Met the woman who teaches these students

And she danced like this while the 5 language teachers, me and Sam sat around playing the oud! Mbarak played the songs, the 2 women sang, Sam and I tried

to keep up by clapping, singing nonsense syllables, and me mimicking the bass line. But then this woman came and immediately started dancing,

turns out she lives in Cadiz, is from Morocco, and they are touring here.

I showed her some clips on my computer from the Baile Tipico Boliviano, and then she showed this video on her blog here:

http://naimabakkali.wordpress.com/

So this is a typical night in Peace Corps... you can't help but start singing, dancing, who-knows-what.

Everything that I a; allowed to say about my site

Im going to live in the Sahara. WOO hooooOOOOO

So, according to Fatima, my site is 100% black people, and has very unique desert culture. Mbarek says it is on a river and the town is one of the many oases along the way, out into the desert. Volunteers are up and down from me on the river. The desert marathon in Zagora, put on by the Ahansal brothers, is very close in case I feel like doing that each New Year's Eve. The name rhymes with Corn N' the Cob. 160 kms from both Ourzazate and Zagora, both of which have airports. Ourzazate is an international airport too, for those coming to see me!

My good friends are between my town and Racheedia, where there are several Saffron people. Plus

There's a souk on Sunday, five internet cafes, two telephone companies, cell phone coverage... though Im planning to get satelite internet very soon so Ill have internet from my netbook nearly everywhere. Im kind of in a place that is equally distant from all major cities.

Ill be staying at a host family who have a one year old baby named Yassine.

I dont know, very exciting day! More to come soon, plus a map

Sitting at the cyber chewing on some great kow kow

The past two days have been very nice. After crawling home to retreat from the world yesterday after class, I was able to focus on non-Morocco things.... reading some more in L'ile au trésor, and some Murakami in Spanish. Then I watched I LOVE YOU MAN. I liked it fine, ncie to see and catch up again on some American culture, to watch a movie that says brolicious understand what it means without needing a dictionary.

It caused me some strange dreams, though. Seeing that and seeing AWAY WE GO the week before, somehow those two movies were alive enough in my mind so that when I slept I dreamt of Justin Timberlake.

Why that? It might not make sense on the outside. But I feel like he's the one person alive that is able to atone for and then supercede all of the dorkiness that exists in white people. And both of those movies were especially harsh. And I cringed because I knew it was largely true. SO I dreamt of J.T., one of the most awesome people alive-- a home grown Tennessean who happens to have grown up 45 minutes from me--and who saved last years Grammys when Chris Brown and Rihanna didnt show up, pulling in BOYZ2MEN and Al Green in order to sing Lets stay together at the last minute (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/02/how-justin-timb.html ) . Not to mention saving SNL each year.

But Sat afternoon after this movie, I had 4 hours or so to myself, evaluating the situation, North Africa. Still bummed that I havent seen the Sahara again, but happy to see that the Marrakesh marathon is the last day of January, instead of the beginning like I feared.

I opened the door. Yasin was there. Lets go out! Im bored! I was not bored, I was happy to be still after such a frantic week. A total of 25 hours of Darija, plus teaching for the first time here. But it was apparent that this Moroccan fellow from Saffron, 3 years younger than meof Spanish descent when his grandfather came here from Madrid, was desperate (and apparently unable to relax for longer than a morning--he usually goes to sleep after me and wakes up before me each day). So I had to save Saturday night. And I did that by making pizza!

It was more involved than I imagined--P Corps is usually like that. I thought I saw some premade crusts here in Sefrou, but when we got to the store they were really premade crepes. But pizza crust is fun and not so hard, so we got some flour on the way home.

It was a big enough hit that once the pizza started cooking Yasin went to buy more flour and so we made TWO more! The funny thing is that as soon as I put the photo u on FB, Rachid our training manager (who friended me the first week i got here) had cliked on the photo and gave it a thumbs up... thats ironic because he has assigned me to do it for homework.

Iù not going to say it was an amazing pizza--just as soon as I put that first bite and I had fresh Saffron olives, and canned pineapple and real mozzarella--I cant complain too much. Maybe one of the top 5 pizzas ever made. The Moroccan Echcherki family, had a much different one. It had tuna, onion and gallons of tomato sauce.

Finally today I went to the gorgeous water falls here and saw Hannane there with her fiance Vago. Then an hour at the gym and Im now ready to skype my parents!

Wish I spoke darija

I found something

This afternoon for the first time I spoke darija to the librarie owner, instead of ordering my things in the usual French. And I got juj tambr, two stamps. But later I realized I needed a bigger envelope than the one I had, so I went back to the same man.

Ive been there before andI always buy stamps from this usually grumpy person. And we were able to accomplish the transaction. But tonite I learned he never knew how to speak French. He appeared to, and gave me all the things I needed. But tonite since I spoke exclusively in darija the first two times tonite, this man opened up in a different way. And he knew I was sending something to Europe or to the US because I requested international stamps, so he began asking me in darija about Chicago and a person he knew there. Then it seems like he was talking about the person coming here to do his thesis, to Saffron, and his eyes lit up. Then at the end of 5 or 7 minutes like this, me trying hard to get his meaning, then he pointed up at the sky. He repeated the mans name a few times... Lawrence Larry...? And pointed at the sky again.

So I guess the moral of the story is that the personality I get from people when Im speaking French to them, whether they speak it or not, isnt the same thing Id get if I can communicate to them in Darija.

At the gym earlier one of the machines cables was caught and a Moroccan youth came around to hold the weights while i readjusted the cable. He gave me instructions for 1 minute in darija, and I think he would have immediately switched to French if he knew how to speak it. But the fact that it was darija the whole time, about this important thing, told me differently.

So, stuff like this means I shouldnt ride on the laurels of my years studying French but should get more active and focused with my darija (and my berber later)

Successfully bought the oud

Photos to come as soon as I can

Updates

Fez trip this weekend! *Tomorrow*

Yassin will take me so I can maybe buy an oud. Today Im watching videos to know what they are like and how to tune them, hold the pick, everything like that.

Heres a couple of them, a short song. Apparently they are tuned in 4ths, like a guitar!

Ive been going through a lot of philosophically tough questions the past week, since one night I couldnt sleep because I had an overpowering sense of shame and embarassment for trying to be different and unusual, going to foreign places instead of spending time at home with my loved ones. So Im trying to work that out. Ive felt like a troublemaker, rocking the boat. Thats what happens when you spend a lot of time in cultures where the family is everything; they start asking you why youd leave home to come all the way over here alone... and the answers you give are flat.

If I get the oud, Im happy because in a week all of our group will go back to the hub, and Fatima my language coordinator says she will ask the other LCF Mbarek if he can bring his oud. That way, Ill be able to have some lessons on it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhgaBxvOvfQ

Film Review of AMREEKA

From here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/amreeka_b_316100.html

The immigrant experience in America is a topic rich in meaning. For me, it is personal, since my understanding has been informed both by my family's story and my work of several decades.

Because America has a complex and conflicted relationship with immigrants, being both inclusive and generous, while at the same time wary and unwelcoming of newcomers, the experiences of this country's diverse ethnic communities has been the subject of great art. The Irish, Italians, Jewish and Latino experience has long been conveyed in film and literature, defining, for other Americans, not only the story of these communities, but, revealing, as well, aspects of the American character.

Until now, the Arab American experience has been less told and is, therefore, less familiar. That is, until now.

The remarkable film, Amreeka, the first feature length work of a young Palestinian-Jordanian American writer/director, Cherien Dabis, marks not only her debut, but an introduction to the Arab immigrant experience in post 9-11 America.

I don't often review films, but after seeing Amreeka, and interviewing Dabis on my weekly television program "Viewpoint" (airing on Abu Dhabi TV and Link TV in the US), I am compelled to write.

Amreeka tells the story of Muna, a divorced Palestinian woman from Bethlehem. As the film opens, we follow Muna home from work, through oppressive and abusive checkpoints, past the wall and suffocating settlements. Muna is not only tired of all this, she is fearful for the future and safety of her teenage son, Fadi.

News that she has secured an immigrant visa to the US gives Muna the opportunity she has craved for a better life. Their departure from home and family is wrenching, but Muna and Fadi are hopeful as they embark on the voyage that is to begin their new life.

Muna's dreams, however, will not be so easily fulfilled. Her experience with US Immigration and Customs, marked by ignorance and bureaucratic hostility, resembles, in some ways, the treatment at the checkpoints. She weathers all of this and exits the Chicago airport, where she is embraced by her sister's family, who preceded her to America more than a decade earlier.

As luck would have it, Muna has come to the US at the start of the Iraq War. Anti-Arab sentiment is raging in some quarters. Her brother-in-law, a doctor, has lost patients due to backlash, and her sister is quickly losing patience with the hatred and fear that mars their lives.

Though educated and with experience in banking, Muna is unable to find work in her field, but knowing that she must become independent, continues to search for employment, finally finding a job at a local fast food restaurant.

Tensions build as Muna, ashamed, tries to hide her place of work from her son and sister; as Fadi deals with bullying bigots at school; and as her sister's family begins to unravel in response to the pressures of the war, and the enormous hardships resulting from anti-Arab bias. Through it all, Muna not only survives, but remains hopeful and thankful for each kind gesture from strangers and new-found friends who come to her assistance in ways small and not so small.

Dabis handles her characters lovingly, making each one real and engaging--and through them a love story, of sorts, emerges. Like most children of immigrants, Dabis grew up in two worlds, loving both--the life of her family and her heritage, and the life they found in America. These two worlds are estranged, at times, but they define Dabis. And she draws on both to tell her story. Her film is, in a real sense, an effort to reconcile them.

Through Dabis' art, Americans will learn not only about the Palestinian experience under occupation, but will come to see their own country, through Muna's eyes, as a generous land, full of promise, but a land that is flawed as well.

Amreeka is currently showing in over 30 cities and will be opening in 10 more this month. It has been praised by critics, with the New York Times calling it "one of the most accomplished recent films" about the immigrant experience.

Amreeka will soon be opening across the Middle East. I urge you to see it. You will learn and you will love the experience.

That it has been praised by the critics and awarded at festivals, itself, tells a story. My hope is that this wonderful film inspires more young Arab American artists to tell our story--so that through art, our experience will be better known and Americans will see what is to be loved about this country, but what also must change, to make it better.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/amreeka_b_316100.html

Conveyor belt post ... maybe the weirdest thing Ive ever written

§§Ive got pictures for this but the upload function is dragging on too slowly. Next time!§§

Sunday night October 4 09

Its funny how looking at the words Oct. 4, and I think: wow, the month is almost over already, and it just begun!

Spent the weekend so far reading a few, very demoralizing Tolstoy stories that make me question what it is in the world I am doing here. “The death of Ivan Illych” “ The Kreutzer Sonata” “Master and Mind”. It's funny but not.

This week we are halfway through training. For half a week after that we will all be reunited at the beach town Kenitra again to be sworn in. From there, it's 2 months living with another family in Our Town, then another couple of weeks settling into my own home before we are called back all together again for 2 final weeks of technical training. After that I am allowed to go on vacations to nearby countries (it only costs 8 euros to fly to Spain, 30 to go from Spain to Ireland or wherever else...).

Looking at that, it strikes me exactly the same as when I looked at the date, Oct. 4. something like: “darn, one month down and soon Peace Corps will be over.” It's not true, but it sort of is.

In Bolivia I discovered that PC is a revolving door. I have tried to exit once already but I didnt go entirely through the opening on the other side, so instead I walked in a circle, neither wholly home nor entirely free from this great organization, and so I was placed again on the conveyor belt as it trundles through the PC factory. It is a process that is exacting in the length of time needed to complete the service. So, high in the factory above us we see the omnipresent clock telling us how far along we are from completion. We even get charts that describe how our emotional state is supposed to be at each moment, as well as periodic evaluations to see if we correspond to the norm. Two months in, you should feel blindly confident, before the five month low comes. At one month, where I am now, things are mildly irritating, so we are told to think twice before yelling at our host families: “What the f&&& are you looking at?!?” when they are watching us struggle to wash our clothes by hand.

These things are comforting, but for now each experience is so ephemeral that we can only look ahead at what awaits us in the factory. Already 4 in the group have fallen off the belt and swept into a discard pile, shown out through the back door. And I'm perfectly fine with all of the things we must do and are done to us. The resources allow us to integrate more fully than any foreigner ever does outside of becoming a genuine expatriate, rather than a make-believe one as we are now. But the clock also keeps us from fully giving ourselves. After all, some of us timed this so that we'll be back at home in time for the fall semester, 2011, to start.

As it is, I'm 3.6% done with PC, since in Morocco the YD program is just 26 months instead of the stan dard 27. We need a month less because apparently youth development is something that occurs instinctively. One month from now, 2 years will be left. And the day after that in my mind, it will become: one year and some months. It will stay like that a while, but then I wont even need to look up at the clock to see that the revolving door is now rapidly approaching. And I will see that half of the people I've met here are already outside the factory door, on the street corner with their luggage trying to get a taxi ride home. Behind me to my surprise will be 100 or so newly minted volunteers and a group of trainees hoping to be that way. Those in the towns next to me will show the effects of this, as I develop a new good friend, but just for 3 months, then celebrate the arrival of someone new while we lament those that are off to somewhere different.

Because the revolving door turns incessantly. More in my group will have fallen off, and there will be no chance to say goodbye to many of those, since my conveyor belt will have taken me towards a different corner of the factory, a different workshop room or something. At that point, if I dont get medically evacuated for some absurd thing (uncontrollable burping, unexplained arthritis, constant dizziness) then I will be nearly a fully developed product.

I wouldnt be here if I didnt believe in the job, and so I will be glad when we finally get on with it. In some ways I'm more of an idealist than ever. To think that 250,000 people have finished this program, its even more mindboggling than the 1900 that finish each Ironman race, all 20 of them in the world. Yet I wonder if the program had been created in this way, as a program lasting 27+ months rather than 27 months, period. Open ended after a certain point is reached. It seems to me like we are at our most effective once we reach the end of the converyor belt, but there is a direct line to the door. And while we are offered the extra year or very rarely a fourth, it takes a big effort of will to contravene the effects of our conditioning, seeing that clock and our placement in the factory as the belt gradually creeps along at the same pace as always.

Today Yassine and I went to our rooftop to place chestnuts on the ceiling so that the sun will dry them. But as we finished we saw the neighbor has a pomegranete tree and several brances hanging over the fence into our yard. Since they are unable to pick them through the concrete wall, several of them were so ripe that they burst open hanging from the branch. We then tried to devise a way to knock them off without them busting on the floor. He went under the wall with the laundry basket and I stayed on the roof to hit them with a stick. So, after about 10 minutes we had 6 or 7 enormous, bright red pomegranates, and to eat them we went directly up the mountainside to a place he knows overlooking all of Saffron. “Now, we are professional thieves.” Yassine said to me.

We emerged from a pine forest to see Sefrou below, and in the distance a snow capped mountain 35 miles away, the second tallest one in Morocco. I didnt see the snow, but that's what Yassine said is there. We had binoculars, though, from my birdwatching so we were able to point out different landmarks.

This week we have language classes all day and nearly no time at the Dar Chebab. This is done on purpose, since training has been reorganized for our group. Normally we would spend the first month in the hub city, everyone staying at a hotel, then on to Saffron or a small town for just a month. I think the director at the Dar Chebab was happy to see that she'd be getting 6 PST's for 2 months, instead of the usual one, but since we've only been there 3 times since arriving—the Program manager's orders—she is disillusioned that we are actually spending less time there than ever before. Walking down from the neighboring mountain, this was on Yassine's mind since he too feels that we are somehow evading our contract with the Dar Chebab. All I could say was that I am following the orders of the boss, and that there's a difference between PST's and PCV's, that we will have endless hours at our own Dar Chebab's later where we will continue to learn about the 'Moroccan mentality' and the opportunity to make a difference. We just aren't focused on that in regards to his Dar Chebab.

I think our absence there is especially apparent to them because they are feeling the effect of Clark leaving at the same time we do, and no volunteer will be sent to replace him.

I think also that because I learned in Bolivia how 2 years, 3 months starts sounding like not a lot at all-- I got through 1/3 of the service and to show for it all I had done was help dig 20 holes in the ground and plant apple trees-- so to me I have that mentality already at a very early moment in the service. Having been through 30% of the factory already, I'm aware of the size and scope that it takes to get from one end to the other and back.

Yet simultaneously I was aware, too, how long exactly I'd be gone from home. I also have the hope that I'll do a better job this time, but even though nearly everything is easier for me here (though I'm learning Darija for the first time, even the language learning part is easier, because I'm actually interested and engaged, rather than hitting myself on the head trying to sit through Spanish lessons that I've already had), the feeling that I am being a more successful volunteer is elusive. Partly that comes from doing a lot more of the recommended reading on my own, and I kind of have that lost sense of innocence to the culture shock and the pain from that. I see better how little I comprehended of my own strangeness to the people I am around, and I wonder if I alienated many of them without realizing it by doing something entirely American with no Bolivian counterpart in their own culture. Thinking this way, its easy to get embarrassed, thinking for the second time of stuff I did unthinkingly the first time, from rote habit and my own cultural conditioning, rather than a deliberate attempt to filter those actions through a Bolivian mindset first.

I also think I relied too heavily on the other PCVs near me. I'll have to make more of an effort to befriend Moroccan people. It seemed rare to find a Bolivian invited to spend time with us, other than Roxana's friends from the Wasi. Or maybe, it was less rare and more something unplanned, something that happened occasionally without any warning because it wasn't something we sought to do.

Every now and then I find common threads. In Bolivia I had hoped to do the nearby Chile Atacama race, here I have the Marathon des Sables. I will try to write more such things in a later article. I did this again with the belief that I'd be able to more fully encounter the host country and to understand it better. It's disappointing to find myself be harassed by the lesser aspects of culture shock, even while I am better able to identify what is going on. In a lot of ways, Bolivia was less foreign and more inviting, maybe less judgmental. And there exists a greater feeling of isolation here at times. I think Iin my mind I feel that I had a cache of loneliness that fills up and after a sufficient amount of time not being lonely—a year at home—then I'd be able to start from 0 with my tolerance to loneliness, completely cured of the bit I had before. Instead, I feel as sensitive to ever of being lonely. That bin was never emptied but remained. Maybe that's how it feels to go to prison a second time, like the time free never was able to erase the bitterness of being incarcerated and so there's really not a first day the second time, but it's emotionally day 181. More than once so far I've thought : this is really my second year of PC, and I'm doing 3 years. It certainly is that way for my family and for Serena, even if I didnt see it like that until I got here.

Time to hit the books! For lunch we had pressure-cooked potatoes in a mild red sauce, a bowl of ' dried apricot soup' and some of the firm hobs bread, plus a carrot and red onion salad with some spicy, mustard-mayonaise-black pepper type sauce in it.

When I finish the next Tolstoy story, Ill be able to resume reading Zazie dans le metro, the novel in french I brought with me. Samiya found it today under my bed when we organized my room and swept. Somehow a pile of dirt appeared in one corner of the room and it wasn't me that put it there. But I enjoy reading the PC literature. A lot of the meetings and lectures that we have to go cover things in such a generalized way, and they repeat the basic idea in a hundred different ways. This is fine to me, because I realize that with a larger and larger group, they must dillute the message and drive it in as firmly as possible, preaching to the lowest common denominator (a little bit like a Hollywood movie?). So things are tailored to the weakest link, the person that pays attention the least or that doesn't have a lot of common sense.... which is generally all of us, at different times and in different circumstances. But it can be boring.

The Culture Matters book, though, and some of the other are wildly amazing books that are enganing and humorous, fun but informative. Talking to my friend Adriana, who worked with an organization in the Dominican Republic similar to Peace Corps, they said the organization copied Peace Corps' rules nearly exactly, since they were so effective.

If I ever have a bad day as a volunteer, I just think how glad I am to have literally hundreds more resources and tools available that didnt exist before. Speaking to Jack, who is a volunteer in my group but that did Peace Corps in Turkey back in 1965, he said that the medical questionaire was one page during the application, and the only thing on it was the question: “Are you healthy?”

Having my back examined by one of the 3 PC doctors here in Morocco, I was happy that it's not 1965. He said that I needed to take ibuprofin to help reduce the inflamation, even if it doesn't hurt a lot. That way, it will heal faster, he said.

Thursday and Friday I was in Azrou, our hub city, with all of the remaining YD volunteers. There's not much to say except that some people got shots, we got to eat pizza for the first time in a month (tasted good, though the cheese was more like middle-school cafeteria pizza than something that should be served in a restaurant), and those of us who didnt go to sleep at 11 ended up staying awake until 2:30 in the morning.... normal camp type activities, too, like learning how to play bananagrams, and upset that the portuguese word Nua didn't count, even though it was a perfect link between 'Vixen' and 'aqua'.

One of our PCT's, David, gave a presentation about Islam since that was his minor in college, and Aydin from Iran gave us a talk about the Sunni Shia split. He said the Shia's are most like Catholics, in that they feel Muslims need an intermediary between God and people. Aydin later drew a portrait of me lying on the ground, so this whole thing was a nice time away from Saffron, and a chance to debrief in a large group, lick each other's wounds and to share the books that we've finished. It ended quickly, and the next day we were in taxis going back home. But it also helped to teach me more about the people I am sharing space on the conveyor belt with, and to have some special moments with the staff, like walking to the bus station with Fatima our main security person, and hear how she is preparing a PhD on society and morality. Or to play drums at 10 PM with 3 of the Moroccan language and culture coaches. I feel like my rhythm skills were sufficient to keep up with those guys, though the Cuban/conga drum influence I have from home was apparent.

I was able too to download the newest JayZ album, that has quickly become my source of inspiration to get out the door and to engage Morocco without any fear. I'm anxious to buy the new Shakira album, since it seems like her art and actions have consistently mirrored the ups and downs, beginnings and endings in my own life. I feel as if I've matured alongside her somehow. That's supposed to be out by the end of the month... so each Tuesday, you can believe I will be checking iTunes!

Sunday night blog

Just finished another English lesson with Hassan. The funny thing is that I'm having trouble typing on an American keyboard! About every few seconds I have to erase a word now because I will try to hit A and instead it writes W, expecting the French style to show up. Then I have to look and see where the M key is supposed to be because I do not remember!

Like before, Hassan gave me a hug and two kisses, one on each cheek after his language lesson. This time, I responded with less embarassment and faster than before. So, according to the EXTREMELY GOOD Culture Matters book that Peace Corps gives us, I know now that I am becoming conditioned to the habits of people here.

It says the five steps of cultural acclimatization are

1- Observation/ Instruction

2- Imitation

3- Positive, Negative Reinforcement

4- Internalization

then my favorite two words ever:

5- Spontaneous Manifestation, where it just comes out.

I remember in Bolivia how we had our own version of that , the 3 – 6 – 9 rule: 3 months in, and you like something about the culture just barely. Maybe before you couldnt stand it, but now you do not want to vomit and/or kill someone when you have to do it. Its not rejection like it was in the beginning. Its a meager form of acceptance. Then, 6 months to one year in.

The same thing that you gave a 3 before, now you like more than you dont. On a scale of 1-10, this is a 6. You maybe dont get hungry for it, but you are happy when its given to you. You're becoming engulfed by this new community, and so now you're more than half way into its mouth.

Finally, your last days as a Peace Corps volunteer, and you find yourself enjoying that thing immensely—maybe Incan flute music, or something culinary sheep's head?--and you can't get enough of it. The cartilage makes your mouth water, and you are ashamed at the idea that in the US you wont be able to slay your own sheep and eat its head (at least not in public). Yes, it's a 9 now. It's even greater than sliced bread. You dont just eat it when its given to you, but you cook it yourself using your

And when you return home those foods that you listed as a 9 before?

3's. Tolerable. Able to stomach them without wretching.

Enough culture theory! Time for the experience of being a PC Morocco trainee.

This weekend alone I had a man throw a punch at my face for the first time while shouting gibberish, then I fell down the stairs, then I got rained on for 3 hours. But if that's all, then I'd be on the first plane home, like the four people so far in my group that have left already. :***(

No, there was more than enough amazingness to keep me here, begging for more. And after all, everyone should expect a rough landing in any new culture.

Instead I had the experience of being invited to the Moroccan bath houses with my host brother Yasin, while he instructed me on the correct way to experience that amazing thing (we are going again on Tuesday with the 2 other guys, Inshallah). Then the next night I was amazed watching an extremely enthusiastic, charismatic and talented magician, Yassin's best friend. He came to the house and we watched and shouted and laughed when he went through 2 dozen card tricks, some of which truly were remarkable. Finally, today I reached a stride with my host family, making jokes with them and marveling in their ability to laugh for an hour together after the dinner table.

As far as food this week, I got lucky when I saw a vendor selling the same style of egg sandwiches that I ate so often in Bolivia. But Yassin was there and said that I didnt want to eat that because they used dirty oil. I said they were my favorite things, then I thought we were going home but instead he led me to his favorite egg sandwich guy, in the dead center of the Souk. I could barely see the man, instead I only could see his hand dip in and out towards me while he reached in to grab his ingredients. There was a kind of vienna sausage in the shape of a piece of bologna that Yassin said is made of chicken, and also a fried potato cake and the eggs, plus hot sauce. So, I said what I wanted: plenty of hot sauce and the potato cakes in my egg sandwich.

Promptly he whipped up a sandwich for me, throwing everything together on his hot iron, mixing it and pressing the potato cakes flat. Then he crammed it into the half moon sandwich bun (like a pita but much thicker and better), and it was even better than the ones I had in Bolivia. Or if not better, then a delicious new version of the old classic that I would buy in trios, egg, french fries, salad and yachwa spicy dressing.

While playing baseball today we got rained on, so a group of us that were only watching left to go to a restaurant to find some food. This city is extremely well groomed, highly developed, it looks like a Swiss dream village. And its not even as good as the city next to it, Ifrane. Later I got an email from my friend Adriana saying she lives in the most rural village of all. So that helped put into context the utter je-ne-sais-quoi of that town.

My belief is that those two towns must receive a lot of foreign investment. Or a concerted effort by the Moroccan government to demonstrate its readiness to utilize forthcoming foreign investment in a big way.

But at the restaurant—all the while walking there telling my MdS teammate Cara that she has somehow gotten the French chic look down perfectly, like Serge Gainsbourg's daughter Charlotte “It's a matter of elegance and simplicity, really”-- at the restaurant I had two glasses of hot chocolate, a giant piece of bread, a pile of green olives and french fries (usually eaten together, how come we dont do that in the US?), plus some vegetables from the tagine. It was scrumptious.

Coming home, I rolled around in bed for 2.5 hours trying to sleep, and ultimately I went downstairs to help Hassan study English. Almost immediately food was brought out and I ate a bowl of vegetable, noodle and onion soup. It tastes very asian, almost like Raman noodles. If I had stopped there, then it would have been great. But then somebody asked if I wanted rice, so out comes a pile of rice with a green salad, heavy on the onion, and with capers, the first time in my life I wanted capers. I had to take half of it back to the kitchen because I couldn't eat it all when, LO!there on the table there was a brand new cake with walnuts on top and yellow icing. Oh my god! So I told Samiya to save the salad for tomorrow, while I began thinking if it would be less painful to go make myself vomit before trying to eat anything else.

And sure enough, when I sat down, Samiya brought us pieces of cake. And they were about 3x larger than I would ever cut on my own, one for each of us. But it was sure delicious. And halfway through Samiya put another piece on my plate. But I had such a look of fright in my eyes that she took it back. All through this meal, I kept hitting Yasin on the shoulder, saying that he should ' mange! Mange!'

Another funny thing I did was I felt Yassin next to me raise his hand to pat me on the back, and though my back is much better I decided to overreact when he touched me there. So down comes his hand and then I put on my painful face, saying : don't touch me there! Don't touch...”

And I looked out of the corner of my eye while he realized what he had done, and his whole body flinched and he quickly took his hand away as if he had been scalded. IT WAS DAMN FUNNY. But I had done the same joke in the cab with William, and a couple of others (Fatima maybe?) who had known that I had hurt my back but had forgotten long enough to try to touch me there.

I thought back and I remembered a French song that I now decided I will sing everytime that someone presents me an insane amount of food: La decadense by Serge Gainsbourg

(See the post before)

Can't complain! I eat more food here than I ever did at home.

I think that's all I can do now. My brain just locked up. Where to begin?

One nice thing today—besides playing baseball with Moroccan people, where they were immediately good enough to hit the ball and run around the bases. Juan said after 30 minutes: “OK, I give up, they are already better than me!”-- I met a man who spoke to us in English about living in the US. He was a Yellow Cab driver, and he lived in Boston. So he asked us where we came from and he knew the places we were talking about. Then he asked if any of us new Spanish, so I went forward and we spoke in Spanish. He said in spanish that he married a Colombian lady from Cali, and then he started talking about Dominican girls being the sexiest. How strange to be from such different places : Sefrou province vs. Jackson ,TN, and yet to have so many common points of interest, even so far as what languages we speak that are not native to our home towns. And to have our lives changed by the same types of people.

Tonite watching the video I put on Youtube of Sam hitting the baseball inspired me to be more firm in my resolve to learn Darija as fully as possible by the end of training. Because the more I push my self, the more we can push each other since we are in the same class.

A funny thing today is that William shared with me his enthusiasm for the band Ween. The songs were fine, well-done, a bit hoakie, but then I asked him to play another song 'to cleanse my pallet' . So we listened to Simon and Garfunkel, and I told how I had played the star spangled banner during evacuation a year ago this week!

Wednesday night

Im having trouble again using the American keyboard, the same one I've used my whole life. But can't complain.

This morning I called my grandmother on her 84th birthday. It was 830 their time so my granddad didnt understand who I was when I first started speaking, and it sounded like he wasnt enthused to speak to me, but then his whole demeanor changed and he started hooting with excitement. Then on we went talking about what my work here is, who things are and of course the weather. Id had the same conversation with my mother 20 minutes earlier and then with Wilson throughout the time that I was speaking to them. This cyber is just across from the balcony where we spend all of our time in class, so instead of spending the 90 minutes of lunch asleep in the corner, some days I can go there and call home!

But this blog entry I'll call: Back into the blender

Things haven't changed much but I nonetheless feel as if I've somehow been removed from my certainty. After class was over on this splendid, gorgeous day, we had to go to do a Youth development exercise using what's called our PACA tools. This one was to draw a community map. It doesn't seem extremely helpful for our sector compared to the other tools, and it was nice when things got underway and these people started discussing with each other their communities, comparing the map the girls made with the one the older boys made.

But it was also a wakeup call into how far we have to go still before we are in the position of someone like Clark. The drama of this seems deflated on paper, and its nice to see it reduced to human size after translating the experience into words, but while it happened it was slightly bewildering and I felt incapable of anything other than admiring the work that was happening and adding the cascades into the top frame of the map.

And the best thing was having 1-1 conversations with those people that came to the English club. It doesn't help that they all dress nicer than me and that I've suffered from a lack of deodorant. But I was able to spend some time with the young people and learn that this one is interested in heavy metal music, and this one is trying to learn Spanish.

Yesterday our program managers came to Sefrou and interviewed us, talking about what we will do and where we may live after training. I impressed the woman (one of the most awesome Moroccan people that I've met.... extremely attractive and fiery lady who radiates charisma and calm) when I said how some people are hung on the idea of learning arabic, when really there's no advantage of that over the other 2 national languages, the Berber dialects. The reason is that you have to go to Morocco to speak any of those 3 languages, so kif-kif, it's all the same. No one in any other country will know what you are saying, so its not important which of the 3 you learn. And I feel inclined to the Berber because its something more unusual and that has roots in that region long before the Arabic influence came. Not even the script is the same!

I will learn plenty of arabic, but it seems apparent that after saying that, then I will likely go to a Berber site. Sounds great, they are supposed to be great fun, and more open a society than their Arabic peers. And there's the mystique, and they have had to struggle to keep their culture strong, even until today's times. But while that sounds great (I told them that I wanted Tata, without them explaining anything more than that it is the Southern most site in Morocco for YD... “wow! You're just like this other volnteer that pointed to the map and said : that's the one I want” But unfortunately its designed for a woman to go there)--while that sounds great, it means I'd be starting over with the language. And that's exactly like what happened in training with Spanish in Bolivia and getting a Quechua site once I left there. But maybe if they seem inclined to send me to a Berber site, then there's the chance that I might get Fatima to train me on her down-time in Berber, since she knows how to speak it.

It was sure tough to try and get Quechua on my own when I was alone in Candelaria! It seemed insurmountable, and I'd hate to run into the same problem here but I feel more confident and capable.

OK, enough PC process things (though it was fun to listen through the door while William had his John McCain moment “ The longest I've been in one place was my time in Hanoi, but I call Arizona home”, William was born in Stockholm and his parents are Foreign Service).

The fun thing tonite was that I visited Sarah's homestay family. I walked her home, and I got too close to the house's front door : it sucked me in. So soon I was ushered into the expansive living room and after 20 minutes of talking in French with the 12-year old girl in the family and aiding her brother Mohammad to play games on my cell phone (7 years old), we were taken into the dining room where we watched the Obamas on TV, a travel commercial about Secilly in Italy, and we ate our bread and cookies with 3 or 4 kinds of oil, condiments, ' sable du Sahara' and chocolate. The strange thing was that this was the first time that Sara had a person that could communicate fluently with her host family, so I was able to see first hand the struggle to understand and be understood without knowing Arabic or French. In 30 seconds I was able to say and do the things that it had taken her days to achieve, and who knows if they ever really understood what she had tried to say, or vice versa.

It's soooooooo strange. PC. A blender . I felt bad today, overwhelmed, and writing like this now has helped. There's a lot more but I dont have the energy to continue, so goodnite.