tcob.

Typed at 10:12 pm on November 23

Currently listening to Ben Folds, Way to Normal album

Many things were accomplished today. In a related story, today was the first day I didn’t feel like a complete retard from dawn to dusk. My province-mate and I planned to meet up in our province capitol in order to meet our delegue for the Ministry of Youth and Sports here in Morocco, then I needed to buy a special stamp for my carte de sejour, then we needed to pick up some bags we’d left at the Peace Corps office. I’m sure none of this sounds particularly ridiculous, but these three errands involved:

1. telling Peace Corps 24 hours ahead of time that I would be leaving site today
2. leaving my house at 6:45 am
3. going to the gendarmes (fancy-pants police that follow PCVs around) to tell them I would be out of town all day
4. taking an hour-long car ride with 6 strangers
5. wandering around to various tobacco stores looking for a place that sold 100 Dh stamps (hopefully I bought the right kind)
6. teaching the delegue how to pronounce my name, then just telling her to call me Amal
7. taking another hour-long car ride to the Peace Corps office, but with 5 strangers this time (good ol’ province-mate was with me this time)
8. trying to remember where in the city Peace Corps is located
9. taking a 90ish minute car ride with six strangers, plus two backpacks, a large suitcase and a mosquito net
10. lugging said backpacks, large suitcase and mosquito net into a petit taxi when I got back to site and trying to explain to the driver where I live in a town with no street names (I literally just told him what section of town I live in then said to go to the top of the hill and I live by the mosque.)

All that and I managed to be home before the sun set, just in time for my host brothers to roll around on my bed then start touching everything that I brought back from Rabat and asking me what everything was. Ay caramba.

I must say, I’m pretty pleased with myself right now. So far in site, the people of my town have been helpful to the extent that I can’t do anything alone (I just recently was able to leave the house without my host mom making sure I had an escort). It’s difficult to adjust to that when you are used to handling most things by yourself. Today was different though! I did everything I needed to do, and I didn’t need a Moroccan to translate for me. Today was exactly what I’ve been needing—a sign that I’ll be able to handle the next two years. I felt so in control that I came home and started making excel spreadsheets and planning lessons. BAM.