But this is a good quote nonethless, plus an intro from Dean Karnazes (from his blog at Runner's World):
What constitutes a life worth living? Is it high achievement? What I’ve come to believe is that more than anything, it’s having the courage to try. Perhaps no one has stated this more eloquently than Theodore Roosevelt when he wrote:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
I thought of a funny saying that I just wrote: "don't forget to put the 'for' into 'effort' . Because if you don't do that, then you're just ef't. (it makes sense if you say it out loud). .
I came to a realization as she was talking about the dialect she speaks. The idea was that they have several very important dialects... including Moroccan Arabic. It's a dialect. Just because it has Arabic in the name, doesn't mean that anyone except someone from Morocco will be able to speak it. Therefore, I shouldn't be prejudiced against learning the other dialects. Learning the one with Arabic in the name won't help me in situations with anyone from any other country. So I shouldn't care so much, or put so much weight into a preference for learning Morocco Arabic. And if I focus on that, I may miss out on living in a very unique place, something that PC offers.
See, part of this reason I thought that way before was because I compared it to Bolivia. Learning Bolivian Quechua, I can't speak it to anyone except those people in the area where I lived. Even between regions, there'd be a communication breakdown. But if you live in the communities where everyone speaks Spanish, then you can take that and go to another place, Costa Rica, and they'll understand you there.
But it's not so with Moroccan Arabic. It's relegated to Morocco. And if that's the case, then it's on equal footing with the other dialects. So, if that is so, then I shouldn't be so preoccupied, hoping for a site that speaks Arabic. Because they don't, they speak Moroccan Arabic.
And if I restrict myself to the ones that speak that dialect, then I'll maybe lose out on a site better for me that doesn't speak it. In all likelihood, as well, it seems to me that Moroccan Arabic is a western word, made up by people who don't know better, and so calling it the Darija--it's real name--is more accurate. I say this because I'm sure that all of the dialects have some French words and have some Arabic loan words. Some more than others.
Language will always be a big question mark until it really happens. And who's to say that I won't be able to learn two dialects, Moroccan Arabic and Berber? One thing I need to do is contact Oxford U in England, and see if their M.St program accepts Moroccan Arabic as a form of Arabic for entrance/acceptance purposes.
I'm impressed with her video blogging, and hope to do the same. This is part of the girl's blog, that helped me come to this conclusion:
"Je crois en l’amour. Ou que menent ses caravanes, car l’amour est ma religion et mafoi.”
“I believe in love and where it can take me, because love is my religion and my faith. “
-Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) Moroccan Philosopher
“Never take anything at face value, everyone has a story to tell.” -Ariel Delaney
I have to express that “I’m in love.” This country has transfixed me to see with green lenses. There was a story that a man was from a village where every one had yellow eyeglasses. This man wanted to travel to distant lands. He traveled to a land where everyone had blue lenses. When he returned to his village they asked him, “How where the people?, What was there culture like?” He responded, “It was green.”
I hope everyone understands that we will always see with our yellow lenses yet we can still see the green ones. Ourzazarte is 8 hours and a world away from Rabat. Here the real Peace Corps begins. I receive my training. At the moment we are all learning Darija which is Moroccan Arabic. Interesting fact: Moroccans can understand all types of Arabic but other Arabic speaking countries cannot understand Darija. I had 6hours of it today. My days are very planned over the next 10 weeks. Language is the most important aspect because we cannot work without it. I washed my clothes by hand today during a break while practicing Darija. After I got out the lesson people would just continue speaking. Even though I was lost, smiling helped to ease things. After all I’ve been here less than a week.
The main goal of Peace Corps and my favorite is to promote Peace and Friendship in the world. Peace Corps wants to define Peace. Peace is not the absence of war but the absence of the conditions leading to war.
Rabat was very packed jam and even though we are living out of our suitcases time is flying. I feel as though we have been here a year.
I have a pile of books next to me that I think will help me get started. But there's strange stories that appear randomly that are interesting and heartening. An example is from an ultramarathon that may be one of the most important things ever to happen in the United States.
From The International Herald Tribute (that I subscribe to on my new Kindle) a.k.a. The NY Times:
Mr. Baucus, in an interview, said he had been preparing for this role since he was elected to the Senate in 1978, and viewed this as his moment — a
nd Montana’s — to make history.
“I think I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” he said in an interview in his office. “Here I am representing Montana in the United States Senate. I am at the point to be able to do something really significant, really meaningful, and it must be done.”
His interest in the issue is not new. In 2003, as Mr. Baucus was running a 50-mile ultramarathon, he lost his footing and tumbled, gashing open his head. He got up and kept running to the finish, looking so ghastly with blood caked over his right eye that a young boy cheering on runners from the sidelines refused to give him a high-five.
Two months later, Mr. Baucus needed emergency brain surgery to stop bleeding caused by the fall, giving him an up-close look at the health care system.
The surgery was done at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., which is known for delivering high-quality care at a moderate cost. But it was also done out of network, leaving Mr. Baucus with thousands of dollars in bills not covered by his gold-plated federal health insurance plan.
Since then, he and Mayo Clinic doctors have carried on a running conversation about how to encourage high-quality, rather than high-quantity, care.
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SO! If health care passes, it may be because the Senator had been trying to run 50 miles that day. And at the age of 61, too!
But these will be the other books I read while getting ready for a marathon, either Casablanca at the end of October, the Zagora Extreme Sand marathon (standard length) on New Year's Eve, or the Marrakesh Intl Marathon on January 31, 2010. Or if I could do all three, that would be a good start.
The plan then would be to do the Spanish ultratrek, 50km a day for 5 days, in July 2010. After that, the MdS and start doing longer than 50ks at one time.... makes me want to die thinking about it. But as I sit here and listen to Glenn Miller's string of pearls, it just takes the right attitude. Nice, easy, slow, don't-fight-it-but-give-yourself-to-it.
-What I Talk about When I talk about Running by Haruki Murakami. I first heard about this a year ago, and I love everything else this man has done, so I can be guaranteed a good and motivating read.
-Marathon: The Ultimate Training and Racing guide by Hal Higdon. The important thing is to find a good training plan once I get a base built up for this winter.
-Dr. George Sheehan : Getting Fit & Feeling Great, the ultimate runner philosopher.
-The China Study by Dr. Campbell
-The Engine 2 Diet, the China study in practice, by a pro triathlete, fire-fighter, entirely plant-based and anti- factory foods.
-The Lore of Running- Timothy Noakes.
For long, long, long, long distance running, flexibility is crucial so I have my two books on Capoeira and a book on stretching.
The best part is that I already own all of these books! The only one I don't have that I need is one called THE PURSUIT OF PERFECT by the living legend Tal Ben-Shahar. Seemingly a good book to help keep perspective and to grow, as only he has done for me in my life (after seeing his online Harvard positive psychology course).
OK! Next time I write I will share my strategies for cooking and following the E2 diet for this month. The hardest part is that my mom cooks one cake or batch of cookies after another, but always with fruit or something to help rationalize doing so. Mama, I love her.
11:30 PM here in Jackson, TN, and some news to share. It's sad about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett today, but seeing their
achievements on television helped inspire me especially to take as good of care of my health as possible. Because the two should definitely have lived a great deal longer and been
allowed to contribute so much more to the world.
My stepdad seemed especially hard hit by the death of these two people, since he remembers seeing Michael Jackson on TV for the first time 40 years go. But unlike him, I felt
that you cannot feel too sorry for a person that has lived so fully. The worse thing is the legions of people that die without ever having lived, or been happy.
So I don't want that to happen to me. In my life I've visited 20% of the countries in the world, joined the Peace Corps twice and I sponsor four children through Children International. I've even met one of them, in Barranquilla, Colombia.
I even was a teenage Ironman triathlete, and in 2002 I convinced my family that it was worth the extra money to buy a Honda Hybrid, long before people knew what that was.
But this good streak ended as soon as it began, and in 2005 I tried to do a Double Ironman. Didn't get it, after swimming 4.8 miles and then biking 135. I tried again a year later and did worse. I even went to Bolivia and that
didn't work out. The low point came last year when after running for 30 seconds down the hill at the start of a workout, my back felt a sharp pain, and I spent six months doing nothing more than walking.
Now it's July and I'm looking out towards a brand-new life that is awaiting me this fall in Morocco. Unlike going to the Spanish-speaking world, this will be very new in nearly every way. The one time I was in Morocco I competed in and finished the Marathon des Sables, back in 2005 when everything still seemed effortless and possible.
The experience of going there for a week and charging through the desert for 155 miles, self-sustained except for water, remains the highest mark in my personal achievement.
So this summer is special in that I feel like I have the momentum to do the American self reinvention that I repeatedly attempt. The new goal to help direct my efforts? To complete the Spartathlon, that is twenty miles longer than the Badwater 135 and has half the time limit, even if it doens't have the hills of the other.
Can I do it? That is not the right question. I'm still entangled in the unfulfilled ambition of the past. I'm fat, and my back has bad moments still. But the less important thing is whether it is possible, and the more important one is whether I will try. People do it all the time, they have had 1000 finishers in 25 years. The odds are better than swimming the English Channel.
The only thing stopping me is my ambivilance to extreme things. That doesn't mean I do them, though my philosophy is not geared that way to chase the limits of human potential. I desire to do so, but it takes the personality type more of my father to actually force oneself into the strict discipline and find the unforgiving propulsion forward that is needed. I desire it? I did Ironman twice and the MdS.
But was my training ever of the steady and demanding caliber that is required? No. I relied more on youth and race day adrenaline than anything. And I felt shamed during the MdS that I wasn't able to dig as deeply as the others. My feet had no blisters because I ran so little, compared to the zombie corpse feet I witnessed by the more dedicated runners.
Even though I conceived of doing the Spartathlon the same week that I joined Peace Corps Morocco I suppose today is the official start. The idea is that I want the preparation for the Spartathlon to give me the conceptual framework for my whole service. To demonstrate the rewards, risks and hope of attempting such a thing that I hope to share as a youth development worker.
But these are the reasons why today is the official start, rather than in January:
1) It took six months for me to realize that it is exericse that will help cure my back, not the abstention from it that I believed would help me. Though my back pain was caused by running, I've never felt as good as in the last 3 weeks where I've began running again. Now I can comfortably do one mile at a time and the day after I feel like everything is normal.
2) Seeing Fawcett and Jackson die today helps to show the personal side of why I need a healthier change in my lifestyle. While I have the knowledge of what must be done, I have more often than not given in and become an overeater since I came home.
3) The ongoing health care debate is coming to a head, and I see more clearly how I want to do everything possible to stay out of a hospital.
4) This year we ordered the E2 Engine Two Firefigher's diet book. It's wholly plant-based, it's a lifestyle rather than a diet, and it frequently alludes to the China Study, which my parents also ordered at the same time as the other book.
But it was only today that I opened the China Study to read it, and though I'm already a vegetarian, seeing the fact-based research helped enlighten me and give me the inspiration to try the E2 diet one day. And so I again skimmed through the E2 book, and I thought: Hey, this is a 28-day program (sort of like drug rehab).
And it's 30 days until Serena comes..... so! An idea grew that I'd become as serious as I've ever been about my health for the next 30 days and follow the book very strictly. The time frame works, and so instead of fixing a bowl of ravioli with olive oil for my 10 PM snack, I
instead made half of a peanut-butter sandwich on whole grain bread. Being nearly vegan already, the challenges will be smaller, but no less important: stop the refined sugar as much as possible.
5) If anything, I expect that July will be the best sex of my life, the best love-making, and so I want to be serious for the next month just so that I have the stamina and strength to enable my Piccolina consumption to the fullest extent.
6) I dreamed of one day going with Serena to the Spartathlon, and having her entire Italian family there to crew me as we made the 155 mile journey together. They are so close, it's only a few hours on a boat between Lecce and Greece. That would be an amazing experience to share.
7) I hope to make VACA- Vegetarians Against Climate Atrophy- a serious campaign, and the three or four year fight to the Spartathlon will be my vehicle for that.
8) I've done ultra races, but always haphazardly. It is my desire, for the first time in my life to have a strong, concentrated effort doing everything right and leading to a big climax. It's so different and better that way.
9) The experiences of the past have led me and taught me how to do this. But it'd be bad to have gone through those hard experiences in preparation for something even more, then never capitalize on that past effort.
So today is the first day on the march to Sparta, as well as the first half-day on the E2 Engine Two plant-based diet. I had a vigorous session today exercising, though the best part was the people I did it with. Walking to USJ, I was floored when I saw an extremely gorgeous black girl. I came into the USJ track area
and I motioned to her exercise equipment saying how : "Looks like you are about to get very serious with that." She said; "Yes, I am a sprinter." And sure enough, she wrapped her waist and shoulders in a nylon cord, and with her muscles flaring and her arms driving across the width of the football field, she ran as fast as possible, pulling a runner's sled containing a thirty-five pound
barbell weight saddled on it. I wanted to say how Jamaica is the place to be for a serious-minded sprinter to train, but I chose not to. It inspired me strongly, and I tried to glimpse her as she trained each time I ran by. She had two people coaching her, who were equally well-built and strong, and two hours before the sunset,
the day was beautiful and I was happy to be there running, pushing my body, my faith placed in the idea that the exercise would heal my back. Soon I came home and then I accompanied Mama on a twenty-minute walk before
I went upstairs to watch Larry King for ten minutes (about MJ, and showing his body loaded onto an ambulance on the rooftop from a helipad). Then I did two sets of dumbell curls and the twenty-minute Joel Olsteen workout video.
It was a great day, the most exercise I've done all year **except for the 24 mile bike ride Sara and I did two days ago around Trinity school**. But after doing all of these things, I went to check my weight on the scale and I discovered for the first time in my life that I weigh
more than 200 pounds. So I have a long way to go. And it won't be easy. But to be outside, alive, running around the field, musing on the beautiful girl training there, but even more upon Serena and her impending visit, I felt like I was seizing the day.
Today was especially good because I felt stimulated, from my conversation with Serena--where she repeatedly told me Bravo for my Italian, which surprised her (thanks Kindle and the Kindle edition of the Corriere della Sera)-- and I watched two courses online from Yale which were good, one about France history and the other, surprise, ancient Greek history.
Life seems to have a spontaneity and possibility that I stopped feeling for some time. The only bad thing for me is that I have to choose between accompanying Beth and Logan to Chattanooga for a weekend camping, or going to see Lily Afshar's concert on Sunday.
So it looks like tomorrow I will be going to the store to buy groceries!
This is a poem printed on the Spartathlon website:
An Ode To Pheidippides
In 1879 the English poet Robert Browning wrote the stirring poemPheidepeides. It is said that the poem so inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin and other founders of the modern Olympic Games that they were prompted to create a foot race of 42 km which would be named theMarathon.
Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return!
See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that speaks!
Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you,
"Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid!
Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed,
Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire runs through,
Was the space between city and city: two days, two nights did I burn
Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks.
This is a good video in Italian:
And the best one online of the race:
SO ONE DAY, I hope that I'll be here, ready to compete and get across the finish line in Athens before the 36 hour time limit expires, Serena waiting there for me. It's a whopper of a race As big a change as it will be in those long miles, I will have changed more between now and then if you find me there.
I saw the whole program yesterday, I bought it for 1.99 on iTunes. This was the most tame part, by far. Olives! It reminds me of a quote from a vegetarian PCV in Bolivia on her survey after leaving:
Strangest Food eaten? Nothing. We vegetarians don't get that weird stuff like you do.
The Rest of the program is good, too, since it shows Ourzazate, where I stayed for a week. And the casbah! But it gets far more bizarre, and ends with him eating calf brain.
Of course, as a vegetarian, I ask: what's the difference between a piece of meat coming from an organ, or the muscles, or the central nervous system or bone? It's still the same animal that during its life shitted, peed, and had snot running out of its nose. Not to mention diseases, babies, and every possible kind of smelly juice that exists. The thing is, this show could not exist for vegetarians, unless you are eating the rind of a watermelon covered in peanut butter.
What can I say? It's the Obamas that led me to Peace Corps
in the first place, when I saw his early speeches in
Spring 07, when he was still a longshot.
I applied immediately thereafter, & now I'm home and eager to go again...
Be careful, and dont go to the YouTube page because there's a great deal of vitriol that I really don't understand (if I had the opportunity to vote for her rather than Barack, it'd be close but I'd lean in her favor)..
These links are found at the bottom of the Serve.Gov webpage.
my guitar professor Lily Afshar, who is planning to go to Iran in a week and a half
I wrote this to Nico Pitney from the huffingtonpost, who along with Andrew Sullivan is doing the best job of blogging Iran
Nico,
Hope you're getting some sleep, but I doubt it. I'm following your blog from Tennessee. Wanted to share a one-year old clip of my guitar professor. It illuminates the profundity and tenderness of their culture so well, and this piece of music for guitar demonstrates the peace that the Iranians deserve but many may never get. The woman playing took me to a party with thirty inlaws of an Iranian family that live in the neighborhood adjacent to mine in Tennessee. And I never had seen them before!
Lily the musician in the clip has tickets to fly to Tehran in the next week and a half but its unclear if she will go now. Normally she goes there each summer during the break in order to share her guitar gifts with Iranian music students. You may be too busy to watch or share it, but its a very affecting song. The woman has inspired me to join Peace Corps in Morocco, doing Youth development. In a way, it is this type diplomacy--the give and take of the arts-- that if left unhindered would keep our countries in perpetual peace.
Tomorrow is Saturday. Tomorrow is a day of destiny.
Tonight, the cries of Allah-o Akbar are heard louder and louder than the nights before.
Where is this place? Where is this place where every door is closed? Where is this place where people are simply calling God? Where is this place where the sound of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder?
I wait every night to see if the sounds will get louder and whether the number increases. It shakes me. I wonder if God is shaken.
Where is this place that where so many innocent people are entrapped? Where is this place where no one comes to our aid? Where is this place that only with our silence we are sending our voices to the world? Where is this place that the young shed blood and then people go and pray -- standing on that same blood and pray. Where is this place where the citizens are called vagrants?
Where is this place? You want me to tell you? This place is Iran. The homeland of you and me.
What I like about the idea is that democracy is visually portrayed as something delicious. It's a horrible sound when the blender starts going, and if it were a totalitarian state, what gory limbs might end up displayed on the plate? But, with this we get something that is not any of the fruit shown before, but rather the flavors of each.
One thought: watching Iran vote, and suddenly seeing this once-closed nation explode in hundreds of independent voices. It's amazing that a person who was holding a camera at the baji cops charging Tehran University can someone transmit that experience to a person in a dozen time zones away, in Jackson, Tennessee. To people in any time zone, all together within a few minutes of loading the video onto a site like YouTube. I saw Charlie Rose interviewing people like Nico Pitney, and considering how it takes only a second to embed a YouTube video onto a blog, then it makes it nearly impossible for that video to be censored by government forces. It's easy to type "youtube.com" into a government filter, but if they wanted to block the videos from Iran that are visible on my site--me simply embedding the link onto it-- then they'd have to type in : "http://peacecorpsben.blogspot.com/" and if they did that, then I could create a new blog site in less than sixty seconds and add the same videos there in less time. In order to achieve censorship, the regime would then have to instead shut down the entire internet, something that would collapse the economy to an even worse degree, since it is used there in all of the economy's daily operations.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Whatever happens, I don't want to forget seeing this video:
1 (Girl in street): Defending civil rights 2 (Boy next to old man): Counterbalancing poverty/deprivation 3 (Boy pushing away donation box): Nationalizing oil income 4 (Man standing on rooftop): Reducing tension in international affairs 5 (Boy sitting next to satellite dishes): Free access to information 6 (Girl sitting besides her mother): Supporting single mothers 7 (Girl with cast): Knock down violence against women 8 (Boy): Education for all 9 (Boy infront of man locking car): Increasing public safety 10 (Girl on rooftop): Ethnic and religious minority rights 11 (Man on rooftop): Supporting NGOs 12 (Girl in front of wall): Public involvement 13 (Boy and girl): We have come for change 14: Change for Iran
This week I will go to Memphis to visit my guitar professor. Looking forward to that. She is from Iran, and we will be able to talk about this momentous and shocking week that they have had.
Here´s two clips that I particularly like:
Far more than the historic nature of our 2008 election, it´s moments like these that I´m happy we have Obama.
The United States of America has just sent a small number of its sons and daughters as Peace Corps volunteers to serve as teachers and advisors in Rwanda. They have arrived to assist, and we appreciate that. We are aware that this comes against the backdrop of increasingly scarce resources, of budget discussions and campaign promises, and of tradeoffs between defense and domestic priorities like health care and infrastructure investments. All that said, I believe we need to have a different discussion concerning the potential for bilateral aid.
The Peace Corps have returned to our country after 15 years. They were evacuated in 1994 just a short time before Rwanda collapsed into a genocide that killed over one million people in three months. Things have improved a lot in recent years. There is peace and stability throughout the nation. We have a progressive constitution that is consensus-driven, provides for power sharing, embraces diversity, and promotes the participation of women, who now represent the majority in our parliament. Our economy grew by more than 11% last year, even as the world entered a recession. We have chosen high-end segments of the coffee and tea markets in which to compete, and attract the most demanding world travelers to our tourism experiences. This has enabled us to increase wages by over 20% each year over the last eight years -- sustained by, among other things, investment in education, health and ICT.
We view the return of the Peace Corps as a significant event in Rwanda's recovery. These young men and women represent what is good about America; I have met former volunteers who have run major aid programs here, invested in our businesses, and I even count them among my friends and close advisors.
Peace Corps volunteers are well educated, optimistic, and keen to assist us as we continue to rebuild, but one must also recognize that we have much to offer them as well.
We will, for instance, show them our system of community justice, called Gacaca, where we integrated our need for nationwide reconciliation with our ancient tradition of clemency, and where violators are allowed to reassume their lives by proclaiming their crimes to their neighbors, and asking for forgiveness. We will present to them Rwanda's unique form of absolution, where the individuals who once exacted such harm on their neighbors and ran across national borders to hide from justice are being invited back to resume their farms and homes to live peacefully with those same families.
We will show your sons and daughters our civic tradition of Umuganda, where one day a month, citizens, including myself, congregate in the fields to weed, clean our streets, and build homes for the needy.
We will teach your children to prepare and enjoy our foods and speak our language. We will invite them to our weddings and funerals, and out into the communities to observe our traditions. We will teach them that in Africa, family is a broad and all-encompassing concept, and that an entire generation treats the next as its own children.
And we will have discussions in the restaurants, and debates in our staff rooms and classrooms where we will learn from one another: What is the nature of prosperity? Is it subsoil assets, location and sunshine, or is it based on human initiative, the productivity of our firms, the foresight of our entrepreneurs? What is a cohesive society, and how can we strengthen it? How can we improve tolerance and build a common vision between people who perceive differences in one another, increase civic engagement, interpersonal trust, and self-esteem? How does a nation recognize and develop the leaders of future generations? What is the relationship between humans and the earth? And how are we to meet our needs while revering the earth as the womb of humankind? These are the questions of our time.
While some consider development mostly in terms of infusion of capital, budgets and head counts, we in Rwanda place equal importance to relationships between peoples who have a passion to learn from one another, preparing the next generation of teachers, administrators and CEOs to see the exchange of values and ideas as the way to build the competencies of our people, and to create a prosperous nation.
We will do this because we see that the only investment with the possibility of infinite returns is in our children, and because after a couple of years in Rwanda, working and learning with our people, these Peace Corps volunteers will be our sons and daughters, too.
Congratulations Peace Corps Morocco Invitees! I think you’ll love it here. We’re all looking forward to meeting you in country on September 10, and wish you a wonderful, relaxing, and productive summer. To help you be “productive” this summer, I am sharing with you the following link to help you get started on Moroccan Arabic before you arrive: http://friendsofmorocco.org/learnarabic.htm. I strongly encourage you to study a little bit each day. You won’t regret it.
Twenty-one years ago, I was in the same boat as you, waiting to fly to Morocco to begin my Peace Corps experience as an English teacher in Marrakesh. I can’t believe how the time has flown since then, and I am thrilled to be back as Peace Corps’ country director. Upon your arrival, you’ll be met by Peace Corps training staff and driven to a training facility where you’ll stay for your first few days. Then, you’ll move into a Moroccan family’s home in a small community where you’ll live and do most of your training with a small group of fellow Trainees. This “immersion” type of training has proven over and over again to be the most effective in language and cultural acquisition. And it’s fun, albeit a little intimidating at first.
If your imaginations are anything like mine was when I prepared for training in Morocco in 1988, you may be picturing camels, deserts, and Rick’s Café in Casablanca. It is all of that and much more. It may surprise you that many of our Volunteers were knee deep in snow at times this past winter. Morocco actually has two ski resorts in its Atlas Mountains.
So, bring cool clothes, bring heavy coats and sleeping bags, but most important, remember to bring lots of patience, innovativeness, adaptability and flexibility, creativity, lots of curiosity, and a very good sense of humor. Peace Corps is a human-resource driven development agency which means that these qualities, plus your tremendous skills and experiences, will be essential for a successful and productive two years.
We look forward to sharing the experience with you.
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