hello all. I have been blatantly avoiding the internet at this wonderful holiday season because of just that, the holiday season. I've noticed my emotional state here in Morocco can often have a direct correlation to my access to the internet. So in an effort to maintain my sanity, and avoid my favorite things about america so as not to miss them I have been "off the grid" so to speak.

this was my first christmas away from home where I didn't have a family to celebrate it with. I celebrated christmas in belgium when I lived there in 2002, but as it wasn't a muslim country most people there had some form of christmas celebrations, the streets were decorated and my family exchanged presents. It would be easy enough to totally ignore christmas here, turn off the internet, turn around your calendars and don't remind yourself when thanksgiving was. It seems like a good idea in theory but never really is in practice. I celebrated christmas in the same way I celebrated thanksgiving here, with a small group of wonderful peace corps volunteers where we tried our hardest to replicate our favorite things about the holiday in our own special way. I drew a christmas tree, we all made cookies and cooked things like mashed potatoes and mac and cheese. Being in homestay means I've been eating exclusively moroccan food since.... um... september. I do really love moroccan food, don't get me wrong, but I was beyond ready to eat some american fare. As a vegetarian here it's slim pickings. For starters all my food is cooked with meat and  most foods are cooked either in a pressure cooker or a pot called a tagine, where vegetables are simmered for hours with meat in the middle. It is very delicious, but it means crunchy crisp vegetables are few and far between. It's funny that you can sit at a table with a 1year old baby and he can eat the same carrots as you at lunch. (this totally happened the other day btw, they don't have baby food here, so unless they're breast feeding everyone eats the same as everyone else, even if you're a little pudgy baby). Digression aside and long story short, christmas was great. I got to skype with friends and family, there was a christmas tree! ( i drew it, see image below), i got to eat good food, make some cookies, listen to christmas music all day and watch it's a wonderful life.

Back to food, having heard other accounts of peace corps countries I know Morocco is pretty special in the fact that most families can afford to eat meat. I know many other peace corps countries meat is so expensive that it is only pulled out for special occasions. I don't know the logistics of it, but Moroccans are able to afford meat one way or another, but it struck me last night how different they go about eating it. In america you cook a whole small chicken for a family of 4 everyone taking a breast and a leg and mowing down on the delicious poultry goodness. Here a single drumstick is put in the center of the cous cous and divided among the family, 4-6 people. I've been struck by the wasteful/overindulgence of america before, but being in a county like Morocco can throw it in your face like a bucket of cold wet spaghetti.  An example of this is that for christmas we bought two chickens for seven people. (I of course ate mashed potatoes and crunchy green beans! yum).

In other news I am slowly becoming accustomed to what I call getting "Moroccoed". for example, yesterday I had a pretty important list of things I had to get done. I've managed to lose my bank card, and it's not as simple as it is in america. In america:
me: "hello customer service, I'd like to cancel my card and be re-issued a new one"
lady in florida or illinois answering customer service calls:"that will be no problem ma'am expect a new card in 5-10 business days"
then you can use your credit card for a few days until your new one comes in the mail. Nope, not here, here I have to go to the police, and fill out a declaration of i'm in idiot and lost my card with 2 pictures and a photocopy of your passport included, and to top it off a stamp for 20d. It's like being in the alice's restaurant song by arlo guthrie-" They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and

they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each 

one was to be used " to get a new card.  My police station is down the hill on the edge of town and I literally walked there and back 6 times to get this whole thing done, and it ended up costing close to 45 dirham. not cool... Anyways.... So that was on my list for the morning along with get money out from the post office via different means. All things were stopped in their tracks. No, we don't have bank checks, this town is too small, no one was using them, come back in 2 days. No you need to bring this that and the other thing, come back tomorrow. Then as I was walking around trying to find the puppies I saw in town the other day I ended up watching part of a wedding. This is what I call getting Moroccoed. You start out your day with certain ideas and intentions and goals and by one way or another your day ends out totally different. It's more often then not a good thing, but not always. Things like missed taxi's, no taxi's, bus fights, bad perfume, no electricity, gross misunderstandings- all getting moroccoed. But I also count things like your taxi driver that you've befriended buying you tea and bread for breakfast, a store owner giving you coffee and not letting you pay for it, the lady next to you on the bus absolutely refusing your "no, thank you" to her bread, cookies and fruit she's eating, and unexpected kindnesses and moments of awesomeness as getting moroccoed. Luckily for me I've been Moroccoed in the good way more then in negative ways.

It's interesting to me how easily i've allowed my life here to become habitual. While on skype with my mom the other day she asked me how things were and I realized how much I have come to accept things as fact here. Kid sitting on the curb roasting a cows head with a propane torch? no problem, totally normal! Walking buy the sheep skins outside the butcher shop? totally legit, where else would they put them? No cheese? alright come back tomorrow, maybe there will be more. Asking every shop on the street if they know what soy sauce is? well maybe i can find a bottle and they can get it for me. dogs just chilling on the street? no worries, they're not mean ( i just wish i could find the puppies!). I find it's easier to just find the things that would be abnormal, to be normal. If i spent my whole time here going "OMFG IM PEEING IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND! IM EATING WITH MY HANDS! WHY ARE THERE DOGS EVERYWHERE! AAAAH DEAD COWS! AAAAAAH! NO CHEESE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!" i would get tired really fast. Maybe I'm lucky in this capacity, I know not everyone has been able to accept these things as well. I also am very privileged in the fact that there is NO harassment whatsoever in my town. Verbal harassment and unwanted attention from men on the street can be a huge problem for female volunteers here and I feel so blessed that this is not part of my life. So, while this is not the life i'm used to, it's the life i have right now; and I can either choose to live in it, or choose to be outside of it, and I'd rather choose to be on the inside. I've also found that for the most part, everything does work out here, even if it's in ways you wouldn't expect it to. Sometimes the smallest thing can make the biggest difference.

the hardest thing so far from being away from home hasn't been the turkish toilets, hasn't been the lack of language (though that is hard), hasn't been internet, it's been the food (and of course being away from loved ones- but food is easier to write about). Man do I miss food in america. I would kill for some chinese food or thai food or sushi, cheap pizza, popcorn that pops all the way, potato chips, and cheddar cheese. I really miss bbq and cheese products. I'm curious to see how this changes once i get into my own place, should be exciting, trying to cook american through moroccan ingredients. luckily i have a cookbook for moroccan volunteers to guide me and even though I haven't had a kitchen since I lived in seattle 2 years ago, I think i still have the skills to whip together some pretty good meals. Pictures will of course, follow, unless it tastes bad and looks like mush.

Monday I move into my own house! my regional manager managed to get me this AMAZING (and huge!) house for a really good price, she's a tough cookie and bargained the heck out of it. I'm impressed,  and I hope to channel her skills whenever i bargain or deal with difficult situations from here on out.  This is the first time EVER I will EVER be living alone. I am so excited and so nervous! I get to furnish the house myself (which is scary, what with the limited funds and  the need to bargain all my household items, should be fun. ), I get to listen to my music all the time, eat when i want, sleep when i want (kind of) and have some solid alone time. This is definitely a new experience for me. I have lived in so many ways; a bunch of people crammed into one space, cabins with kids, dorms, hotel rooms, tents, home-stays in 4 different countries, cabins with grown ups, house with roommates- but never alone. This is me becoming a grown up. I will have rent to pay, dishes i can only blame myself on, electricity and water bills and no one coming to make my bed while I'm at a load-in/performance, or the girls campus head coming to grade our cabins to motivate me to keep my stuff in order. As an american it's kind of ridiculous that at 25 years old i've only paid rent once in my life and i've never lived alone. But in a Moroccan context it's kind of ridiculous that I'm not staying with a host family and instead choosing to live alone. This has been a hard thing to communicate, but I hope I have done it well enough, and I know myself well enough to know that my relationship with my host family would deteriorate if i had to stay here for two years. This is sort of the next big step in my time here and that should be happening on monday. I might be spending the next few weeks living sparse until I've bought everything for my house, so it's kind of like a squatters camping trip, definitely a new adventure.  I don't know when I'll get internet again, but expect a video tour of the house before it's furnished and then again later down the road when I've done some work.

Alright! that's all for now, sorry my blog updates have been so few and far between. I'm probably going to buy an internet stick so I can have internet more regularly, because it will work out to be cheaper then going to the cyber cafe once a week, and also a lot more comfortable to be online and once i'm on my own i wont feel guilty for using it at random times in my room,  (and I can listen to music on 8tracks.com my favorite site ever). So we shall see! Enjoy the pictures!

 Sunset over the mountains

 A view of them montains from a day i went on a walk. 

 The mountains and the gardens

 Town from the backside.  One of my favorite things about N'kob is the fact that the majority of the houses are made out of mud, so they almost blend into the landscape.  

 Christmas cookies! I  have made these thumbprints in every country I have lived in. I tried some with nutella knock off- super tasty. but I'm always partial to the jam ones. 

 The Christmas tree I drew for us! 

 A view of the wedding clothing, I can't wait to see a full berber wedding! hopefully this summer. 

The wedding procession from behind. 

a long awaited updat

Hello all! here is a long awaited update, with pictures and everything!

I have gotten more settled here in my town called N'kob. It's a small town off the beaten track that is known for it's kasbah's which are the moroccan equivalent of castles. there are 45 kasbah's in my town and i even live in one of them! tourism is the main income here, but to be honest there are not that many tourists. my host father said that tourists stopped coming around 2008 in full force. But if any of you are planning a trip to morocco i highly recommend N'kob, being off the beaten track it is way more friendly and authentic. I hate travelling as tourist places, because you only see what someone wants you to see of a country, never what people somewhere actually live. N'kob would give you the food most moroccans eat and in a setting many moroccan's live in. the thing i love most about N'kob is that most of the houses are made out of mud, so everything is this great earthy color. As you can see, my town is surrounded by mountains, and on the edge of town is a Palmerie where most of the people have gardens where they grow collard greens, alfafa and palm trees filled with dates. It's a good thing i've acquired a taste for dates here, because they are everywhere. The other day i stopped by a store and these woman just handed me a handful of dates. No one really sells them as far as I can tell, because everyone has their own. I'll have to see if my family can hook me up when i get to my own place. 

a lot of what peace corps tells you is about adapting and adjusting, and it's definitely an adjustment from 6 hours of language classes a day to the unstructured free for all that has become my life.  most days i wake up, have breakfast, go for a walk around town, try and talk to whoever i meet, maybe make a phone call to another peace corps volunteer, then i head home for lunch with the family. Then i often go to the womans center called the netti neswi and hang out with the women there in their sewing/craft room and either bead crochet or work on a cross stitch. the women there are very nice and are intrigued by the crafts i've brought with me (and i brought a lot). My town doesn't always have cheese, but there does seem to be a supply of beads and thread and string, and so i'm thinking I might try and teach the ladies how to do bead crochet bracelets, which would be cool. as they say in tashleheet (the local berber language ) ymik ymik- or little by little. Little by little I'm trying to get to know my town. Little by little I'm trying to understand what people say to me. Little by little I'm learning tashleheet. Little by little i am inshallah (god willing) going to be able to start some more english classes and do some none english classroom projects. 

I had my first english class on wednesday with the women at the netti neswi- and i think it went really well. we started with the alphabet and next week we are going to do numbers. I'm hoping in january i can start some more english classes with different demographics. 

the view from my roof looking out over town, you can see some more of the houses and the differences between concrete and earth. i like the earth houses better. 

you can see more of the mountains and the beginnings of the palmerie

 the view from my roof and part of my kasbah and the palmerie in the background. i love going up on the roof and looking at the mountains, talking on the phone, looking at clouds. a lot of my fellow pcv's are currently very cold. being in a desert region, the temperature has stayed at around 55-65 degrees so most days i'm comfortable in a light long john shirt and a flannel or sweater. at night it feels cold so i'm glad i brought more winter clothing with me, but for the most part it is really nice out. word on the street is that it gets unbearably hot in the summer though. which is another reason why earth is a more suitable building material then concrete. Earth houses are cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. many moroccan houses are colder inside then it ever is outside. the concrete takes the cold and holds it there. i'm hoping my apartment will be able to be an earth place, because i don't want to die when it's 115 degrees out. 

 these are the two kittens that live in my house. the one in the front i call hmqa or dirija for crazy and the one in the back i call vache or cow in french. my host family thinks it's totally bizarre the way i've befriended these cats. having them sit on my lap, petting them and letting them fall asleep ( i do have a favorite, vache is way more friendly and affectionate and there's a possibility i might try and take him with me when i move out. ) the concept of a pet here is totally foreign. there are dogs in my town, but they seem more to be a obligatory staple then anything else. it seems each dog has it's own stretch of butcher shops that it hangs out in front of to catch scraps or any food that is thrown out. most people seem to be afraid of dogs and offer them no respect or kindness. same goes with cats. there are tons of cats all over morocco, the problem seems to be pretty contained here in nkob because it seems most families have a cat that has a home inside the kasbah walls to serve the purpose of keeping away mice and bugs. they are a tool, not a friend. 

another thing that has been hard to communicate is the idea that i need to find an apartment. The other day we were talking about another volunteer with my family and they more or less said it was sad that she lived alone. Family is the core of most moroccan values and it is not uncommon for a woman to get married and stay in the house of her father or go to her husbands house. More or less, people do not live alone. I did a tour of 3 houses and i believe they would all constitute as family houses. no bachelor pads or small flats. I tried to describe to my family that in america living with your family past a certain age means you are not considered successful and in america we strive to have our own space, but the concept was lost. I will admit I am enjoying my time with a host family, but i am really excited about the idea of having my own apartment. The last times i had a kitchen was last year at nature's classroom (on the weekends and english muffins at night) and then in 2010 when i lived in seattle. it has been a long time since i've been able to cook for myself, and morocco has so many great ingredients that i am really excited to explore and try out in new dishes. Peace corps wants us to be moved into a new place by january first, and i'm hoping that can happen. I have my eye on 2 places, one is simple and earth and one is concrete. I'm partial towards the earth one, but we shall see, i'll let you know when i seal a deal. 

 the end of sunset. one thing i love here is the stars. the stars in N'kob are as good if not better then they were at nature's classroom and in the berkshires. N'kob isn't filled with street lights and the nearest big cities are over an hour and a half away so there is almost no light pollution to speak of. The past few days the moon has been so bright it casts shadows, and it isn't even full. I'm happy that most of the winter constellations I could see at home, i can see here, the seven sisters, orion, and there's planets that are crazy bright. The other night on the phone I saw 8 shooting stars in an hour. hopefully there will be a meteor shower while i'm here so i can lay outside and watch it. I'm also hoping to get some friends together when it's warmer out to do a campout on the mountains near a full moon. hike up for dusk, hang out during the full moon, hike down in the morning. im crossing my fingers. 

here's a view from a street i was walking on the other day. i love the windy roads, and earth houses contrasted against the blue sky. 

all in all things are great. keeping my chin up, riding the roller coaster that is the peace corps experience. I've been finding that day by day, and hour by hour makes everything work. I've dubbed it the great moroccan bi-polar express (gently stolen from the gandalf song) because one minute everything is great and perfect and you understand everyone and you are prepared and ready to go. then the next minute class is cancelled because you don't have a key to the door then the next you're being handed cookies by a group of friendly women. 

also, it seems the mail situation is totally working (HINT HINT) so if you want to send mail please do. 

new town

hello all. im going to keep this short for many reasons 1) im at a cyber and ive been here for a while and 2) said cyber uses a french keyboard and the going is slow in terms of my typing.

im sad that i do not have the capability right now to show you all my new town because it is beautiful. after a lovely thanksgiving with fellow peace corps volunteers i made my way to my small town that is decently off the beaten path. i feel like i can really breathe here. the stars are beautiful and they should be seeing as im over 2.5 hours from any major city. My town is rimmed by plateaus and mountains that make me think of arizona; very canyon like. I feel like being in fez had me yearning for the "real morocco" and i think this is definitely it. most of the houses here are packed dirt and im lucky enough to live in a kasbah (otherwise known as a castle). my host family is very nice and very helpful. they also have 2 month old kittens and even though i am normally adverse to cats ive fallen for the little guy cat who ive secretly named vache the french word for cow (bc hes black and white im so clever right?)
alright. thats all for now. hopefully i can find my thumb drive so i can write this before hand and just copy and paste, but it is currently mia. refer to my previous blog post about my new address.

oh! addendum to the mail situation. when you mail things take them out of their original packging if they are vluable, i will get taxed on things when they show up so if you send electronics or expensive things put them in different boxes and never claim that the box is worth more then 10 dollars. also keep in mind im in  small town so word gets around and people will more likely then not know what i get in my packages. ive heard putting lacey underwer or tampons on the top of the box means ppl will be less likely to pilfer through it; but you never know. its been takind between 2-4 weeks for things to get here, so keep that in mind as well. im an excellent pen pal and id love to get stuff from home!!!

real live peace corps volunteer.

Hello all!!! Today I finally got to be sworn in as a real live peace corps volunteer! it's great. I got to hold my right hand up and swear an oath and i was told I was a soldier for the USA. very exciting.

Tomorrow i start the voyage to my new home! I start on the train from rabat-marakesh then I stay the night in marakesh with my two region mates, mimi and sairah. after then i travel over the high atlas mountains by bus. I'm so excited to see the mountains of Morocco! It should be an interesting voyage, I might have to invest in some Dramamine. After a couple hours we should arrive in ourzazate! which is known for the amount of movies that are filmed there. If you've seen the movie babel- that's where it was shot, and that's my region! woot! Then my region mates that are already established in their sites are throwing a thanksgiving party! and it works out time wise that we can stop along the way before we get to our home site. I am very excited about having an thanksgiving party with the people i will be closest to geographically for the next two years. I am thankful (get it!) that it worked out so well, and i love thanksgiving so that's even better. After thanksgiving i have to go get my luggage a couple hours south in a city called zagora then i'm not entirely sure how to get to my home town from there. some combination of taxi's and inshallah's (god willing's). My stuff seems to have multiplied since i arrived here so my once modest looking two bags feels more like an unbearable weight. I cannot wait to get established somewhere and not deal with carting my life around on wheels or on my back.

speaking of which this voyage brings me to something i've been realizing lately. Once i get to my city, it will be the longest i will have been somewhere since college. and even then, in college you leave and go back every couple of months. this is the first time i'm actually LIVING somewhere. up until this point (since high school) i've been either going or coming, never staying. I've never had a regular coffee shop or a regular restaurant or known the neighbors, let alone worked or integrated into a community. the adventure i'm about to embark on is both daunting and exciting.

I HAVE A NEW ADDRESS!!!!

"name'' / maison des jeunes - casbah ait atta / n'kob -zagora province / 


Morocco / africa


Huzzah! that means all of you that i know have been DYING to send me care packages can now do so. here's something important about care packages though. Do not value anything at over 10 dollars on the customs sheet or i will be stacked with custom fees. more often then not packages will be opened, and if customs thinks my package is intended for resale they will also charge me, so if you send me swanky presents take them out of their original packaging and if you send something like electronics or something brand new and expensive then put it in a different box (tampon boxes are especially effective). the mail here seems to be pretty consistent and generally takes 2-4 weeks to arrive based on the letters i've received so far.

I have a small wish list, though it will probably change between now and when I get my own place.

at this point I have a wish list- this is a loose wish list, and feel free to use your creativity, but this is just things i thought of. honestly i have a lot of stuff here and this is just extra on top of what i already have.

-febreeze (this would be fantastic, imagine watching all your clothes by hand)
-toms/natural deodorant
-moisturizer  (the moisturizer here sucks and is expensive)
- Mix CDS! please i love getting new music
-pictures of you, pictures of life. anything to remind me of home, i realize that now that we all do digital pictures i don't have a lot of physical pictures of anyone and i don't know what my internet access will be like.
-anything to decorate my house with- you be the judge.
-essential oils! ( i would love these bzzef bzzef bzzef (a lot x3) they're multi purpose and I can use them for deodorant, perfume etc)
-mac and cheese
-cheddar cheese (dont send in the summer)
-velveeta
-junk food (specificaly cheese flavored items (notice a pattern, and remember that time i was a vegan), and honey bbq flavored items . my favorites are doritoes (cooler ranch) sun chips, munchies, honey bbq, ruffles)
-zip lock bags
-spices- specifically NOT cumin or pepper or salt or ginger but things like curry powder, garlic powder, italian seasonings, any mixed spices, curry paste, maybe some tasty hot sauce (ciracha, tobasco, something not too spicy with a good taste).
-condiments and premixed sauces, ketchup, bbq sauce, sweet and sour, anything really i love sauces! i'm looking forward to having a fridge filled with condiments.
-tupperware containers
-measuring cups
-kitchen supplies (veggie peelers, nice knives,  french press etc etc)
-sweet and sour sauce and sweet chilie sauce (to make guacamole specifically)
-PENS and School supplies! omg i would love your forever for pens. specifically sharpie pens and rsvp fine point black and then there's also my love for pilot pens. so nice black pens or colorful pens. no just blue pens. i hate blue pens. also just to preface i don't particularly need notebooks (unless it's a graph paper moleskin or graph paper anything) i'm in the world of graph paper and i'm
- Books of any kind (i'll have a lot of time so i'd love to have some extra stuff to read, and when i leave the upcoming peace corps volunteers will love the contributions to the library)
- Magazines (specifically outside or naturey type ones, national geographic, time, but i'm not picky i'll take anything whatsoever- because even though i'd like to think i don't like those gossip mags, we all do... let's be honest )
-lipton pasta and rice bags, think college. yummy. instant alfredo pasta? yes please
-luna bars and cliff bars
-granola bars
-dark chocolate, they don't have it here
-peanut butter (specifically crunchy and organic or almond butter or anything like that)
-snacks of any kind.
-capri cotton yoga pants (walmart works)
-black underwer or bike shorts
- also if anyone has a comfy oversized tshirt and baggy pants or big workout clothes that would be good to work out in that would be great. I didn't really bring anything that is culturally appropriate to work out in outside. as you all know women here cover up head to toe, so if i want to be known as the crazy american who walks and runs outside then i'd rather be the culturally appropriate crazy american walking and running outside.
-any cardigans. girls, if you are looking for a way to get rid of long sleeve cardigans do not give them to goodwill. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give them to me. especially if they're long (past the butt) and lightweight. remember ladies i need to wear longs sleeves all the time, even when it's 120 degrees mid summer
-anything good for kids or kids books- any games, books, classroom supplies anything whatsoever.

but most of all i would just love and cherish letters- i understand shipping things is expensive- so whatever ya'll can do. I love getting letters and my life will totally slow down once i get to site and I love writing letters. i make no garuntee that they will be coherent or not rambly, but I will write you back. and let's be honest people, who doesn't enjoy getting mail? duh.

so yes. please send me mail. or emails if you don't have time. i love hearing from people, even if your life is mundane, find the joy in the small stuff and then tell me about it.

so yes. there's my current wish list. i hope you are all well and i will probably be off the grid for a little while specifically because of travel and being in a new place. I cannot wait to be in my new home, even though it's a little intimidating, i'm sure i can handle it, but this is definitely a new challenge.

i'm so excited to embark on this new adventure and i cannot wait to see this country, even if it is from the window of a bus or a train.

l3id kbir Pictures.

Hey guys, here's the pictures to go along with that post. I thought they warranted their own post. 

whaat... oh hai. i'm a sheep. you're going to eat me. 

the family admiring their sheep. 

It's crowded in here! 

once there was one, now there is three. 

the unhappy sheep being dragged up the stairs first thing in the am. 

capturing his last moments. 

the deed is done. 

that's one dead sheep. 

all the kids watching the whole thing. also notice how our sheep is half on the ground. it was too big and broke the rope and flopped onto the roof. awesome. 

three stages of sheep. those buckets contain parts. my host dad has the next in line and the guy is gutting ours. 

just a couple of sheep, hanging in our living room window.  

what i ate for breakfast! ie delicious cookies. my host mom is an incredible cook. 

just a fire in the living room... no bigs. 

sheep brain

different stuff from the sheep. 

sheep head and feet in our bathroom now. 

getting the sheep chopped up for storage is a family event. 

i've been watching too much dexter, but that's all i could think about as the sheep was cut up into it's edible parts. 

my host brother helping out. 

L3id Kbir

Alright guys:

It’s officially the end of an era. This week has been a week of first:

I went to the public bath for the first time. While it was a little odd to get the “massage” from the Hamam worker (read: being scrubbed vigorously by a complete stranger both of us wearing nothing but underwear), I did actually really enjoy the experience as a whole. I was a little nervous at first because I’m not totally accustomed to being undressed, nevermind undressed around total strangers. I think it’s an interesting cultural difference that clearly no one was worried about being naked in the Hamam but they cover up outside almost head to toe, but in America we are not all comfortable with nudity but we are totally ok with mini skirts and tight boob shirts. I felt a little uncomfortable at first, but by the end of it I was definitely enjoying myself. The fact that I couldn’t wear my glasses helped a lot. Because I couldn’t make out people’s faces, I couldn’t tell if anyone was looking at me or what they looked like. It also felt good to be hot and clean; I haven’t felt that clean in a long while. The most fun part was the moment where my host mom pulled out some mandarines and she, my 2 yo host sister and I ate mandarines in the public bath.

 As you all know this week was the very important holiday of Eid Al-Adha (as mentioned in my last post and wikipedia linked) . Long story short it celebrates the moment where Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son to God, and God intervened and gave him a sheep to sacrifice instead. Any Moroccan family that can afford it buys and slaughters a sheep, it's a huge holiday (akin to the american importance of christmas i've been told). Having a sheep is very important, some families here sell their appliances prior to the holiday in order to afford a sheep for their family. It's a big deal. Now this holiday involves mostly things I have never done before. I’ll give you all a little run down of my day…. I was planning on sleeping in a little bit, but I was awoken by my family and left my room just in time to follow our huge sheep (ram) up the stairs. He was not pleased. The guy who killed our sheep was just finishing up the first sheep of the day when we got up to the roof. I’m not going to lie the whole thing was pretty intense, and something I never though I would either see or be comfortable seeing. I’m not going to lie it was pretty fascinating. In Morocco they don’t waste any part of the animal so most of the morning was spent first gutting then cleaning the whole of this poor animals insides. Did I mentions Moroccan's don't waste any part of the animal? All of it is eaten. So.... 

Ok… I expect some surprise on this one. ….

I ate meat. Not just meat. Heart (which wasn’t bad). And a little liver (which was gross), Brain (which was too mushy), Sheep face (way gross), stomach (too fatty) and finally sheep leg I think (which was delicious I am guilty to admit)

Ok… I know… ok… but here’s the thing- earlier this week I was mowing down on some rice and chickpeas in some tasty sauce with some indescribable looking meat in the middle (pretty normal here) and My host mom goes “do you know what this is?” I nod my head no and she goes “You really want me to tell you” I did and she informed me it was cows feet. Now kids. As soon as I was sitting there supping on the sauce of the feet of my favorite animal I realized the jig was up. I will tell you I did not intentionally eat any of the cow’s feet- but 6 of 1 half dozen of the other what’s the difference between the sauce and the meat. I’ve been wrestling with that concept before and I decided it was time. (cue “dun dun dun” music). Later that night my host mom made some ground turkey and tomatoes and onions and garlic sauté and I had some of the turkey. I am guilty to admit that I thought it was delicious. Now friends- especially those who have harassed me about the deliciousness of meat- I know meat is delicious, I knew meat was delicious, but don’t expect me to go on some meat extravaganza and find me double fisting a leg of turkey, and a bacon burger and some hot dogs on the grill….When I signed up to do the Peace Corps I told them several times I would be willing to eat meat while I was abroad in order to integrate. I’m very lucky that my family has been incredibly accommodating to my vegetarianism and I’ll admit I use the term vegetarian here loosely for the way I’ve been eating (see cow feet sauce as an example). But there have always been a lot of reasons why I didn’t eat meat and things I had always told myself would make an exception.

This holiday is the most important in Morocco and it hinges on the consumption of meat- wouldn’t I be missing out on the holiday if I didn’t at least try?

I always said it’s important for me to know how the animal lived and died. Our sheep hung out in our bathroom for 2 days, I saw it’s food and I’m pretty sure a family member raised the sheep- Moroccans tend not to have the most gentle and caring relationship with animals but I don’t think this sheep was raised like the sheep in meat farms are raised in the states. I also said I want to know how it died. Well…. I saw it die. I documented it last moments I saw it take its last breath (side note, kind of creepy, it took a little longer to die then I had expected and it stared at me the whole time- I’m working hard on this whole situation to not let my overwhelming catholic guilty chime in.) So there’s that.

Also, as they say When in Rome… I don’t expect to carry over this meat eating stuff once I’m back stateside. Food is such a huge part of any culture and community and I also don’t plan on going meatatarian here in Morocco, but I think it is important to taste and experience important dishes.

 Also how many of you have watched Indiana Jones where there's the scene where they open up the monkey brain, and at first you're like... ewww... gross.. then I always wonder.... what does monkey brain taste like? There's a part of me that likes the idea of once in a lifetime opportunities and seeing as I won't feel obliged to eat meat once I get my own house I decided to seize the opportunity to try something new in a safe setting. 

Also something else I never expected to do was having a grill right in the living room- fire flaring up next to the lunch table. Huzzah.

Things that have been in my bathroom this week:

3 sheep

bucket of sheep heads and sheep feet.

Pictures of some sort will follow. I will warn you they are probably not for the faint hearted, because there will be photographed sheep death and sheep parts. 

bad at this

hello all! I am really bad at this! but still to be fair, i still don't really have internet in my house and I'm not motivated enough to go to the cyber cafe. The one I walked into was kind of sketch.

This week they announced our sites. I'm attempting THIS LINK to google maps that shows you where i am. It's a small city of 2,000 people called N'koub/Nekoub/nkoub There's a whole bunch of different ways to spell it. I'm very excited to get there! We swear in nov 17th so I should be arriving in site somewhere around the 21st or the 22nd I'm excited. I'm in the southwest of the country and it seems like there's a lot of different stuff I can do. I'm sandwiched between the High Atlas Mountains and the Sahara- so it will get hot!  The one thing I'm nervous about is the fact that, as you all know, I have been spending the past few weeks learning a wonderful language called Dirija. N'koub is city where the community speaks a native dialect called Tashlheet, in case any of you were wondering- it is indeed a whole new language. Morocco has a huge variety of languages and native populations more commonly known as Berbers or Amazight (amazight is more PC). Tashlheet is a dialect of the Amazight community- The script is just recently standardized and I'm hopeful I can learn how to speak both Dirija and Tashlheet. I know Peace Corps put me there (inshallah (god wiling) ) because I'm doing well in Dirija (?) or because I do have an aptitude for languages (ishallah)- So if the Peace Corps has confidence in me, I'll have confidence in me too. I'm very thankful Peace Corps gives us money for a tutor, hopefully I can find a good teacher to guide me along in my continued language learning once I arrive in my new home.

Other than that coming up this week is a very important Muslim holiday called Eid Al-Adha (link to the wikipedia article.) As a vegetararian i'm a little concerned seeing as it is pivotal upon the slaughtering and consumption of a sheep. should be interesting. Expect a post on that next week.

Lately life is comprised of what has become habitual here (which I often remind myself was not habitual several months ago). I go to language classes, walk up my crowded street filled with fruit and vegetable vendors and find my way to my host families house where we watch tv in Egyptian or turkish arabic and the occasional American movie. I had a great experience last weekend where there was a movie on the Moroccan channel that was in Dirija with French subtitles- seeing as I speak french I was able to understand the movie as it went along, and I was even able to pick up a word here or there in Dirija. I loved it most because for the first time we all were sitting in the living room watching tv and laughing at the same jokes and the same moments. Much unlike the experience of us watching Blades of Glory together, where for an hour I laughed and I think my host family was very confused.  I don't think Will Farrel translates all that well.  My favorite part about the movie was that there were several scenes where there were 2 french people and 2 moroccan women, with no language in common. I'll put the paraphrased dialogue and scene here

french lady: Is there any more chicken?
Moroccan ladies: what is she saying?
French lady: IS THERE... ANY. MORE. CHICKEN???
Moroccan ladies: Let's just laugh and pretend we understand *hahahhaha*
French lady: Why are they laughing?
French Dude: I think maybe they don't understand, maybe try acting it out?
French lady: IS THERE.... ANY *moves arms wildly indicating MORE* * then she proceeds to cluck and walk like a chicken*
Moroccan ladies: What is she doing? I guess we should join in... she seems to be sharing this with us

and next thing you know everyone is standing up around the table clucking and dancing like chickens. I feel like anyone who's been in a place where they didn't speak the language may have had an experience  like that. In Belgium I remember answering a questions I didn't understand with either a "Yes" then receiving a confused face and then saying "No".  I feel like sometimes us PCV's  in an attempt to communicate with our community here in Morocco live in a constant game of charades in an attempt to understand each other and for all we know we've confused the lights out of our host country nationals and we are all proverbially clucking like chickens around the dinner table. (I'm thankful and also not thankful that my host family speaks incredible french so we've had a lot more luck having effective and substantial amounts of communication). I look forward to my new experience with not only my ability of  Dirija, but a whole new language coming down the road! whew.

I find I have to take my experience here day by day in a lot of ways, because all that is coming can be both overwhelming and daunting.

I will leave you all with some pictures from my activities/experiences in the past few weeks.

what?!?!? you're going to eat me? baaaaa....

cafe or qhawa- of which i drink a lot. 

my host family eating bourbush or snails. my host family loved them

haddou- my lovely language teacher. he made a sound like : "meeeeeeh" in a high pitched tone. He's great. 

the view from moulay yacoub

us girls overlooking moulay yacoub 

yay! i'm in morocco! yay I'm in moulay yacoub. My friend said I look like patrick from sponge bob.

rachel drew a representation of our class. shannon is nn3s or sleeping, gary is saying "oh! is this dirija?" kathy is saying "shnu?! shnu?!" or "what?!what?!" Haddou is saying "Sm3!" or "LISTEN!" I am singing and Rachel is saying "ooo! kitty!" I would say this is a very realistic representation of my classroom experience. 

Me and some kids eating the pumpkin we carved for our Halloween party. 

Oh! Hello Donkey. 

morocco round 2

 Hello all,

So here is my update way long overdue. To be fair, I do not have internet readily available. My host family has internet, but the concept of typing it on a French keyboard would be painful to both me and you all, so I decided it was better to wait.

This update took a lot of time I’ll have you know, mostly because the internet here at the welcoming center is very slow, especially considering there’s about 40 other pcv’s who are desperate for internet.

Things are going really well here. For those of you who didn’t know training happened in the city Fes, and while most of the other PCV’s headed off to other towns and cities in the surrounding area I got selected to be the guinea pig group for the first time in the city of Fes. Fes is a city of about 1-2 million people depending on where you look and who you’re talking too. I live in the neighborhood of zohour which is very busy. I live right off a street that has a market (known as souq) every day from about 4-12am. It gets noisy. There's a picture below with explanations so you can see the differences.  Things start picking up around 4:30- people selling vegetables and fruit out of the back of little flatbeds attached to motorcycle or these two wheeled pushed tables. The fruits and vegetables here are great. I love them so much. There are so many new things to try and taste- my favorite fruit is definitely a cactus fruit called Hendia- it’s green and sweet and incredible juicy. The only downside is there’s a ton of seeds, you just have to ignore them. In general there’s a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables here, and although the food is often based around or cooked with meat, it’s been very easy being a vegetarian here.  You, the audience at home, can make a very easy Moroccan dish! We had it last night and it was delicious; take rice, raisins, sliced apples and banana’s, and cut up dates and put them cold in the bowl then blend up 1 large avocado 2 small banana’s and a liter of milk then blend them up with a decent amount of sugar then pour that over the rice and fruit mixture. Yum. I plan on making this in the summer but adding some more stuff like nuts and maybe strawberries.

The food here is fantastic and the coolest thing about it all is that at meals everyone eats from one communal dish, more often then not without utensils. You use your right hand only though, because with Turkish toilets, you use your left hand to do your business. (I am luckily enough to have a western toilet in my house though). I am also in carbo-overload, they do not shy away from bread- known as xubz- my host mom makes ours herself, but we usually run out faster then she can make it, and it’s really easy to buy more right outside our door. Since I’ve been here I’ve helped make a biscotti type cookie, as well as help the upstairs neighbors make peanut butter ball cookies for an upcoming wedding.

My days are mostly occupied by language classes where I’m learning Dirija (Moroccan Arabic) Shwiya beh shwiya- or little by little as they say here. There’s a lot of consonants placed together in this language (take the verb to work for an example- xdm) so it’s part luck, part memorization and part slaving your mouth into making the sounds. I am really excited to be learning another language, but man was it easier when I was 16. The best part for me so far is learning the Arabic script. It’s been a dream of mine to learn Arabic since 2002- so I’m using this opportunity to at least get the alphabet under my belt. Besides language classes, there’s a lot of sitting in the living room studying, procrastinating studying and going out shopping with my host mom for dinner supplies. I’m looking forward to upcoming Sundays off where I can hopefully travel to other Peace corps volunteers sites and visit somewhere besides Fes. Don’t get me wrong, Fes is great , but it’s nice to see somewhere less urban then this big city. Last weekend going to Sefrou with my family was definitely a breath of fresh air, no car horns, kids crying or yelling neighbors below. Also getting to walk around amongst trees was an incredible soul rejuvenation.

I worked really hard to not have expectations when coming over to Morocco, which is good, but it was hard not to. Expectations are hard to live up to, and so far I don’t know if my expectations can even fit into my experience here. Morocco is way more developed then I had imagined a peace corps country would be.  I have access to  western toilets, American television, washing machines, let alone the running water and electricity. Don’t get me wrong I really love Morocco- I love the food, the music, the clothes, the colors and all the new things I’m going to get to do here, but at the same time I was hoping for something…. Quieter is maybe the word I’m going for. I’m looking forward to getting my full time site (fingers crossed a smaller town or city).  All in all, I am 97.99% excited to be here and loving it, but every once in a while, but while I sit in my bed hearing car horns- I would trade anything for the sound of sheep, donkeys, crickets or chickens. And kids, that’s why you don’t go into situations with expectations, because even though 97.99% of the time I am 110% pumped about being here and all that I’m going to do,  that 2.1% is still there.

Anyways. Moving on to pictures! Here they are, with even more words underneath. Whew.

me and my roomates from training, kim, sarah and myself

 even in a city of 1 million people seeing donkeys or horses on the street is fairly common here in fes, as is seeing people riding double on mopeds with kids babies and even german shepards.

 gary and rachel at the cafe across the street from the youth center (dar shabab) where we drink our qhwah or coffee during breaks in our language classes.

the view from our classroom, a typical day

 the view from my street at around 12  in the afternoon

 the view at 4:30- this isn't even considered crowded yet the area on the right fills in way more with guys selling fruits and veg

 my host aunt took me to her sisters house in the next town over called Sefrou- a huge difference between fes and here. Sefrou was so quiet! It was a great day! we went to her house (which was gorgeous) and had delicious food and she gave me a modern jlaba. We had a very relaxing day where we looked out over the city then went down to the waterfall. The coolest thing about my host aunt who lives in Sefrou is that she is the president of a woman's artisan partnership and has all of these looms in her basement.

loom in her basement!

There are about 42 women who participate and make all sorts of things, blankets, rugs and shawls. She makes all the dyes herself using plants. I got to try making this rug, which wasn't hard, but I couldn't imagine making a huge rug, time consuming for sure. 

me at the waterfall in Sefrou in my new jlaba. funny story: it's pretty common for men to harass women here and hamdullah (thanks god) i've been fairly lucky, almost being completely void of harassment, instead I get these crazy stares. I decided that I would be all integrated like and wear my jlaba to class the day after I got it- lo and behold, the first and only time I've been harassed. I thought that was funny. 

 my host father fouad and my host sister zineb.

zineb, she's two and adorable. I have two other host brothers, Youssef and Abdelqdr, but they occupy themselves more often then not with watching tv or playing games online, so I don't see all that much of them. They are very nice though. Also my host mom and dad are amazing. My host mother is an amazing cook and it's been fun getting to know here and hang out with her (speaking in french, not dirija. )

so.. now that i've made this blog post unbearably long, congrats if you've read this far. I promise I'll update more often from here on out, because it's time consuming for both me and you, also there's more stuff I would love to share that I have left out to spare this becoming even more rambly and long. so here's the first real update from morocco! i look forward to the rest of my time here.