Happy New Year; photos

Bought this baby in Marrakesh! Its got the waffle maker part, but you press a button, take that out and you get these other two sets of trays that you can use. So there's a george forman grill part, or you take those two out and put in the two trays for the sandwich griller-cutter (panini machine). So with this I could do all three meals of the day if I needed to! It's something that Im not planning on leaving behind when I am done with Morocco.

Its a nice looking piece of equipment.

Silent Night on the Oud

Merry Christmas from Morocco

Pics of me in my town

I just threw a football to some young guys and a five year old playing with me

Its a gorgeous place, home to more casbahs than all of Morocco

A nice email from our PC Training Staff

This is the only bit that Im legally allowed to share without being deported to a secret base in Antarctica, but its nice.

It’s already a month since you have sworn-in as PC volunteers in Morocco. We are definitely sure you have been experiencing a world of things with your host families, at the Dar Chebab, with the local community as well as on your own. For some of you it might be the first time experiencing Thanksgiving away from the family and beloved ones. It might be the first time for some, if not all, of you experiencing Eid K’bir in a Muslim society and with a host family. We are sorry for the vegetarians who had only meat as their primary meal…sorry for those who decided to become vegetarians after seeing their friends being slaughtered…sorry for those who enjoyed l’Eid to its fullest but had terrible diarrheas… We are happy and Lucky to have you experience these, and other, special occasions at this early stage as part of your cross-cultural training.
-Training staff

Heres a thought I had today as I walked to the Cyber. Peace Corps is all about down time, whether it wants to or not. And thats fine, as long as its not all down time. But just last night, I read Henry VI Part 2. Great fast read! Then I immediately started the next volume in the War of Rose Shakespeare octet of plays.

But the thought I had today was this : would I necessarily have read this now if I wasnt procrastinating a giant list of stuff to do? A.k.a, if I wasnt in Peace Corps now, would I be close to finished with reading Shaksepeare's complete? And its not that I dont love those plays or I dont read them at home. But why last night? And part of the reason was that theres a whole language here that I need to learn, an entire community to get to know, 6 or 8 classes each week to plan starting tomorrow ( beginners english 1 and 2, intermediate eng 3 and 4, begin Spanish 5 and 6, and advanced conversation 7) . So with all this pressure I find myself escaping into things I might not necessarily have been attracted to as at home. Just like in Bolivia there are books that were handed to me to read that I wouldnt necessarily have touched, or skills that I desired to learn to help pass the time. Crotcheting. Ventriloquism, juggling. I imagine this is the sort of spontaneous enthusiasm that you might find in prison that you wouldnt see outside of such a setting. Sort of like Clint Eastwood learning to play the accordion, which handily also conceals his get-away route.

So far Ive got 17 books, guides and novellas that Ive read since Ive been here, and am in the middle of another 5 or 6.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8398565.stm

Story from Wes about movie making in nearby Ourzazate! A video clip

Been in Morocco for 74 days already

I expected to add it up and have it be 100+, but this is still a whole lot.

So, update on the past week. I felt like I was gone a whole lot, and I was. One day I took a personal day in the middle of the week to visit the tail end of a birthday party. So going there I was able to see the other people in my region that I didn't meet when I went to Rabat for the memorial. And then next thing you know, within ten minutes of showing up there, I was volunteering to organize the Zagora spring camp in April. The girl whose birthday we were celebrating had done this the last year, and it was stressful but manageable, so long as I don't sign up to lead any of the clubs or activities at the camp. So this I guess is my birthday present to her! But before I signed on, I needed assurance of one thing:

“This won't prevent me from traveling to France in February after Post-PST?”

“No... are you doing it illegally?”

“Nope, that's the first dates that we are allowed to travel outside of Morocco.”

So, no problem then.

I stayed overnight in Tinzo again after going to Zagora. The Peace Corps Washington people were here collecting info and connecting dots about the person who had died. Can't talk about the specifics, but my recommendation was to decentralize the medical staff, and have optional 'health weekends' in each region once a month. I think this would do good because each time we went to our hub city during training, there would be a long list of people who signed up to talk to the doctor about things that they would likely not have gone 12 hours from their final site to Rabat to get looked at.

But going there, one of the PC Washington people, the lead man, & friends with the PC director is a guy named Stacy, who was a PC Bolivia volunteer in '69-71. He said "We're the ones they were trying to depict falsely in that movie that got us kicked out."

Today I spoke to my friend, a man nearly 40 years old who spent 5 years in Spain. We hit it off speaking Spanish my first days here, and now he told me that he is going again ' manana a la manana'. So we sat today at a cafe and spoke for a while, and I showed him my book in Portuguese so he could see if he understood anything. And yes, he was able to get the idea. Anything too hard I'd repeat in Spanish out loud, and I could see the lights in his eyes flickering with understanding and happiness. I know the feeling, the same thing happened to me.

So now it's Monday night, and I'm starting my classes on Thursday. I'm trying to prepare as much as possible before then, luckily there's a lot of resources. I've gone to my Youth center each morning for 2 hours. It needs to be cleaned badly. I'll continue to do that, since I can concentrate much more easily there on my work than when I'm at my host family's house. And it gives me some visibility since people are always coming and going. Noone stopped by yesterday but today five more people came and wrote their names on the sign-up sheet. The first one came by himself and each sentence he spoke to me was in 1)english, then a sentence in 2) Spanish, then 3) French and 4) tashlheet. So I was blown away by his enthusiasm and ability! He wasn't great at all of them, but he told me how he doesn't do great in class but is much better when he studies by himself in his room with books (the same as with me).

So sitting in the youth center after that, I felt so great because my mind was bursting with possibilities. And as long as I remain as enthusiastic as they are, then everything will turn out fine. Then lunch at home, a 1 hour 15 minute run into the sunset after a siesta... now the cyber! So today I'm happy.

The same man that is going back to live in Spain to work, I told him how I ran the Marathon des Sables the first time I went to Morocco. Turns out, he knows Lachen and Mohammed Ahansal, the 14+ x champions! They went to elementary school together and stayed close until recently. It was fun to hear about that.