and exchange information, resources, and ideas about projects. I got a lot of information about youth development and hope to start doing some leadership and team building games with the students in my site. And right after the meeting, my mom came into country!! I took her on a ten day tour of Morocco; we visited Fez and had some absinthe tea (don’t get the wrong idea, it is just herbal tea) and bought some clothes, then we traveled to a town outside of Beni Mellal and she got to enjoy some recently pressed olive oil; our next adventure was to Marrakech where she enjoyed harira and galanga tea in the Jemaa El Fnaa. We shopped a little more before we traveled down to agadir and enjoyed the beach and the English pub. Next on the list was my site, where she experienced henna and tried on some traditional outfits of the sahara. She also visited my sbitar and met the midwife nurses that work there. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to see souk and walk around to see everyone in the village. ** a note to pcvs who are reading this and are having family visit soon: I HIGHLY encourage you to spend a lot of time in your site. Mom and I only stayed for two days and I truly regret not giving ourselves more time to really enjoy spending time with family and friends there. Had I known what I know now I would have had my mom stay in site for at least 5 days to a week!** I think she had a good time and it was really nice for my host family to meet family from the states. They keep asking when she is going to return (enshollah ;) )
So in less than a week I will have been in Morocco for a whole year! Peace corps life really hasn’t been anything like I had expected, but I am so happy to be having these experiences. I am so pleased with my decision even with all of the ups and downs, frustrations and let downs, miscommunications, and cultural faux pas, and I can’t at this moment imagine anywhere else I want to be or anything else that I would rather be doing. I can’t believe I’ve already learned so much and I still have another year and two months to go. I plan to make a trip to the states in may, so if anyone is in the Wichita or manhattan ks area please let me know! I want to get in touch with people and catch up!! Until next time, be safe and keep on keeping on!

Cheers,
Bjai

LEid and getting ready for thanksgiving

*Ok, this blog was written a REALLY long time ago. I appreciate your interest inspite of my delay in entries. I have decided to write my entries a little differently. They will be more like journal entries with dates on them so if it takes me a long time to submit, you will know when I wrote it J Thanks for keeping up with me and my life in Morocco!*

(between the months of October and November)

Hello all of my wonderful family, friends, and blog followers! I thank you guys for checking in and keeping up with what I have been up to and learning in Morocco. So I get a couple of magazines a month from the National Peace Corps Association, and the theme of this month’s magazine is about fulfilling the third goal of peace corps: bringing our experience back home. The official statement of the third goal is … but in my terms, it is about taking our experiences as volunteers and using them to help other people expand their own worldview. I hope that my entries are helping you all see this part of the world in a new, exciting light. I always encourage you to do your own research about this wonderful country and culture that I am immersed in. My point of view should not at all be taken as a generalization of Morocco as a whole, not even as a generalization of the province of Tata as a whole. That’s what is so fascinating about this country! It is hard to believe that even within a few miles of a big city with fancy clothes, lap tops, Mercedes benzes, and washing machines there are communities that have to fetch water twice a day, wake up at 5am to bake their own bread, wash their clothes in a ditch, and are just as happy as those big city folks. Maybe more so. I still can’t get over the wonderful hospitality of my community members. They are teaching me so many wonderful things about how to approach life and daily situations.

Yesterday (October 11^th) I did my first lesson at the local health clinic. I spoke to women about family planning and the different methods offered at the clinic. I think that it went pretty well and I was able to explain everything well enough for the women to understand me. Tomorrow, Eric and I are going to do a lesson on handwashing at one of the grade school classrooms. We are going to help them make a poster of their hand prints for world handwashing day.

So for the passed couple of days I’ve been sick with a bad cold. It really sucks to be sick in another culture. I have people telling me that the wind made me sick (which I can understand their logic… wind = cold weather = lowered body temp = harder time for immune system to fight off microbes) and that I’ve been riding my bike too much. They keep telling me that I should stop drinking really cold water because that is what makes you sick. I’ve also been told what remedies will cure it. A mixture of coffee, vinegar, and lemon juice will get rid of it, as well as mixing yogurt with instant coffee as a medicine. My community members also don’t seem to use rest as a way of getting better. I don’t really want to be around anyone because I don’t want to make anyone else sick, but they tell me that I should walk around to make me feel better. I hope my cold doesn’t last for very much longer because I can’t handle having 5 “medical experts” checking in on me for very much longer J They are being very sweet by looking after me to make sure that I’m alright.

I have an interesting story about interacting with forgeiners in my community. On the 14^th of octber, outside my health clinic, a group of mechanics set up shop on the road. The mechanics were servicing cars that were coming through the town as part of a week-long rally that traversed all over Morocco. At first I was really excited to see other English speakers and wanded the opportunity to speak with them. But as I kept watching and observed the different, subtle ways that they were treating my fellow community members and their town, I grew a little annoyed with them, maybe even a little bit angry. I started to look at the bigger picture of the situation going on in front of me: This group of foreigners, coming in with no way of communicating with the people, using their road; And when their cars are all fixed up they drive off like they are on a race track when the road is full of kids. I could also get a vibe of prejudice coming from them. I am surprised with my reaction a bit, for I felt a little protective of my friends around me. I wasn’t very comfortable with the idea that the visitors may have thought more of me because I spoke English and am American. And despite whatever I feel, there is no way to change it. That is life. All I can do is be a good friend to my host country nationals and spread the word of understanding and tolerance to you lovely people.

At the beginning of November, I head to Marrakech for another training. I will learn about grant writing and take a break from my site to re-focus my plans and organize a bit more. Thanks to all who keep up with me and in case I can’t talk to you all before, have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

PPST and my birthday!!

Hey everyone!! I’m sorry again that it has been so long since my last post. It has been an unlucky time for internet this past month; I usually only have enough time to read (and try to respond) to emails and research PC business. I hope the weather states side is bearable for you all. So what all have I been up to lately? Well about a week ago I attended my Post- Pre Service Training (PPST). It is a time where all of us health volunteers can come back together, take a break from our sites, share our experiences, and get some formal technical training to prepare us for executing projects in our sites. Even with all of the training seminars I had to attend (which were indeed very helpful and informative) I would dare to call it two weeks of heaven! We stayed in this wonderful hotel in Ouarzazate that had air conditioning, a huge swimming pool with club music, and great food (despite the lousy service). I was able to get up every morning and swim laps!! And on Friday nights, we went to this nearby club and danced until 4 in the morning! To go from three months in the bled with 120* F sun w/o AC, no real outlet for exercise, and not a whole lot to do besides talking to people and studying tashelheit, that place was pretty awesome. It was also really great to see my fellow volunteers and catch up on what everyone had been up to. It was really nice to hear everyone’s stories so far and it was also reassuring for me because despite how different everyone’s site is, so many of us had similar experiences and feelings over the past three months. The training seminars we attended consisted of various topics surrounding health issues in Morocco: Maternal and Child health, Water and sanitation, hygiene practices, HIV/AIDS, as well as helpful workshops on how to introduce peer education into the schools, how to prepare and give a lesson, and we had a panel of 2^nd year volunteers discuss how to handle Ramadan and also to just talk about their own experiences during their first 6 months of service. A lot of ideas were generated from the trainings, which I am thankful for. It finally gives me more of a direction as far as what I want to work on during my service here. I still need to do some assessing of more specific topics, such as bathroom access, water sanitation, and maternal health, but hopefully by November, I can get something big rolling that will really help out the community. For right now, I’m just going to work on preparing health lessons to teach in the schools. It is a good and simple way to establish my role as a health volunteer in the community and allows me to practice my language in a very public setting.

Another great event that recently came and went was my birthday!! It couldn’t have been more convenient to be right at the end of PPST. The Friday night before, I danced at the club with all of my friends, and then the next day a big group of us headed to Agadir for the weekend!! On the night of my birthday, we were able to find a restaurant that served asian food, and everyone chipped in to pay for my meal! Then we headed out to the English pub and listened to some interesting karaoke music :O) The next day we spent all day at the beach. I also traveled to a nearby surf town called tagazoute and hung out with some pretty cool people. The view there was beautiful! All in all, I’d say that it was one of my best birthdays (it is definitely up there with last year’s birthday, Lizzy B. J)

So today (8/19/2010) marks the first week of Ramadan, the ninth month on the Islamic calendar. Ramadan is the month of fasting where Muslims fast (that means no food OR water) from sun up to sun down. There are people who are exempt from fasting: children who have not yet hit puberty, the elderly, pregnant women, lactating women, women who are menstruating, and people who are sick. They know when it is time to break fast when they hear the call to prayer (tiwitchi). This occurs around 7:15pm. Moroccans break fast with dates, cakes, and soup, this sweet, nutty dry paste called slilu, and this cold drink of corn flour, sugar and water, called goofia. Breaking fast is a glorious time because the food is so great! This is my first time experiencing Ramadan and I decided to fast the whole month! The first day was terrible, but since then it hasn’t been too bad. The town is pretty much dead during the day; everyone spends it laying down and/or sleeping. I’ve spent a lot of my time reading and studying, trying not to sleep too much during the day. So I have the first week down and two more to go! I have no doubt that I will be able to fast for the whole month, but I’ll keep you posted on how it is going!

Before I end this post, I just want to say good luck to everyone who is heading back to school! I want to hear about what you all have been up to this summer, so send me emails! I can’t guarantee that you will get an immediate response, but know that every letter I get is SOOO appreciated and I WILL respond! Enjoy your last few days of summer freedom!

Peace!

Bjai

Wedding season in Morocco!

Hello everyone! I am sorry for the long wait and I appreciate everyone who has still been checking up on me and seeing if anything new has been posted. These past few weeks have been a real whirlwind for me! I spent my fourth of july in Agadir with some other pcv’s. We rented out a house and cooked some amazing American meals there. I can’t get enough of the ocean. Although I had a wonderful time in Agadir, the travel to and from was very frustrating. We tried to take the 4am bus, but we were told that the bus was full. So we ended up taking a taxi all the way there, which is long and uncomfortable. And I wanted to be back in my site by Monday for a wedding, but there were no taxis going to my site, so I had to spend the night in tata city and miss the wedding. It wasn’t all bad though because when I got back to site, I went to an Ahawaj, which is basically a dance concert. Ahawaj s are a big deal here. I borrowed one of my Aunt’s dresses and I had a white dress to wear there. I met the family of the bride and I ate dinner with some new women who travelled to here. I feel like my family uses me to get meat from the meal. After the meal, we watched the ahawaj until 5 in the morning. It was such a drain. I was so tired the whole next day. Then I went to another ahawaj that night. That one didn’t get over until 6am. It is a great way to meet people, but I am just not used to staying up so late.

My host father is home on vacation now. He is really nice and a very generous person. He knows French really well and also knows Arabic as well as tashlheit.

I am finally in my home! It has been quite an adjustment for all of us. I’ve had a lot of guests come and check up on me. I am also adjusting to not having water in my house either. I have to fetch water everyday. I walk with my neighbors with these big bottles and treat my water with bleach when I get home. My neighbors say that the water is good to drink, but I don’t want to take any chances J. People here are not at all used to the idea of someone being alone, so I think it will take a little bit for them to understand that I am fine by myself. I also got some “lessons” on the meals here . I’m not suppose to eat pasta for lunch because it isn’t filling enough; I should eat it for breakfast or dinner. And I’m not suppose to eat lentils for dinner because it is heavy and makes it hard to sleep. I made lentils for dinner anyway, but I didn’t tell anyone. It is also difficult to get by without eating bread here. Even when I tell people that I don’t need to eat bread with my lentils, they give me tons anyway. And when I told my family that I ate watermelon for breakfast, they laughed at me! It is so funny to me how set in their ways Moroccans tend to be.

I really like my home. I have a wonderfully big bed and and great fridge. I really don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have a fridge for cold water. It is a nice luxury.

I’ve reached the point in my service where I am truly on my own in my community. I am living in my own house, having to cook for myself, clean after myself, and do my best to not be a hermit J My house is coming along quite nicely: I have three rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. All pcv’s who are not here as a married couple are given 5,000 D to purchase furnishings for their new homes. My big purchases were a fridge and a bed. And then after buying furnishings for my kitchen that I need to at least survive in my house, I quickly ran out of money. I have no chairs, no table, and no shelves yet. Hopefully within the next 6 months or so I will be able to make my house a decent home.

I want to tell you about weddings here. There are TONS of weddings in the summer time. I don’t quite know if I understand the whole ceremony, but I’ll do my best to explain what I have observed. So the whole wedding ceremony lasts about a week. On the first day, the women of the town all sit in a circle and sing songs, then from the roof-top of the house, someone sends down three baskets of barley, wheat, and corn. The women sort through the barley while singing and place it in a metal pot. They then top it off with some wheat and corn and someone takes it into the house to cook it. After the left-over grains are picked up, it turns into a huge dance party with drumming, chanting, and really awesome dancing. The following days are just dance-filled eating festivals. The women let me eat with them, even though I’m not married. After about an hour of dancing and drumming, they bring out a bunch of small tables that we gather around. There are usually four courses and they have been slightly different each time I have participated. The first course is usually a beef tajine, but sometimes it is couscous too. The second course is most likely another meat dish, like a chicken tajine topped with French fries. The third course is a sweet pasta dish called sfah. It is small spaghetti noodles with powdered sugar, crushed peanuts, and sometimes raisins. The last course is fruit, usually watermelon (Dllah) and honeydew melon (shlah). The dinner is usually around 8 or 9 pm, and then there is another music concert that starts at around 11 or 12am and doesn’t end until 5 or 6 in the morning!! It has been nice to participate in all of the festivities, but they are so tiring!! I am scheduled to go to at least two more weddings before my conference in ourzazateJ

A few more weeks and it will be the month of Ramadan. For those of you who don’t know of it, Ramadan is the Islamic month of fasting. From the time that the sun comes up to sunset,

First experience as a real volunteer!

So one of the things that we are told as trainees is that we won’t really do any “work” until about 3-6 months after swearing in. During this time we are supposed to focus on language and integrating into the culture. We meet the people who are in charge (authorities, presidents, principals, teachers, etc.) and establish a rapport so that they are more accepting of us teaching lessons in their classrooms and cooperating with us on projects.

I was giving a wonderful opportunity to help a second year volunteer on one of her projects in her site. She planned a field day for the grade school in her site and needed help with running the different activities. Her and another volunteer planned 6 health and environment activities for the kids that involved topics on smoking, hydration, hygiene, youth development, habitat preservation, and waste management. I helped with the hydration station. We taught the kids about the importance of drinking a lot of water, especially in the summer, and to demonstrate the amount of water they need to drink, they did a relay race where they filled their mouths with water and had to run to two empty 2-liter bottles and spit into them to fill them up. The kids loved it (maybe a little too much). Despite some really intense competitors who tried to carry the cup full of water to fill up the bottles faster, everyone played fairly. After the relay, we taught them how to make a rehydration drink with water, sugar, and salt. The kids hated the taste, but they understood that if you have sicknesses like diarrhea it is important to stay hydrated and you lose more than just water.

Helping out was really helpful with learning new words in tashelheit and it also allowed me to practice conversational speech and having to speak quickly. I also interesting to work with the Moroccan school system. We had to be ready for anything to happen; we had different plans of action of the teachers decided not to show up or if the principal cut our time with the kids down. And unfortunately all of those things did happen. We got through it though and the kids learned some good information.

As for a site update: things are unbelievably slow! It is just so hot here that people stay in their homes from around 10 to 7. I’m trying to keep myself busy with studying language and being around people as much as possible, but I am really looking forward to having my own house. My Arabic script is coming along pretty well. I can write a few words and read a bit. My only problem is that I don’t know what the words mean . The past week has been really hard as far as language goes. Some days are better than others. Sometimes it is hard to keep trying to talk and have conversations when people can’t understand my accent and I can’t understand all that they are saying. I just hope that the light bulb clicks on soon.

Some new experiences include actually making bread in the oven and drawing up water from the well. I helped my aunt draw water all day so that she could get a roof put on her new house. I also found a house! I hope to spend my first night there tonight! Again (and I know I have said this a lot) I will keep working on getting pictures up as soon as I have good internet reception. Peace for now!

Happy belated independence day!

Agadir trip! ishwa bzzaf!

First time to see the Atlantic!

So it has been a little over two weeks in my site and things are starting to have a slower and slower pace. We are still working out transportation in and out of our site. hopefully we will be able to find better contacts that we can call upon. We are starting to develop a rapport with the taxi owners around town, so that helps a lot. Because my site is so far from the main road, I have to bike or walk to the my souk town that is on the paved road that the cars drive down, about 8km away from my home. The main problem is that not a lot of people travel a lot to my nearest major city, and they only will go if they have a full taxi (6 people). It is either a long wait or we pay for all of the seats, which is a lot of money.

I’m still getting used to my family and how everything works. I am starting to really feel the cultural differences as far as sense of time goes. I have many an awkward feeling when I am just sitting down with them for hours at a time while they work on spinning their wool or making these really neat bread containers called “agunins”. But just sitting down and listening to them speak really helps me out. I tried to spin wool, but it takes some getting used to. It is amazing to see the whole proccess of how things are made. Once they shave the wool off, they wash it, let it dry, pick through it for debris, brush it, then spin it. Then they will use it to make blankets. How cool!

I went to my first “sobey” which is a baby-naming ceremony. There is a ton of dancing, music, songs, and food. And it is all of the women in the town that are there. No men allowed! I am determined to learn at least one song and play the drum by the time summer is over. There are a lot of pregnancies and births in my site, so I should be able to get a lot of practice in.

I took my first trip to Agade this weekend and swam in the Atlantic Ocean!! Agade is a nice city, but it is a little too big for me. It is nice to get a break from the religiously driven cultural norms and wear shorts and short sleeves. There are also a McDonalds and a Pizza Hut there too. Not my cup of tea, but the other volunteers were so happy!! The beach was fantastic!! The only annoying part was all of the solicitors walking by every few minutes asking us if we want to jet ski, use an umbrella, and by expensive food and jewelry. Other than that, it was so great! I definitely got my fill of sun… too much in fact, because my back is so sore from burns! I won’t see the ocean again for a while so I guess it is worth it. There is also a supermarket equivalent to Wal-Mart here. Marjan is sinful. You can buy flat screen TV’s, laptops, patio furniture, Oreos, good lotion! It is really expensive though, so it can be dangerous if you don’t keep track of what you are buying. It really makes me excited for my house though J

much apologies for the delay

It has been way too long since I last reported what has been going on here, especially when so much has happened! Much apologies to those wonderful people who want to keep up with how I am doing!

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!