baking and hotness and buses oh my!

Hello Internet world. I hope you are all doing well.

Holy cow. Morocco is hot. I don’t mean to whine but a lifetime of new England summers have given me next to nothing for dealing with this. The other day it hit 101 degrees  in my house. My internal seasonal calendar is totally confused. My brain keeps saying “but Michelle it’s june! What’s going on?” and I say “Brain we’re in morocco now, this isn’t maine in june.. you best be ready there’s more to come” my brain responds “awwwwww….” Most days it gets to be 92-95 during the day then drops down to 87-89 when the sun is down. The nice thing about it is that it’s not humid, which is a great thing. Also Morocco does sell fans, my fan and I have become really good friends. The hardest part about the heat is traveling, because you get all crammed up with 3 other people in the back of a 50’s Mercedes’, then you get to experience not only your own sweat, but the special feeling of someone else’s body covering half of yours, so it’s a double deal. Sauna? Not really… No….

But exciting news! My site just this week got a super fancy CTM bus that runs through from my neighboring site all the way up to Marakesh. It’s difficult to communicate why this is a big deal, so let me first give you the  hierarchy of niceness in terms of modes of  travel here in Morocco-  ONCF first class trains- CTM buses (AC, and individual seats)- Supratours buses (reserved seats, but a little cheaper and not as new as CTM)- ONCF trains (they never “sell out” so you sometimes see people literally pulling people in and out of over-crowded cars, and the windows don’t open, so it can get pretty unpleasant- Transit’s (vans, with seats really close together, but generally you get your own ‘space’ and they have pretty decent circulation of air)- Grand Taxi’s (7 + passengers in a Mercedes’ sedan but the drivers can get kind of stingy about how open the windows are and they take the roller bits of the window controls… jerks), Souk Buses (bus with no AC, no reserved seats and no “sell out” point (read people crammed up in the aisles who get asked to sit everytime we pass a police stop), also they stop ANYWHERE and so it makes any trip exponentially longer. But the nice thing about Souk buses is that they stop in more places then CTM and Supratours). So as you can clearly see CTM is up at the top of that list in terms of awesomeness. Getting a CTM that comes through town means that as long as I catch the bus in Marakech and barring mechanical dysfunction I will get back to site in one day. Before it was always a crap shoot with catching a taxi from Ouarzazat (the biggest city in my region, about 2.5 hours away from my site). No more hanging out at the taxi stand in Oz for hours waiting for my taxi to my tiny town to fill up! Or showing  up too late and no other taxi will go to my site unless you buy out the whole thing (which I will not do because that would be crazy expensive).  Now I can hop onto a CTM claim a large amount of space and cruise all the way home with not a care in the world. It makes traveling exponentially less stressful. Last time I went to Marakech I was in site for 2 hours waiting for my taxi to fill up to take a 9:45 CTM bus in the a city about an hour away every minute it got closer and closer to me missing the bus.  Every time I did that I was always so stressed I was going to miss the bus, so I end up waking up really early and waiting around either in town, or in front of the bus stop an hour away. The one downside though of having a CTM in town is that me and the ticket lady at the CTM an hour away had become pretty good friends because I always end up waiting there. She’s great, understands my Arabic, laughs at my pathetic attempts at joking and shares her food with me. It’s possible I’ll still go up there from time to time if I don’t want to wake up super early to catch the bus here in town. It would be worth it to sayhello to this woman from time to time. So  yay! It’s the small things in life people. If you can’t get excited about the small stuff what can you get excited about ?

What a thrilling rant about travel. Honestly every volunteer I’ve talked to lately has heard about this new bus, I literally called the volunteer in the site next to mine, and it was like listening to two teenage girls get excited about a new hanson brother’s album or something. My one friend said “now I understand what it must have been like to be our grandparents getting excited about stuff when they were kids… vacuums… mops… microwaves… new buses.” Good times.

After being in Rabat for so long it’s nice being home. I’ve changed rooms, because the room I had set up in for the winter gets full sunlight for the majority of the day, the room I’m in now is almost 4 degrees cooler at any given moment. I decided to finally move the day my thermometer read 101 degrees. 101 degrees… in june. ( i know we've already visited this, but this is a big transition/experience for me... i will admit sitting outside comfortably in june is nice- but 101.. come on now that's just silliness...) I remember my first summer at camp in maine wearing sweatpants, a sweater and an overcoat in june, and sleeping with two blankets on. The other night I wet a sheet wrung it out and let it dry a little then laid it over me as I fell asleep. A damp sheet to keep cool is not equal to a fuzzy blanket and sweatpants. Le sigh. I miss Maine. I miss Mass. There is a distinct lack of cool green grass for me to walk barefoot through here. There is however a large amount of rocks and a courtyard for me to scamper across as quick as I can because my feet are literally burning from its hours in the sun.

So yes. As you can tell by my rambly ranting things are a bit boring here, but not boring in the mind numbing way, just boring in the way that you spend a lot of time fixating on small things and your successes are a lot smaller then they used to be. 

After all that time in rabat then in ourzazate for the regional meeting I am so happy to be back in site. As I said before I’ve changed rooms, and the new room has a nice cozy feeling to it, that I really like. The one downside is that because there isn’t as much sunlight hitting the room there isn’t a lot of light which makes crafting a bit more difficult. I’m making it work though.

a close up of my flower garland

Now that my classes have tapered off substantially from shwiya ( a little ) to walu (nothing). I have a lot more time to devote to crafting! I’ve become obsessed with crochet these days. This week I’ve made a flower garland and bunting. The flower garland I made from yarn I brought with me from America and the bunting was made from a color changing yarn I got from my good friend Kali, I have the crochet fever! I’m really enjoying having different kinds of projects. I alternate between crochet, bead crochet and cross stitch and lately I’ve taken up baking.

a view of my flower garland going across my new room

my bunting! i love it so much pattern from crochet with raymond.

wide shot of my bunting. thanks kali!

my second and maybe best quiche i've ever made

 I’ve always been a crafter, but I’ve noticed that sometimes you make something for someone and you can tell they appreciate the gesture but what you have given them is something they would never use or wear. I discovered, however, that baking is a craft that most everyone (except for people with eating disorders, vegan or gluten free people) can appreciate. I also was lucky enough to be passed down an electric oven from a volunteer who just recently left morocco. It’s fancy because it’s electric and not propane so it’s easier to maintain and understand the temperature inside of the oven. So far I’ve made 2 quiches, a peasant loaf and a sweet cinammon raison and almond bread. (did i mention i've only had this oven for a week and a half?)  I really enjoying baking here also because it is instant gratification. Very rarely do you finish a book in a day, or a craft. But when you bake, you make the dough or whatever walk away for 20 minutes to an hour then come back to a delicious present. I currently have a “peasant loaf” with onions and garlic in it. I’m going to bake it first thing tomorrow for a second breakfast. I’ve also gotten more exciting in the kitchen. Last week and this week I made a thai style peanut sauce with Moroccan collard greens and rice noodles. Super delicious. I also tried my hand at some green beans with curried slivered almonds. I’ve also made my own watermelon juice and lemonade, and iced tea with mint. I’m telling you people, come visit me and I will whip you up a fancy Moroccan/michelle styled feast.

my peanut sauce with collard greens. delicious. i am obsessed with peanut sauce. 

Not having classes means I’m trying to channel my time more towards spending time with the people in my town. All the students are done with school (unless you failed your exams I think and if you fail them you have to re-take them maybe? I don’t know for certain). Because no one has school and I don’t have classes I’m trying to spend more time with individuals in my town as well as my host family. So far it’s been working but I’m also trying to just stay upbeat and active as life gets a lot slower. because of how hot the sun is no one is particularly active until the sun has set or is setting. there are whole families that are just parked outside their houses, shop owners and workers are hanging out on the side walks, town definitely has a different feel. i'm going to try and benefit from this publicness the heat has brought out in people. 

Please let me know if anyone wants to skype/chat ahead of time or text me on my Moroccan number so I can plan my internets accordingly. Not having the internet means I’m spending a lot more time reading too. I’m on my 13^th book in country!

Stay classy everyone.

some pretty looking vegetables in the indoor market in rabat. trust me the veggies don't look this nice once they've made the hot voyage over the mountains to me. veggies near me look substantially more abused and wilty. 

some turtles for sale in rabat

me and a volunteer from sierra leone in jlaba's- i bought that one. 

i got to "see" mariah carey in concert for free while i was in rabat. she showed up almost an hour and a half late then had sound issues. diva. but it was a fun experience.