The Next BIG NEWS!

Today was a very nervous and exciting time for us... We found out our Community Based Training (CBT) sites, the languages that we will be learning!!!, the other volunteers that will be in our CBT site, and the type of family we will each have for our homestay. For the next 10 weeks, we will be travelling back and forth between the CBT and Ourazazate (Seminar Site). For this first trip (leaving tomorrow) we will stay 9 days and then return for 4 before going again.

So, for the details...
I am going to be learning Dreeja (Moroccan Arabic)!!!!!! I am thrilled about this!
I have 4 other volunteers in my site, Brian, Matthew, Anna, and Amelia. We have Mina as our Language and Cultural Facilitator (LCF). She is amazing. Her English is excellent and I really like her teaching style. I think we will all learn really well. Brian in my group also speaks French fluently, so I kind of doubt we will have time, but if we do... I could try learning some of that too! We are going to a bigger town, Skoura, to stay and learn language and travelling to a small village by taxi, Gedarra, to do our technical training. For the technical training, we will be interviewing artisans (probably pottery in this case) about their business and products and seeing where they might need some assistance and then developing a project to analyze how they could improve their problem. Should be exciting! My homestay family sounds really great too. There is a mother and father, plus 5 children! 3 older girls, 18, 15, and 13 and 2 boys, 10 and 1! Also, the father is a teacher! I don't think I could have asked for a better match. Love it!

So, wish me luck integrating! I'm sure it will be challenging. L'humdullah It will be great!

Seminar Site Training

Since we arrived in Ouarzazate, we’ve had 3 language lessons, 4 technical sessions, 1 medical session, and an introduction to Islam.

Our meal schedule is pretty interesting. Because it is Ramadan, we eat up to 5 meals a day! We have our normal breakfast at 8 am, which consists of Bread with honey or butter and coffee and orange juice. We are served lunch at 12:30 pm which is a salad of sorts, pretty good actually. It is usually all the same ingredients and maybe one different one. Usually cucumber, carrots, rice, potatoes, beets, lettuce, tomatoes (or a sort of salsa), and sometimes something hot like beans of some sort. We have bottled water with this meal ☺ Neither of these two meals are eaten by Muslims. They are fasting during this time. At 6:45, Muslims break their fast and begin their meals… l-fthur or breakfast is served. There is always a type of soup and one or two types of bread, dates (I think these are pure fructose sugar) and usually some other very sweet items. Coffee, tea, and orange juice are all served. At 10 pm, we have another meal (the biggest of all the meals), this one usually has a type of meat, as well as salad and bread. All drinks served again. Two nights ago, we even had a milkshake! It tasted like a vanilla milkshake, but it was green and one of our teachers suggested it might be avocado. There is one last meal at about 3 am, but none of the PCTs get up for that, although, I suppose we could if we wanted to. I’m not sure, but I think this one consists of fruit, bread and cheese usually. Sometimes, they set out bags with these in them for those that wake up to eat and pray. I’ll get some pictures of the meals on soon ☺



We have ventured out just a bit to try to buy a few things we need and such. The markets are really different here than what I’m used to. It seems that the Moroccan way of obtaining customers is have a long conversation with them. They ask a lot of questions and almost always invite you to sit and have tea with them. I haven’t yet felt comfortable negotiating the market, but that will come. I also only learned the numbers yesterday, so that will really help. A few days ago, we managed to buy some water and toilet paper without speaking Arabic hardly at all ☺ I’m looking forward to being able to communicate though.





The view from our hotel is pretty great. Today, we did our laundry on the roof of the hotel. That was really a process! It took 2 hours for me to do it and my back and wrists hurt afterwards! Then, just my luck, it started raining!! It stopped shortly after, but it was pretty dramatic.




Today I had an interview with the Program Director and Assistant to talk about what our skills are exactly and our site placement preferences. We’ll see what happens. I figure we will probably find out on Friday what language we are learning (since we leave Saturday to start our Community Based
Training (which will be our first homestay and at a site where they will speak the language we are learning). I requested to learn derija (Moroccan Arabic) instead of one of the Berber languages, but I have a feeling I’m not the only one requesting this, so they said they would do their best to accommodate our preferences. “en shallah” they say, or God willing.

Road to Ouarzazate~

The road to Ouarzazate is 3 hours of continual mountain overlook. It is a path only taken in conjunction with Dramamine. We turn every hundred feet, dipping and climbing, as if hiking through a rocky valley, trying to find a foothold. We step only as the mountain allows. At times mountains surround us on all 4 sides, turning a corner out of the valley and to a foothill of an even larger mountain. We approach a small village se up on a hill. At the bottom of the hill is a tiny stream. I imagine the strength in the legs of these people from their journeys up and down. The goats stay to the side of the road, avoiding our bus. We pass a small shop with a young white woman talking with locals. I can only wonder if she is one of us. This could be my home for the next 2 years.

Back Log!

I’ve made a flickr page for the more comprehensive collection of pictures. Please visit at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12973534@N04/

I’ve discovered that our time difference is 4 hours later than the East Coast of America.

I am still pretty unsure of how and how much internet access I will be able to use. I will know soon about the next 11 weeks, but after that, I will evaluate again. Even if I can’t get my computer online though, it’s great to have it – I type everything out ahead of time and then when I go to the café, I’ll be able to just copy it to the blog. So, however often, you will likely receive a very long update! I’m sure I won’t write as much once day-to-day life is more similar, but right now things are still changing a lot.


A little catching up to do here….
The last half of August…

Jesse and I flapped our wings until we arrived at my sister, Angela’s house outside of Denver Colorado. That week involved missing the end of the crazy turn-around Rockies game, finishing my dress!, major shopping at REI (don’t doubt the outdoor involvement of people in Denver! – that place was HUGE – 3 stories - and packed!), playing with my adorable nephews, and much other fun. Jesse and I went hiking in the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was totally gorgeous. We saw many beautiful waterfalls, tall and wide. We shared some of the most beautiful overlooks and trail walking and didn’t encounter any mountain lions or other such creature. We also got a change to spend an evening with Jesse’s cousin in the area. He took us to Red Rock Amphitheatre, where the nature rock makes incredible acoustics.

This was the first waterfall we came to and below is the view with us in front of it at the Rockies game ;)



After we returned from Colorado, we spent a couple of days preparing our next trip. We decided on a camping trip to Lake George in New York (Adirondacks) and then a couple more hours north to Montreal. This was great. In Lake George, we spent a day Kayaking on the lake (which proved challenging, but was fun). We visited a couple of small islands in the middle of the lake. We had a tandem kayak (which seat two) so we could stay together. We also went horseback riding one day for 2 hours. This was Jesse’s second time on a horse and he was great ☺ It would be fun to go again with just us and a guide (this time there we two others as well). Jesse and I (mostly Jesse) cooked breakfast and dinner and sometimes lunch almost every day. Jesse got very good at making a fire in our tiny fire pits. The whole time we were camping, I only saw one mosquito (and that was as soon as we arrived). How incredibly exciting! We thought for sure they would be everywhere. I also had the opportunity to learn good Frisbee throwing technique from Jesse! He didn’t learn good miniature golf from me when we got to Montreal (but I think he just wasn’t paying good enough attention when I was doing well). I made a hole in one! And if you saw this course at the campground, you would understand that this was a great accomplishment (see flickr photo). In Montreal, I think we had the most fun – and mostly because we enjoyed speaking to each other with funny French accents. We learned a very small amount of French and we repeated it as much as possible in our conversations. We walked around Mont Royal, a huge park there and saw the most common site of Montreal – le Croix (the Cross). It is a 100 ft tall steel cross. It was first built in the 1600s after the village had survived a flood (or was it a drought?) I told you that we avoided big scary animals in Colorado, but I can’t say the same about Montreal. We were quite sure that there was a bear outside of our tent in the middle of the night one night. Remembering our survival skill review in Colorado, we tried various techniques to scare the “bear” away from our site. Eventually it left, but frightened might be an understatement. The next day, we did some investigation and detective work and inconclusively thought we may have had a raccoon encounter, instead or a bear, BUT, I think, due to our state of fright, I’m sticking with the bear story.












I arrived at “Staging” for the Peace Corps in Philadelphia around 1:30 pm on Saturday, September 8, 2007. There are 67 Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) – you will soon learn just how much peace corps loves their acronyms going to Morocco with 38 in Small Business Development


We learned that we 38 will have our base training site in Ouarzazate, which is the ‘door to the desert,’ just above the Western Sahara. Ouarzazate is known for it’s new (and old) movie studios. It is the largest in Africa and many American movies were filmed there. Ouarzazate in Tamazight (a berber language) means ‘without confusion,’ so that is good – maybe a very good place to learn these languages! ☺ We will be spending 30% of our time together there for the next 11 weeks. The other portion of our time is for CBT (Community Based Training) – I will be with 4-5 other volunteers and a language/cultural facilitator in a village somewhere “near there” – perhaps up to an hour away.

When we arrived in Casablanca, we were prompted to enter the “Crew and Diplomats” line for customs, which made us all feel quite special ☺ We then took a bus to Rabat (capital city) and toured the Peace Corps Offices of Rabat. They took our pictures when we arrived at the hotel (later on) –oooh fun… no sleep and over a day of travel later!) We will rest for 3 days in Rabat In Rabat, we had lost of lessons and vaccinnations and paperwork, etc. "resting" they called it. A few days later, the 38 Small Buisness Development Volunteers traveled 9 hours by bus down to Ouarzazate (Wait, “where’s that at?” you might say... or did you say? Because you were attempting to read what I wrote. When pronounced Ouarzazate is about like Where za zat? (more about that later).

So, these people I’m with… they are pretty great. Everyone is really very skilled and intelligent. Particularly thoughtful people too. It’s like I’m in a group of people that were pre-selected to make excellent friends. Love it.

My parents and Jesse saw me off in Philly. It was so great to be able to see them all. How blessed! My fellow PCVs thought it was pretty incredible to be able to have them there. They might have been a little jealous – if they weren’t so thoughtful.

Arrival!

You should know that I ran the far reaches to get on the internet for you :) I climbed carpets and rugs to the roof, walked the entire hotel and there was a connection in only one room of a PCV. And then the connection wouldn'[t work on macs, only pcs. I'm on someone else's computer now.

Here is something I typed yesterday, hoping to send it earlier today...

So, our plane was delayed. Not because we didn't board on time (we boarded 1.5 hours before departure. No explanation, but we sat there for another hour after we were supposed to leave. Very strange. Was the Peace Corps testing our patience. About an hour and a half after we got on the plane, I was pretty tired. Anyway, we arrived late, so the rest of our day got rushed. We went immediately to the Peace Corps offices for a tour, to meet the staff, Sept 11 commemoration, and a very warm welcoming. Here we had our first glass of Moroccan Mint Tea. It was good! Not unbearably sweet!

Our tour was cut a little short and we hurried on to the hotel. After much bag unloading and room organization, we ate lunch. Every lunch and dinner is very good (they are some sort of mix between what we would be used to and what Moroccans really cook). Immediately following this, we had a talk about Safety and Security from an Embassy worker. We weren't aloud out in Morocco without having heard this. This put us all to sleep (didn't mention, but with ALL my MANY efforts), I again didn't sleep on the plane or the bus ride from Casablanca to Rabat (although I was a little closer to sleep on the bus). Then, the remainder of the day proceeded with much more talking. We received our handbooks, medical kits, more paperwork and information about medical staff etc. Of course we had more Mint Tea, but still, no one seemed to be able to really stay awake. After this, finally, A SHOWER! Then dinner and a walk around the block. Curfew was 8 pm, so that was a quick walk. We followed this by trying to buy Internet access in the hotel, but were told it wasn't working  shame. Now, I'm writing this email, so I can send it to you at my first opportunity tomorrow.

To explain the pictures: Family and Jesse at the hotel seeing me off, Jesse camouflaged into the hotel chair, Departing the plane!, A picture of a mosque from the bus window in Rabat, the flowers were the first thing I saw departing the bus to enter Peace Corps Offices (they were literally right in front of my face (inches) when I stepped down from the bus., There are 36 Peace Corps staff members for Morocco. On stage are the ones that were here today to greet us. Bruce Cohen, Country Director (in suit and tie) spoke to us for a while. He is an excellent speaker, very inspiring. I think we a fortunate to be led by this man.

I was amazed by the beauty of all this. The Peace Corps offices were gorgeous, with a large courtyard (where we were sitting), gardens, and beautiful buildings. One of the current volunteers told us not to get used to it. Grass is not an everyday site.

Now, for a little update from today...

First thing one of the other PCVs taught a yoga class :) Then another tired day of learning st. I had a rabies vaccination. The U.S. Ambassador of Morocco came to speak to us and he was also a really down to earth guy (these are the things that make us feel really important). After they let us free, I went with 10 others walking through the Medina (market) and to the edge of the earth (Atlantic Ocean) where I saw the most amazing 360 degrees. There was a beautiful old cemetary that stretched out into the expanse. The ocean, with rocky cliffs, the city and it's busy streets... And the sun was setting over all of this. The call to prayer began and I felt very happy to spend 27 months of my life in this country.

I received a card today from Angela, a letter from a woman from church, and later in the day I received a padded envelope from Angela with a cool art project from Tyler! How fun it is to receive mail.

a note about cell phone to family and such...
I found out that I will likely be getting a cell phone eventually. I'm just not sure if it will be sooner or later. It is free for me to receive calls from anyone, so I know it is typically more expensive to call a cell phone from the U.S., but if you find a good rate, you could call me anytime. and it would be free for me! Maybe the calling card that Vikki had gotten us before or maybe the skype rates? It costs a lot to call the U.S. from a cell phone, but I can get a phone card to call from landlines and pay phones.

I have lots of fun pictures to share, but it isn't working out right now, so soon guys! Post me some comments!

Love and Peace ~