Day2

Realized something interesting about the developing world: even the poorest people have got greater access to the latest fashions than those in the US or Europe. Who in the US wears Dolce and Gabbana? What proportion of the population is able to afford that? But in Morocco?

Everybody and their Mama wears Gucci, all the kids have something designer-based. And while yes, it maybe doesn't come from Milano, but that's not the point. The point is more that the designs are protected in the states, and anything that rips off the company too badly on a wide-basis would be taken from the shelves. I.e., Wal-Mart wouldn't carry something carrying Tommy Hilfiger's trademark if it wasn't from the company and if it didn't cost a lot of money.

But I suppose the point is less if its real, and more if it looks like the real thing would look. It might be on horrible fabrics but it was created based on a picture of the real thing, and so that automatically retains the fashionability aspect even if it falls apart and maybe a letter is spelled wrong.

The look is there, anyway, and the look was designed by the person even if their factories were not the ones that produced them. But there are not really any thing else other than these copies. I.e., people in the US don't have money so they buy poor-looking clothes. Here in Morocco, people don't have the money either, but the clothes for the poor look like rich-people clothes, ergo : more people here have rich-looking clothes while those in the US are stuck with the poor-looking clothes, even though they are equally destitute.

Strange.

So, Camp Day 2! A successful morning followed by a mixed-bag of results in the afternoon and night. It's nearly 4:30PM now, but that means there's still 6.5 hours left in my work day! My share of the work, the responsibility and feeding the eyeballs of Young Moroccan teens has been completed, however.

An hour and a half this morning of Hangman, "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" and a short lesson of Informal English "Hello? We don't say that. We say, 'Sup!" "Goodbye? Only in the textbooks and romance novels. Instead we say : Peace out, or Peace and Love". Catch you on the flip side.

At the beginning, I was happy when I learned that I'd go from the two hour lessons to just 1.5 hours. I was less happy when I learned that I'd not have a class on Friday, though it wasn't too painful since I knew we'd be doing an English Olympiad activity instead. However, when they told me today that the Beach Trip on Thursday was given a early morning counterpart--going to a canal then with a professional Moroccan engineer--will eat my 4th English lesson, I was bummed. So what originally was promised to be 10 full hours of English became 6, which became 4.5. So I'm trying to find more to do.

Sean has provided this opportunity tonite: I am supposed to draw a world map for him before the end of supper so that he can use it for his World Cup Bingo activity. He was originally called to do a geography lesson, which became something based on the countries that will soon play at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. So that when they spend their entire summer watching endless soccer games, they will

The girl Hanna had a tough time, and what normally happens to me happened to her. Her activities seemed perfect on paper, all of them had a big "A-ha!" Eureka-lightbulb moment but once she took it to tke kids, it all became blurred into an incoherent sludge that had fun moments and a lot of spontaneity but no overarching lesson for them to take home.

She said something funny to me earlier, about how she thinks its stupid that we have to call Football 'soccer'. She's a Rugby enthusiast and brought a real Rugby ball here (my goal is to have both of them together before the kids, my football and her Rugby in order to show that it's not the same thing.... it's important since everyone calls my football a Rugby). But this argument, which I think about, too, poses a problem: if Soccer goes back to football in America, then what do you call football? It has to have a new name. So it reminded me of Christopher, a guy in our YD Staj who with his wife Jolie lived in France for a year before coming here.

Chris has a t-shirt with a picture of an American football. Then immediately below it, it has the name it SHOULD have, THROWBALL. I always laugh when I think about that and I laughed just now as I typed it.

So, voila. More later! Somehow I got off on a tangent and never found my way back on the original path. Which is a great metaphor for life!

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So, didn't have to do the world map, but I was able to pitch in by

A funny and ironic thing happened since my English beginner's class was in the same large room with the much smaller advanced class. Our theme was supposed to be Children's Rights, but the only class capable of delving meaningfully into this topic was the Advanced class run by Meredith. And while I was afraid we were being to loud, I crossed the room to see if I should tone it down. On her white board they had already discussed things like the idea of 'freedom of information' and how that relates to being a person. wow!

But when I came through there 40 minutes later after practicing a few songs, guess what I find! No longer did they have the heady topics on the board but a gallows-stand, a rope and a disembodied head with part of a torso and an arm. Yeah, so seemingly her class stared at my side while we did Hangman for 30 minutes, and they convinced her they wanted to do the same for the whole second half of class!

Which is hilarious but tragic, too. And so human. It is a fantastic game, but for the small group of 10 that can actually handle something more meaningful with their English? It was trumped by our baser instincts.

Of course, camp is supposed to be fun and they did do some of the other, too. And I'll no longer be alongside that class in the same room to corrupt them with sheer joy and unthinking feeling.

Because tomorrow we do the Midnight Labyrinth lesson. If you've never done it, it's where you wear a blindfold and have to maneuver between chairs and tables shapled like Mino's labyrinth from Greek mythology. And you really have to think hard about the English words "Right! Left! Stop!" when people are shouting them to you, trying to guide you from afar through this maze. And we'll be outside so that Meredith's class will be able to focus on the deeper philosophical state of existence as a young Moroccan person.

Other things? Bingo was a success, but it had major fits and starts as well. Nonetheless the desired result was achieved. And I think it's a good game that deserves to be replicated.

In place of calling out letters and numbers, everyone has a card with the nations competing in this year's World cup, and we give clues about the geography and cultural history of the country until everyone discovers which country it is.

The trouble here was something that was not considered in Sean's planning. We did a dry run with just me pretending to be Moroccan and play the game until I got Bingo this way. It took an hour, but I learned a lot. And once the game began the 100 kids participating learned a lot, also.

But the thing that was overlooked was that in my practice run, what took me 30 seconds took 40 minutes. This was the act of creating the card with the countries lined up randomly in the 6x6 grid. And Emily and Sean were able to tell me exactly the right way in English what I needed to know. But with soooo many people, and sooo many distractions, and the enormous language and cultural barrier, this was 80x longer than it needed for me to complete and move on to the actual gameplay.

So, voila. We live and learn, and our wounds scab over. Now it's the end of the day and I'm happy that today I got lost in Oujda, missing the Sports block in our schedule, and instead happily running for 10k through the outer rural areas. Then a shower, heading back to the dorm building alone and enjoying my Cormac McCarthy book alone before taking a frigid and peaceful shower on my overheated body. Hope I get to do the same thing tomorrow.

The best thing is that my responsibilities are over after 1030 AM, and then any other things afterwards are a matter of choice and desire that I am able to fit into the day.

After the day finished, we were happy to know that one counselor had finished downloading the Lady Gaga Telephone video, and so after our day of inhibition, crossing to the conservative culture and second-guessing our movements and actions, it was liberating to see something sooooooo extreme and amazingly off-the-wall. At the same time, we were a little bit too tired to fully enjoy this, and since we are so hypersensitized to skin here, it's like that, since the video was continuously beyond our threshold to me it was just kind of white noise.

I'll have to spend the two dollars and download it on iTunes, desensitize myself again and look for the subtleties that I missed the first time after overloading my circuits in such a way. And Beyonce's character is just as amazing. It's Michael Jackson-epic.

Goodnite! For the second night I successfully nominated and defended my choice of Star of the Day, this time to a very mature, cosmopolitan girl that wears overalls named Imane. She asked me to cheat during the game, telling me to ask Sean to call Spain next during our World Cup Bingo match. I did not do this, and she didn't win any of the prizes, but her attitude afterward merited the prize. She laughed and said it didn't matter, because it's just a game. Which is a very grown-up way of thinking, compared to those people that cheated during Bingo, erasing several times the names of countries that had not been called and putting in the names of ones that were called. Just to get a pack of gum. A sore winner is not better than a content loser.

Voila, goodnite! Busy day, and still somehow able to read 90 pages. 10 more before bed, and wow, this is somehow not right, but oooooh so good.

Quote of the night:
Sean

My best friend, I don't know why. He thinks I'm in the Marine Corps.
Check this email : "Hey man! How's the corps/ I just heard that every Marine is getting a new kind of M5 rifle, you'll have to let me know how you perform. Semper fi!"
Me: "It's funny but it'd be even funnier if Moroccan intelligence intercepted that and didn't get the joke."

#2
Listening to jazz music ('Round Midnight with Miles Davis, and So What), which is so powerful, and complex, and irrational but lovely. Totally individual, off-the-cuff, the epitome of American critical thinking skills and the ability to adapt. "I love America. It's soo amazing."
"Being a music major, it's so strange to be friends with someone, and to know that their whole world is.... jazz xylophone. But somehow good enough and have the opportunity to make a living at it? I love America."

#3 Let's make a sandwich