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.