it's been a long time coming

evidently, i am bad at this whole updating my blog thing.

the past few weeks have been less than ordinary, and i've had less frequent internet access then usual ( i know, excuses, excuses)

the beginning of the month i went to a fellow pcv's site and observed/helped out with a highly successful GLOW camp (girls leading our world). it was really fun to meet a whole bunch of pcv's (peace corps volunteers) that are here in their second year and get to witness a wildly successful pcv initiated camp! i had a lot of fun doing things like dance parties, henna and pretending i understood all the sessions in arabic about girls health. One of my favorite personal experiences was when i tried to explain my smokey the bear sticker on my water bottle to the girls in my group- i do not know the words for fire, bear, forest or environmental campaign- so it was a bit complicated. i drew a picture of a fire, said the word for tree, then drew a bunch of them, said, no, pointed to the fire, bad, pointed to the trees, then said publicity. the girls looked at me, and said "ok, thanks". it's good to know i can confuse children equilaterally across all cultural and geographical boundaries. the coolest thing is there was a lot of media coverage, a suprising number of people in my town have said they saw me on tv! here's the link.

after the week long camp i started the arduous journey up over the high atlas mountains to my IST (in service training). My staj was lucky enough to be in the beautiful beach town of Mehidia, near Rabat, it took about 12-13 hours total to get from my tiny town to Mehidia. I was able to break it up over 3 days or so, spending the night in Ourzazate, then another near Marakesh before arriving on the coast on the other side of the county. I realized in speaking with other volunteers just how difficult it is to get in and out of my site. I'm really thankful for it actually. Because Morocco has such great systems of transportation in place it makes travelling a lot easier then i was expecting when i signed up for the peace corps. PC Morocco has a different culture then i had anticipated when joining the peace corps; its proximity to europe and transportation infrastructure makes it not only easy but almost expected that pcv's will travel around, to either the bigger cities in country or to europe, the only place that's not easy to travel to is africa (moroccan's do not consider themselves part of africa, and most days i don't feel like i'm in africa either).
 IST was hard for me in a few ways. I found myself faced with problems i wasn't expecting to have to be dealing with when i was in the Peace Corps. The one thing people always tell you before doing something like this is to have no expectations. As much as we all try it's more or less impossible to do that, and i had thought the small number of expectations i had in my brain were more or less reasonable for a peace corps volunteers; isolation, lack of amenities, difficulty cooking, daily comforts being adjusted, and not seeing/talking to americans for months at a time. None of these things have panned out to be true at all. Honestly adjusting my expectations UP has been one of the hardest things for me. I feel like I'm cheating, and i feel like you all feel the same way too (speaking to you few readers). some days i feel like im in a study abroad program, not the peace corps, and i think you all feel the same way, whether or not you tangibly recognize it. I didn't choose to be in peace corps morocco, with constant water and electricity, propane stove, 'free' cell phone, easy internet access, ease of travel, comforts and supermarkets with cereal and french and american foods (expensively) lining the shelves. I didn't ask for any of it. honestly, most days i wish i had that other set expectations. It's easy to adjust to that stuff, the adjustment here is different, and I don't know how to put it into words, maybe part of it is guilt, maybe part of it is the more "first-world"/american problems i find myself facing, maybe part of it is i haven't exactly figured out what i'm doing here, but whatever it is IST stirred those feelings all up. Nothing like putting 39 uncertain, adjusting, peace corps volunteers in a hotel together for a week to shake things up, throw things in your face, and make you laugh and smile all at the same time.
Long story short IST was actually really helpful, and i'm really glad we had it. The craziest thing is that IST is possibly the last time i will see some of those people before we all are convening in rabat for our close of service conference. That's pretty crazy to me.

Being out of my site for so long, made coming back such a relief. It was great to sleep in my own bed, cook my own food, see my host family and start up my english classes again. Having been a nomad/gypsy for so long, it's awesome to be here, in one place, and it's crazy how quickly i've nested in. I bought a new ponj (essentially a long rectangular couch cushion that you put on the floor) yesterday, and i've started decorating my house, finding places for things, and making this place a home. it's a good and new feeling.

i did my first big cooking adventure yesterday! it took 3 hours, and a bit of creative thinking, but i was able to make a pretty decent batch of pumpkin curry! my first hurtle was my mis-reading of the can the previous volunteer left me, what i thought was coconut milk, was, in fact, upon further inspection creme de coco, which is a lot sweeter, and thicker then coconut milk. I did some spontaneous thinking and scooped a big old spoonful of it  into my milk from a box and then added a bunch of salt and tomatoes- not your conventional curry, but it came out pretty good.

what else. i had a pretty moroccoed week too.
in marakesh, i was stupid and wasn't paying attention and i more or less watched a man steal a substantial amount of dirham from my backpack, that i had thought safe on the floor of the bus. not so! Moroccoed! (luckily all he got was money, i had a lot of other stuff which is much more valuable to me, so in the end, im almost grateful, because it could have been worse. I also made friends in the marakesh police, so that was fun. Morocco adventures!)

also in my attempts to get home after IST i was waiting in ourzazate for a taxi that would probably  never come, i was prepared to spend the night there and make my way back in the morning, but then i saw my tutor i said to him: (inshallah means god willing)

me: rachid! are you going to get back tonight to n'kob, it's getting late?
rachid: yes, inshallah, we will go to agdz first then we will get a taxi to n'kob
me: i was told that after a certain time there aren't any more taxi's to n'kob, are we really going to get back?
rachid: yes, inshallah
me: no, look, i need a solid, nishan (direct) yes or no, not inshallah, because i can sleep here for free, and i don't want to pay for a room somewhere else if we can't get back.
rachid: yes we will get back to n'kob tonight............. inshallah.

we did get back, but it was definitely more inshallah then nishan.  moroccoed

so.  that is all for now. i'm getting back into the groove of it. here's some pictures from the weeks past.

looking all integrated, with my new scarf! it is significantly warmer when you do this, i think i've found a new winter look! 

a view from the top one of the descents along the tishka pass. 

the tishka

one of the views of the tishka pass. that's the view of one of the worst parts of the voyage. around 45 minutes of climbing up and up and hairpin turns. 

why hello big truck filled with hay. 

a very moroccan over loaded truck. this happens with all sorts of supplies. 

the view from the beach. 

i like is. we make art. 

putting my nature's classroom skills to work for the beach fire. 

my friends lauren and sarah, im not usually very good at taking pictures of people, so im really proud of this one. i love these two people. 

i love this picture bc of the americn flag pants, i also love making fires, i totally commandeered this from mr shannon, thanks! 

everyone enjoying the fire

a group of pcv's hanging out on the beach

the view of my room to the right, i was surprised that i could hammer some nails into my concrete walls to hang up my scarves and flags. 

the decorations in my room. they keep falling down, so if anyone wants to send me poster putty, and a bunch of it , i would be much obliged. . 

where all the cooking magic happens! my wonderful kitchen. to the right is my current 'fridge' where i keep my veggies and yogurt, the middle is for everything else, and the left is for cleaning stuff, i have a map of morocco on the wall, that i have plans to fill in with pins for where all my friends are in morocco. 

this is the other side of my kitchen.  my precious few ziplock bags drying, and my kp calendar that was lovingly sent to me all the way from maine! that jug of water is for when the water goes out, which it inevitably will again.  

the view of my sleeping/clothign area of my room. the pink things on the wall on the right are my calendars, that im trying to make for every month i'm here, ill post a close up picture later, i've been trying to be creative with them. it's finally starting to feel cozy and homey here. 

Hello All!

So I’ve been borrowing an internet modem stick from a friend this week, so if you’ve seen me online more regularly that’s why. Before I left for Morocco I told myself I wanted to go internet free in my house for a whole year. When I worked at nature’s classroom I had no problem being disconnected with no cell service and no internet available. The difference between then and now is at Nature’s Classroom I was surrounded by an amazing group of like-minded supportive people and friends, in short I had a wonderful community available to me day in, day out week after week and a beautiful property to go on hikes on, with no one else around for miles. In that situation not being connected was more often then not a blessing; instead of us all sitting there checking our facebook’s over and over again in the living room we played games, colored, wondered at our incense convection currents, watched planet earth and narrated the days adventures with the assistance of the guitar. Here in morocco when I’m at home in my house, I’m alone. I have a pretty great community in my town, but it’s sort of an adventure in itself, and nothing like the communities I’ve experienced at camp and Nature’s classroom, this community is a learning experience and isn’t as ‘comfortable’. For the reason having the internet here is a solace, those communities I’ve left at home, those relationships that are so important to me are sitting across an ocean, but also at the end of my Maroc Telecom USB internet modem. So long story short, I plan on purchasing my own modem by the end of the month and staying connected, even though the service is pretty terrible. A part of me feels like this is selling out, and missing out on a learning opportunity, but another part of me is really excited about al the skype conversations and facebook chats I’ve had in this past week.

This week was long, and not too productive. I got a really bad congestion/sinus problem that rendered me spending all day in my bed last Sunday, and into Monday. Being sick sucks everywhere, but it was sort of a hard time here, being alone in my house, noone to talk care of me, no one to make me soup and nowhere to buy it. It was hard not to sit there and sort of wallow in sadness. I found moments of happiness  last weekend when I was sickest where I ate the luna bar mama crunchy sent me, which meant I got to eat without cooking (if you read this btw thank you so much! ) , and watched the big bang theory non stop. Even with those things it was hard to bounce back from, and the sinus headache that has stayed with me all week hasn’t helped much with my mood.  But these are the trials, and honestly, minus the buying soup at the supermarket thing, there’s no difference from being sick alone in morocco and being sick alone in America, I’ve just never lived alone, so it ranks as a new experience for me.

Even with my sinus headache I ended up at a pretty cool event down at the gardens this Thursday before my English class at the woman’s center. It took forever to figure out what people were trying to tell me, but what I ended up figuring out was go to the gardens, around 3, there will be cous cous. Because I was sick and cranky I was a tool and didn’t bring my camera, but I’ll paint  a picture instead. I found myself at a little gathering of ladies, who were all sitting around drinking tea and drinking the sour milk that goes with cous cous. To the right there were three huge couscous pots cooking on coal fires, when I say huge, I mean these pots were almost waist high. I got handed a handful of cous cous and ate it , acquiring a huge group of children, who laughed at my attempts to eat it successfully (there was a lot there!) and grilled me about my name, where I was from, whether or not I was muslim and the variations of names from Arabic to engilsh (ie zara=sara youssef=joseph miryem=mary) mostly they were disappointed because there aren’t that many equivalents. I tried to tell them more common names were Barbara, and Ashley, which they found amazing. Then a girl I’ve befriended and a group of her friends went for a little walk around the gardens. After our walk, my hair became the main event, and it was a good laugh me making my hair into all different sorts of configurations and sending the kids in all directions squeeling. Finally it was time for the main event, the cous cous was done, and women walked around bringing big plates of it with veggies and a small amount of meat on top to the different groups of people that have formed. I got to experience trying to eat cous cous with my hands for the first time, and I would say it was mostly unsuccessful. The trick is squeezing out some of the moisture, then gently moving it around your hand to make a ball, I think I squeeze too much, but it was fun, and really delicious. I ate a ton of cous cous then made my way to my English class, which as you could imagine was poorly attended because of the allure of free couscous. Turns out it was a prayer for rain, who knew! Next time I know never to leave my house without my camera.

The other thing that happened unexpectedly was the talent show I ended up at at the dar talib, or student house. The dar talib is a place where students who live too far away from the town schools come to live during the week, so they don’t have to make the long commute from home. I really didn’t want to go anywhere on Friday when I was on my way home, but was cornered by one of the guys who is associated with the dar talib. I showed up and found out it was a sort of event, I got almonds and tea, and met some of the girls who live there. Finally we decided on nights I will go to the dar talib and dar taliba to do English clsses and help with homework and the like. Very exciting.

Finally because of y ill ness last weekend, I didn’t do my weekly shopping at the Sunday market. Because of that I had next to nothing in my house. I’m lucky my host sisters brought me one of my favorites, milwi, which is like a delicious, crispy and greasy tortilla, without that milwi I would have been pretty hungry all week. I used up the little I had left in the house , but I was ready for souk (market) this weekend. It ‘s always exciting to have food in the house, but it especially was this week. I was really excited to start trying out some recipes and experimenting with different ingredients as well as my new pressure cooker. I had soaked and boiled some chick peas last week, and then got sick and never used them. So today I decided because it’s been so cold out ( 45 degrees inside most morning when I wake up!) that I would try and make some soup. I was really happy with the result. Here’s the recipe:

Michelle’s Moroccan chickpea soup

1 large onion

5 cloves garlic chopped

2 tomatoes grated

½ c water

2 c chickpeas

¼ kilo pumpkin

seasoning: salt, pepper, curry, basil, paprika, and a pinch of ginger.

Sautee the onions and garlic in the pressure cooker, add the other ingredients. Wait until the pressure cooker is hissing (heat up on high)  and then cook for 15 minutes over medium heat. After 15 minutes turn off the heat and either release the pressure yourself or let it sit and release itself. This is the point where you wouldn’t want to open the lid, or you might blow things up, like your face or your kitchen, the whole pressure thing about pressure cookers. Once the pressure is relieved, open it up, I then added a dash of vinegar and blended it until smooth

Once the soup was done I used this recipe I found online for fried chickpeas, really easy! Though I would suggest a smaller amount of oil rather then a large amount, a little goes a long way. Once they were done I salted them and used them to garnish my soup! A great trade off for a sort of bread product or something of the sort.

Sorry this post is more or less picture free, but here’s what my soup looked like, that’s the orange tree in the background.  I've started decorating my house, so maybe i'll post some pictures of that tomorrow morning when i finish. Hope everyone is well. There’s also a new feature on the right side of my blog if you want to follow it by email, if you tend to be a forgetful type and don’t remember to come to my blog often, please subscribe by email as well! I don’t really know how to send it out to you all by email, so this is my best option for you forgetful types, I know how it is, I’m bad at remembering to check people’s blogs as well. 

Hello all.

This is my weekly dose of internet, but hopefully by the end of this month/beginning of the next I will have an internet modem stick and get to watch as things slowly load from the comfort of my own home!

I have moved into my own house! It’s a lot bigger then I had wanted/expected, but I feel really blessed/spoiled to have my own place I can leave my dishes out and not worry about what anyone else is going to say. I’ve settled in pretty well, got a few decorations up and I’m enjoying the music I can blast all the time and the messes I can leave without worrying about anyone else’s happiness. Having a courtyard is really great, I love having an outdoor space. Especially because inside it hasn’t gotten any warmer then 55 degrees in about a week and a half. (it’s a lot warmer in the sun outside, more like 65-70 so being able to sit outside is a really great feeling. ) At night it drops down to 45. 45 feels really cold when all you have is a sleeping bag and a blanket, this weekend another blanket is a necessity purchase. I’m trying not to cave and buy a hot water heater or space heater. We’ll see how long I hold out. So far my home is furnished sparsely, mostly out of necessity. There aren’t really that many stores in my town, and most of them carry the same things and the same goes for the weekend markets. There is literally no place in town to buy a refrigerator- so I was told to wait on that, as you read above it’s cold enough most days that I just leave my stuff out and it doesn’t spoil, I won’t need a fridge until the end of February or the beginning of march. I’ve been buying things as I need them and so far it’s worked out pretty well. These pictures are of my house unfurnished.

I had a brief stint this week where I was a cat owner, remember those two small kittens from my host families house? I decided to bring vache (the boy) back with me. He spent two days crying non stop, and using my bed as his own toilet. Seeing as I’m not a huge fan of cats to begin with, I decided that his life was better off with his sister/family/not with me so I returned him. Evidently his sister had spent those same two days crying, so it works out best for everyone. Big sigh of relief on that one. I’ve found the hideouts of the puppies that are in my town though, and if their spirits haven’t been broken by the beginning of February I might see if one of them wants to be my permanent friend. Problem is people in morocco do not like dogs, and especially don’t have them in their houses. As long as they don’t bother anyone they’re left alone to roam the street, but mistreatment of dogs (rock throwing, kicking etc) is both pretty commonplace and accepted behavior, it breaks my heart. But I also know I can’t afford the time or money to save every puppy I see. Having a dog has big old pro’s and big old con’s- so I’m weighing my options at this point.

This weekend was a very exciting time here in nkob! There was a big festival where I got to listen to traditional berber music, see tradition looms, grindstones and other sorts of good stuff. I got to go on a walking tour of a couple of the kasbah’s turned hotels in town which was very cool. Also there was a marathon and a couple of other smaller running races for the younger generations. There was music, and running and dancing and food and more or less everyone in town showed up. All of it was hosted in and around the dar chabab/youth center where I work so that was really cool too.  I felt very special being invited to all of these different events and activities. I’m pretty sure this festival is one of the most exciting things that happens for a while around here.  I’m hoping to run the marathon next year, we shall see! I started with my first ‘for exercise’ bike ride and jog around my courtyard yesterday. I am incredibly tired right now, but it was worth it.

So since my last post not much has happened. This festival was a time were I felt like I was part of what was happening here in town, people invited me places, I felt less like someone who was here and not just being invited out of pity or anything like that. It felt really nice. I felt more like a friend/member then some foreign creature people were nice to because they felt bad. Being an outsider is hard, and between language and culture it’s hard not to feel like a total outsider sometimes. It usually doesn’t bother me/ I don’t even notice, but it was cool to feel like I was part of it all. I forsee that happening more and more as I stay here longer, at least I hope so.

I’m eternally grateful for the small joys and kindnesses I find along the way here. For example on my bike ride, the way out of town I felt disheartened, out of shape, bummed out. I stopped at where I decided to turn around and listened to a few songs on my ipod while taking a sip of water then headed back. As I was changing the playlists on my ipod a kid stopped and asked if I was going to nkob, I told him yes and he asked if he wanted to bike with him. I said, no, it’s ok I’m not very good right now, but he insisted and we ended up biking back the 1.5kilometers back to nkob, and my bike ride went from a bummer to a total bright spot in my day. Had I listened to one more song or one less song I probably wouldn’t have run into this kid and my ride would not have been as rewarding. Small things like this happen all the time, that I like to think of as little nudges that I’m doing well here, I’m heading in the right direction. I’m thankful I’ve always been the type of person to find joy in the small stuff.

So there it is. This post is really picture heavy bc I’ve had such an eventful few days! Woot!

 a space i like in my house. to the side of the courtyard. 

 my non fruiting orange tree in my courtyard. birds love it. i am constantly cleaning up bird poop off of the leaves and the cement. 

my big cement salon! i have set up camp almost exclusively in this room. it's pretty great. i'll post a picture of it when i've decorated some more. 

courtyard to the kitchen. 

 my kitchen, with the brand new sink and counter. pretty snazzy. 

one of my three roofs. 

the second of two roofs, this one is above the big salon, it's probably where i will sleep come summer time.  

 a traditional nkob rug loom

 ladies in wedding garb sitting on the curb. waiting for the races to finish up. 

something i would NEVER do in america, but is totally acceptable here. socks and sandals. 

a guy in traditional garb smoking a cigarette. 

"a berber bride"

 me playing with the traditional grindstone. if you wanted flour this is how you used to do it. also this is probably my favorite outfit at the time. i wear it a lot. another totally acceptable wardrobe choice is wearing the same thing all week- a practice that was not difficult for me to adapt to. 

 the kids finishing up their race. 

 a view over nkob. i love the colors of the houses. 

 another view over nkob

 main street from above. 

 main street from above 2

 traditional music in practice. 

 a sunset over the crowd. i swear to god this is what it actually looked like. it was gorgeous. 

the sunset again. i couldn't pick what one to use, so i decided for both. this picture also shows how all the ladies carry around their babies. i love it. the just kind of bend over, place the baby on their back, and then put a blanket over their backs, tie it on the front then place a series of other fabrics (blankets towels etc) depending on the weather and the event. it's wonderful. 

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.