I gotsa place to live

Typed Tuesday, October 2

Welllll a lot has been going on the past few days. Most importantly, I found out my final site! I’m hesitant to post the name of it, but I will say I’m quite pleased. There are definitely pros (close-ish to a few big cities as well as some other YD trainees that I’m good friends with) and cons (following a volunteer who is apparently awesome), but I’m excited to get started!

Some stuff that’s happened lately:

My CBT group totally has a mascot in the form of a tiny and maybe crazy little girl. She’s three (ish), we call her Weasel and she sometimes licks walls. Her mom cooks for us everyday and Weasel likes to hang out and play peek-a-boo/ stare blankly at me when I talk to her.

My Darija class was attacked by bugs last Friday morning. I was sitting there, minding my own business and drawing Pooh Bear as a little black rain cloud in my notebook (totally normal) when all of a sudden this THING was sitting next to me. It LOOKED AT ME then slowly spread its little wings in what I perceived to be a threatening manner. As we all know, harassment happens when someone is made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe by another’s actions. In other words, that bug harassed me. I’ll pause a moment to make sure the gravity of the situation sinks in fully.

Last weekend Brahim and I were in a neighboring CBT site and got to do all sorts of fun things, most notably visiting the Dar Chebab there. We made Halloween decorations for the Halloween party they are having this coming weekend then played some games. One of them was most definitely a game I used to play in the states, only with booze.

I crashed at a fellow trainee’s house and over dinner his host mom told me I knew zero Darija because I didn’t understand one of the questions she asked me. Tough crowd.

Yesterday and part of today I was at the hub, freaking out about finding out my site, then finding out my site, then freaking out about moving to my site. There was also some delicious cheese and chocolate mixed in between the freak outs, as well as an avocado smoothie. I assure you that the deliciousness of the avocado smoothie has an inverse relationship with how gross it sounds.

I spent most of the evening talking with my host-uncle in a pathetic mix of Darija, French, English and smiling-and-nodding, then dazzling the host-siblings with my ability to make origami stars (thank you Asian friends from high school).

Final thought: Last night at hub we set up a projector to watch “The Hangover” and oh my goodness did I forget how funny that movie is.