new site, yeah!

Hi all. So I had my site visit these last few days, met my family and counterpart and all that jazz. Things went pretty well, did a lot of napping and sitting around but that's ok.  My family is nice though requested that I not post pictures on the internet of them, so you'll just have to guess what they look like or something. However, I was able to take some pictures of my site as well as the beautiful sunset in Essaouira.  I also have a real address now and if I forget to include you in the email and you want it, let me know!


sunset at essaouira

view from my bedroom

another beach view near my site

my site on a rainy morning

Yes, zucc is a bad word in darija

And I use it all the time by accident. oops.



Well, everyone, i have officially found out my site for the next two years. in the interest of my personal security/to keeep the creepers from knowing too much about me, I won't say the town exactly, but I am in Essauoria province.  () It's definitely in a beach town. I'm very excited (as many of you know, i do love my beaches). my town is about 15,000 people and seems pretty well equiped. there is a souq (market) daily and even a women's only souq two days per week. there seems to be a lot of other ammenities. it is a very touristy place (from what i have heard) so that will definitely provide an interesting experience. i leave monday to do a week-long site visit during which i will stay with a second host family. there are 6 children under the age of 13 (should be exciting, to say the least). another volunteer and i will be escorted tomorrow to our sites and then will spend the week finding out information about the town, clinic, etc. 


funny story of the week:
so, even though it's been about 80 degrees at site, i've been wearing long sleeves and long pants (hard to get used to at first, but it's been getting easier...i have just come to the realization that i will sweat a lot and not shower much at all and it will be just fine). but that is not the funny part of the story. so we are all sweating through our one layers and the people in our town/host families are wearing 2-3 layers on both top and bottom. ashley's sister consistently has three shirts on. sydney's brothers always wear two pairs of pants on top of one another. the other night, my brothers came home from visitng some other family. they were wearing some new clothes...and i was teasing them a little about wearing a bunch of shirts. then my host mom started in and we figured out that my little 6 year old brother was wearing 5 shirts. yes, 5. even his grandma was cracking up and teasing him for having so many on. it's nice to be able to laugh with my family and have a good time. we have started to play card games before dinner at night. the favorite is "tajin," a game where the cards are in a big circle (a lot like a tajin) and you make pairs. i've been teaching the boys the names of the cards in english, sharing culture, woo! all in all, things are good here, i'm ready for the next part of the adventure.


i tried to add pictures, no dice. maybe next time!

CBT pictures, yes!

team Blue Ice 2 (well some of them at least) outside our hostel

one of my costume changes from the photo shoot my family made me do; yes, it's velvet, love it

me and my host sister Miriam, photo shoot

lunch tajine...mmm....

casbah and surrounding landscape...picture doesn't capture it so well, but it was beautiful!

More pictures from CBT

my host brother Jamal

my host brothers/grandchildren of my host parents and their baller Moroccan hipster bike

Zacharia and Mohammed 

Get Your PACA On

            Well, here I am at the Hub in Ouarzazate again.  We just spent ten days with our host families- I think it’s good that I can say it definitely didn’t feel like it was that long.  Granted, we did take a mini vacation this past weekend, but in some ways, that was more tiring than being with my host family.

            Since I last posted, we (as a CBT group) practiced using our PACA tools (participatory analysis and community assessment) that are basically one of the main ways that Peace Corps has us assess our community.  It was a pretty cool exercise-we had two groups, one of girls age 16-24 and one of guys, same age.  We learned a lot about our community (in terms of how each groups sees the community and what is important to them there, what they do every day and how the seasons change what they do.  We also learned about what each group would like to have in the community.

            Language learning has been very intensive, but pretty good.  We just learned the past tense.  I understand more of what my family says, but still feel pretty clueless.  It may very well be that we got a lot of information in the past few days and I have yet to fully absorb it.

            Our mini-vaca was nice.  All seven of us went to a duwar (town) to the north of our CBT and stayed at a hostel overnight.  It was really beautiful and had an old casba overlooking an oasis that we were able to walk around.  The hardest part of the trip was trying to get A) a taxi that wouldn’t mind breaking the law and take all seven of us in one car and B) the correct price for the trip.  We did make it there and back, though not without adventure.  On the last leg of the trip the one guy in our group took a taxi with some other Moroccans going to our destination while the six girls took another.  Of course, we got the driver that almost hit our friend’s taxi and then proceeded to yell at their driver.  As we sped away, the driver started to blast Lady Gaga and the cab turned into a dance party.  We listened to crappy American ghetto fab/club songs for the whole trip, while simultaneously almost rear-ending and then passing every car we came upon (including our friend’s taxi which had left a good ten minutes before we did…we ended up at the destination and waited for him for another ten mins), and all of this a crazy fast speed (of course)  A great adventure…sort of…

            All the health volunteers will be at the hub here for a few days, then we head back to our CBTs and will be cooking some sort of American food for our families on Saturday.  I have decided to go with pancakes, scrambled eggs and hashbrowns.  I’ll write more about the success (or lack thereof) of that experiment next time.  More pictures of my host family and CBT site to come (Inshallah)!