Some not bad but not good news

Well, Development is all about finding common ground between what you want/can do and what the people want/can do.

So today was my international cuisine cooking class, but at lunch time Ilhem (she's my host sister, 12 years old and the smartest person in town), she said that most girls come on Tuesday not because they want the cooking class but because they don't have class that day.

This means that I thought there was a surplus of students because they liked the cooking class, but instead it's just because they came wanting English on their day off. And then I have food, and very little English, and that's OK but not what they want.

So now it's 2:30, I'm trying to find something in the next hour and a half to do for them. My hope to teach them French Toast --in order to find a recipe they don't know, I explain to my family what the recipe is like... so it was funny when I used all kinds of gestures trying to explain what French toast is like--has now evaporated, and while I'm glad to save money I'm sad that my favorite part of the week did not have the cult following like I had hoped.

But it's not about me, and it's not about what I want to do. And maybe it's less that they were anti-Cooking class, and more that their free day, where there's no school, they wanted 100% English. So maybe this means the cooking class can be an end of the week celebratory-type thing.

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Other stuff: two weeks until the big weekend bike ride around my region. And it'll be a hot one. I'm still wearing wool : the strange thing about staying a long time in Morocco is that you learn to forget short sleeve everything. I learned this is partly the bugs, but also because most people are not in the sun for long, they are nearly always hiding in shaded places. And this country is called : the cold country with the hot sun. So a lot of layers and you cover up every inch of your body even when it's 100 degrees outside. The third reason to stay like that is because of the miniscule mosquitos that cover your body in bites. It's bad, but it's not so bad if the only thing showing are your eyes.

Man, I only go to the internet once every three days now, so looking at my GMAIL I have almost 700 unread messages.

Glad to see Mohamed Ahansal won the 25th Marathon des Sables! And a woman named Monica Aguilera. Mbruk! Congratulations

It's interesting to go there and look at the Dessins du jour :

I like it because they basically illustrate my life here each day. This week I'll try to write a series on my blog called 'five years ago today..." Check for it! Bye, love you all