From an email to my dad

I had a good week, the first week since I felt better after the 3 weeks of having a parasite. I went to spend New Year's with people from my group, which I haven't seen in six weeks.
There's a snow advisory now for a lot of Morocco, and we received an email from our security person telling us to be wary when traveling. I'm lucky to have a hot shower here. I live at a Casbah that's been converted into a hostel, so there's a hot shower available any time I want one. The only thing is that it is done by natural gas, so you have to turn the water to a very low pressure for it to heat up very warm. Still, many PCVs only have a cold shower or a bucket bath, so this is a great thing for me to have. In place of moving out on my own like most PCVs, I've moved into a bigger room but still with the same family. The room is big enough for the bed, desk, a living room-type space and in the corner a table with an electric eye to cook.
But even with the hot shower, you can believe that on nights like tonite when it's very cold, I remember Franklin and sitting in the hot tub talking with you. I wish I could magically fly there for an hour or two, enjoy some Franklin Pizza Co. and then get in the hottub for a bit.
I've been here four months already! Starting the 11^th. It seems like it's gone fast, but when I remember everything it's not surprising. It's been a very full four months: the weekend in Philadelphia, flying to Casablanca, taking the bus with everyone to Rabat and the beach resort where we spent the first week, then the long hours of training, crammed into a small room and trying to learn Arabic. Two months of that, then moving on to my town Nkob, plus various weekends in different cities along the way, going to Rabat a couple of times (a 12 hour trip from where I am to the PC office), twice in Marrakesh, twice in Ourzazate, twice in Zagora, and twice in Agdez, as soon as I go there tomorrow. Plus getting all of my things from place to place, buying the new things to help furnish where I am, and I've read about 20 books since I've been here, or more now.
I'm very close to all the people in my region, though I've only seen them briefly. The problem is that they all left for Christmas! Some went to Tennessee (one guy near me went to school at Vanderbilt), others went to Paris. One girl's mom became badly sick so Peace Corps flew her home for free for a month to be with her. So she is coming home this weekend and tomorrow I will take a taxi to the town (it's the closest one to me), and have a chance to cook and eat good food. I have a can of red beans that I will take, hoping to maybe convince people that some chili is the perfect thing to eat in the Winter time. And I'll try to make waffles for the first time with my waffle maker that I bought in Marrakesh. I've used it already, but to make sandwiches. You press a button and you can change the plates inside for a grill, for toasting sandwiches, or for making waffles.
But as happy as this week was, getting to eat real food again after 3 months of being sick, on a Bread-Rice-Apples-and Toast diet, something I ate yesterday affected me badly, and I was even more sick than before. But luckily, though this was more violent it was also shorter. I threw up a dozen times, and I was stuck in the bathroom on the floor, waiting to see if I'd throw up or have diarrhea next. But this was only from 6 to 8 PM, and apart from being sick a couple of times through the night, now I feel nearly perfect again.
The worst thing is just not knowing why, i ate different things all day but am not sure what it was that did it. Knowing that my host family would come to check on me, I got out of my bed to go hide my peanut butter. They blamed my first 3 week illness on my having eaten peanuts, so now that I was healthy and I began eating peanuts again (I never really stopped, but this week I didnt hide it) I was afraid that I'd never hear the end of it if they knew I had two jars of peanut butter.
And they blamed this time being sick on my sandwich bread that I bought in Ourzazate.
For work here, i've taught only 2 classes before I got sick the first time, and I was afraid being sick yesterday that I'd have to postpone classes even longer. My schedule is pretty simple. I have Spanish four days a week between the time students get out of high school and the time they eat lunch, 45 minutes or an hour. Then I come back at 3 and 4 to teach the girls English, since the normal classes are at night in the dark, and they are not allowed to leave their house at night. So while that is another 2 hours of teaching, it's really just a repeat of the English lesson the night before. Then I have an hour and a half to go cook dinner before my night lessons. So it's 16 hours or so schedule a week, though I also hope to have a class where I find a song in English that they all like, then we look at what the lyrics mean and practice singing it. My Arabic teacher knows a Cat Stevens song, Fathers and Sons, 10 years later because her English teacher taught it to her, so I think it will be a popular class. But it's hard to find a good time slot.
I want to use my beekeeping skills, and I might try to get a PC grant that would allow me to go into the nearby mountains where they harvest honey, and train them in more modern ways to get the honey without destroying the nest.