I Got My Mind Settttt Onnnnnnn Youuuu (RIP George)
This morning I was woken up by a phone call from my 11-year-old host brother, basically telling me to get my ass out of bed and to his house for breakfast.
Today is the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. It’s not celebrated as intensely as L3id Kebir (as in, no animals were harmed on this day) but it’s still kind of a big deal. I told my host mom earlier this week I’d be over for breakfast, but when I said that I meant at like 9 or 9:30. I didn’t expect to get reprimanded by a child for not being dressed and ready to stuff my face at 8:30 am on a Saturday.
And wow, did I stuff my face.
My host aunt made the Moroccan equivalent of funnel cake (get in my belly) and then there was the cake. And Moroccan crepes (beghrir). And another pancake thing I forget the name of (nsimmin?). And tea. Always tea. Let’s just say I ate a disgusting amount.
The rest of the morning passed nicely. I got my first manicure since Lindsey’s wedding. Bubblegum pink nail polish applied by my 16-year-old host cousin. I was also able to remind all the women that tomorrow morning we are exercising. I don’t think the older women will end up going this first time, but my two host cousins are excited about it and I’m totally cool with improving women’s health and self-esteem two girls at a time.
I think the rest of the day I’m just going to lie around in a mild food coma. No big deal.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
On Being Very Important
Morning jams include but are not limited to The Strokes
Before joining Peace Corps I had this idea that being a Volunteer was one big adventure. That’s part of what made it seem so appealing having worked in a basement office with no windows filing human resources forms, creating contracts and paying bills (not that I don’t love my Lisner family). In some senses, being a Volunteer is a big adventure—you never know if you are being understood, your house might mutiny in one form or another at any moment and the neverending gifts from creepy men in your community (yesterday I was given a teddy bear for no reason) definitely spice up the day.
However.
For the most part being a Volunteer means living life the way normal people in your town do. It means being willing to feel like an idiot most of the time, being willing to sacrifice your health by eating like 45 cookies in one sitting, being willing to delay or change your plans due to the whims of the Moroccan sun. Basically, being a Volunteer—at least here in Morocco—means being willing to give up a substantial amount of your own independence and let the environment dictate your life. Instead of waking up and making something out of the day, the day makes something out of you.
When you feel like you don’t have a lot of control over your own life, you tend to feel unimportant, a pawn in someone else’s chess game. Sure, Obama praises you in his speeches. But it’s a little awkward when you don’t feel like you really contribute that much.
It is times like these, my friends, when being invited to Rabat to facilitate last-minute sessions—“Giving and Receiving Feedback That’s What She Said” and “Providing Support to Peace Corps Trainees”—for the language teachers in preparation for the incoming Health/Enviro stage is awesome. That is a Dickens-worthy complex sentence if I ever saw one.
Basically I got a call from Peace Corps staff on Tuesday asking if I could be in Rabat Thursday to do some sessions to the LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) who were in the middle of their ToT (Training of Trainers) that focus on working with and supporting Americans. They asked me and my friend Ryan to come, mostly because we can both get to Rabat in a matter of hours and we are still pretty fresh out of training ourselves. Did I care what exactly what was expected of me? No. Was I nervous about having to give a 90 minute seminar on topics I’m not really an expert in? Not since getting a liberal arts degree. The important factors here were:
a. Free trip to Rabat
b. Seeing all my LCF friends
c. I needed to go to the PC office anyway
d. Free food
e. Getting out of couscous Friday
It was an amazing 26 hours. I got into Rabat around 2 pm on Thursday and headed straight to PC Headquarters, which is sort of the happiest place on Earth. It’s literally a villa, and they have this magical place called the Volunteer lounge where you can TAKE FREE BOOKS. So I made a quick stop there to drop off some books I’ve read since getting to site then pick up a few new ones: The Two Towers (I know have the complete LOTR series in my house) and The Tender Bar. Book reviews to come in future blogs. Probably not really.
Chatted with my program manager for awhile about various things: the upcoming spring English camps in Morocco and how they are a clusterfuck every year, my upcoming vacation plans, whether or not my Darija is zwin yet. Then I was able to bum a ride with another staff member to the LCF ToT site, otherwise known as the welcome center for the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Conveniently, this little building is a two minute walk to the beach.
After getting settled in there and meeting up with Ryan, we had a quick meeting with staff about the topics they wanted to touch on in our sessions. Then Ryan and I went out to the beach to plan. Not a bad day’s work. Afterward there was a lot of fun and indulgence with the LCFs old and new: big dinner and a jam session with Mbark and his mandolin.
Our sessions Friday morning went really well. Everyone listened to me and actually thanked me afterward for my “hard work.” This is maybe the fourth time I’ve felt like an important, contributing member of the Moroccan community.
Here’s the best part: after the sessions Ryan and I were treated to lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Rabat! So much food, so delicious. I ate a salad, plate of fajitas and ice cream sundae, reasoning that I should fill up on free, delicious food now and just not eat for the rest of the day. (Worked like a charm). The entire meal ended up costing more than what I pay every month in rent.
Got back to site in the afternoon, just in time for an epic game of Scrabble with one of the university students that was hanging out at Dar Chabab. All in all, it was a much needed dose of feeling-like-I-matter. Plus, my European vacay got officially approved. Tebark Allah aliya.
Before joining Peace Corps I had this idea that being a Volunteer was one big adventure. That’s part of what made it seem so appealing having worked in a basement office with no windows filing human resources forms, creating contracts and paying bills (not that I don’t love my Lisner family). In some senses, being a Volunteer is a big adventure—you never know if you are being understood, your house might mutiny in one form or another at any moment and the neverending gifts from creepy men in your community (yesterday I was given a teddy bear for no reason) definitely spice up the day.
However.
For the most part being a Volunteer means living life the way normal people in your town do. It means being willing to feel like an idiot most of the time, being willing to sacrifice your health by eating like 45 cookies in one sitting, being willing to delay or change your plans due to the whims of the Moroccan sun. Basically, being a Volunteer—at least here in Morocco—means being willing to give up a substantial amount of your own independence and let the environment dictate your life. Instead of waking up and making something out of the day, the day makes something out of you.
When you feel like you don’t have a lot of control over your own life, you tend to feel unimportant, a pawn in someone else’s chess game. Sure, Obama praises you in his speeches. But it’s a little awkward when you don’t feel like you really contribute that much.
It is times like these, my friends, when being invited to Rabat to facilitate last-minute sessions—“Giving and Receiving Feedback That’s What She Said” and “Providing Support to Peace Corps Trainees”—for the language teachers in preparation for the incoming Health/Enviro stage is awesome. That is a Dickens-worthy complex sentence if I ever saw one.
Basically I got a call from Peace Corps staff on Tuesday asking if I could be in Rabat Thursday to do some sessions to the LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) who were in the middle of their ToT (Training of Trainers) that focus on working with and supporting Americans. They asked me and my friend Ryan to come, mostly because we can both get to Rabat in a matter of hours and we are still pretty fresh out of training ourselves. Did I care what exactly what was expected of me? No. Was I nervous about having to give a 90 minute seminar on topics I’m not really an expert in? Not since getting a liberal arts degree. The important factors here were:
a. Free trip to Rabat
b. Seeing all my LCF friends
c. I needed to go to the PC office anyway
d. Free food
e. Getting out of couscous Friday
It was an amazing 26 hours. I got into Rabat around 2 pm on Thursday and headed straight to PC Headquarters, which is sort of the happiest place on Earth. It’s literally a villa, and they have this magical place called the Volunteer lounge where you can TAKE FREE BOOKS. So I made a quick stop there to drop off some books I’ve read since getting to site then pick up a few new ones: The Two Towers (I know have the complete LOTR series in my house) and The Tender Bar. Book reviews to come in future blogs. Probably not really.
Chatted with my program manager for awhile about various things: the upcoming spring English camps in Morocco and how they are a clusterfuck every year, my upcoming vacation plans, whether or not my Darija is zwin yet. Then I was able to bum a ride with another staff member to the LCF ToT site, otherwise known as the welcome center for the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Conveniently, this little building is a two minute walk to the beach.
After getting settled in there and meeting up with Ryan, we had a quick meeting with staff about the topics they wanted to touch on in our sessions. Then Ryan and I went out to the beach to plan. Not a bad day’s work. Afterward there was a lot of fun and indulgence with the LCFs old and new: big dinner and a jam session with Mbark and his mandolin.
Our sessions Friday morning went really well. Everyone listened to me and actually thanked me afterward for my “hard work.” This is maybe the fourth time I’ve felt like an important, contributing member of the Moroccan community.
Here’s the best part: after the sessions Ryan and I were treated to lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Rabat! So much food, so delicious. I ate a salad, plate of fajitas and ice cream sundae, reasoning that I should fill up on free, delicious food now and just not eat for the rest of the day. (Worked like a charm). The entire meal ended up costing more than what I pay every month in rent.
Got back to site in the afternoon, just in time for an epic game of Scrabble with one of the university students that was hanging out at Dar Chabab. All in all, it was a much needed dose of feeling-like-I-matter. Plus, my European vacay got officially approved. Tebark Allah aliya.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Unconnected Thoughts Awkwardly Compiled into One Post
“Opposite Day” by Andrew Bird
It sounds really obvious, I’m sure, to say that Peace Corps is a great opportunity for anthropological research. Well, folks, I’m going to go ahead and be really obvious.
I don’t even know where to start. Walking around every day I get so many ideas for research I don’t even know what to do with myself. For instance, I could probably write a huge linguistic/anthro paper on when and why my host brother calls me by my Arabic name (Amal) or my American name (Alli—it’s easier than Allison and now I prefer it). When he’s around kids or at the Dar Chabab he always calls me Alli, which is what the other kids call me. But at home or if it’s just the two of us he typically calls me Amal. It’s like he uses my different names to signify that he is in the “in” crowd at any given time. I feel like calling me “Amal” at the Dar Chabab would be the humiliating equivalent of calling your teacher “mom” in front of all your friends. Not that I’ve ever done that.
Also, I sat in on a French tutoring session at the Dar Chabab this afternoon, and it was truly eye-opening. The same room that I use to make up goofy handshakes, get into yelling matches about why two kids don’t need four basketballs, lose miserably at chess and break into impromptu ballet demonstrations was transformed into a classroom full of quiet, behaved Moroccan children. Same tables, same chairs, same general décor. The only variable that changed was the person standing at the front—a French teacher from the local high school rather than a weird American that makes faces and has no experience teaching English. This may be why my English classes don’t tend to be that effective. It was crazy, though, watching the same kids that scream and run around like maniacs sit still, speak French and even take notes. They’ve been conditioned since they were very young to fear and respect teachers, but they don’t necessarily know how to react to Peace Corps Volunteers. The line between friend and teacher is very blurry—to the point that I don’t even know where I stand. As I sit and reflect with an imaginary pipe hanging loosely from my mouth I wonder if that might be an identity I should work on defining.
Anyway, the French tutoring session served me up a nice two-fer: it gave me a good outlet for thinking ethnographically and simultaneously made me feel incredibly inadequate as a teacher. Good thing I don’t want to be a teacher anyway.
Other things lately: crazzzzzy mood swings. You’d think I was a woman or something. I had a streak of three or four really good days where I felt competent, aware of what the hell was going on and healthy in body and mind. Then Monday came. I woke up to lots of work-related emails that did nothing but make me stress out about my ever-growing to-do list (a list I knowingly force upon myself), then I made the mistake of leaving my house. A poor choice indeed. All I wanted to do was check my mail and instead I got accosted by a creep who’s been bugging me for English lessons. The rest of the day was spent wallowing in my house, stalking people on facebook, getting the latest gossip from the southern half of the country and eating a lot of Triscuits and Teddy Grahams (Dad: stop sending me food. I clearly am not responsible enough to handle it.).
Yesterday was a little better, if not slightly frustrating. We had a planning meeting for an upcoming environmental education activity, and I thought I got all my questions answered/ understood the gist of the meeting pretty well. However, it seems that in the sea of Darija, Fusa (standard Arabic) and French being spoken I totally missed the part where my counterpart said Peace Corps is just going to give us money for the event. Nedi nedi nedi. So I have to go back today and explain that in order to even ASK for money from Peace Corps we’d need to write up a grant proposal, a process I don’t even know how to do yet, and we should have started that months ago, like before I was even in site. All is not lost, there are other financial options, but it’s still pretty frustrating.
One last thing. I’m finally starting to remember some of my dreams, and now that I do I realize why my subconscious never really bothered before. Man, are they boring. The one I remember most vividly involved me trying to borrow a tall man’s bike but not being able to reach the pedals. I politely declined the bike, but the man didn’t understand why, and it dissolved into a pretty scientific discussion of why clown cars are funny and how this situation is the exact opposite. As in, a clown car is hilarious because there is way too much clown per square unit of car, but in the case at hand, there is far too little clown per square unit of car. That’s seriously a dream I had.
Coming up on the calendar: I get a free trip to Rabat! A perk of living near Peace Corps headquarters is that when they are holding some sort of event or training seminar (in this case they are training the new Darija/Tashelheit/Tamazirght teachers for the incoming Health and Environment stage) and they need to bring in a Volunteer they call me and I get to come to Rabat for a day or two, stay in a hotel and eat free food. And all I have to do in exchange is talk a bit about giving and receiving feedback when working with Peace Corps Trainees. Not a bad deal. They invited my friend, Ryan, too, so I will even have some much-needed American company.
The weekend should be pretty nice, too. There is a holiday so I don’t have to work Saturday. Lots of time for lying around my house, watching The Sword in the Stone, and getting some planning out of the way for upcoming projects.
It sounds really obvious, I’m sure, to say that Peace Corps is a great opportunity for anthropological research. Well, folks, I’m going to go ahead and be really obvious.
I don’t even know where to start. Walking around every day I get so many ideas for research I don’t even know what to do with myself. For instance, I could probably write a huge linguistic/anthro paper on when and why my host brother calls me by my Arabic name (Amal) or my American name (Alli—it’s easier than Allison and now I prefer it). When he’s around kids or at the Dar Chabab he always calls me Alli, which is what the other kids call me. But at home or if it’s just the two of us he typically calls me Amal. It’s like he uses my different names to signify that he is in the “in” crowd at any given time. I feel like calling me “Amal” at the Dar Chabab would be the humiliating equivalent of calling your teacher “mom” in front of all your friends. Not that I’ve ever done that.
Also, I sat in on a French tutoring session at the Dar Chabab this afternoon, and it was truly eye-opening. The same room that I use to make up goofy handshakes, get into yelling matches about why two kids don’t need four basketballs, lose miserably at chess and break into impromptu ballet demonstrations was transformed into a classroom full of quiet, behaved Moroccan children. Same tables, same chairs, same general décor. The only variable that changed was the person standing at the front—a French teacher from the local high school rather than a weird American that makes faces and has no experience teaching English. This may be why my English classes don’t tend to be that effective. It was crazy, though, watching the same kids that scream and run around like maniacs sit still, speak French and even take notes. They’ve been conditioned since they were very young to fear and respect teachers, but they don’t necessarily know how to react to Peace Corps Volunteers. The line between friend and teacher is very blurry—to the point that I don’t even know where I stand. As I sit and reflect with an imaginary pipe hanging loosely from my mouth I wonder if that might be an identity I should work on defining.
Anyway, the French tutoring session served me up a nice two-fer: it gave me a good outlet for thinking ethnographically and simultaneously made me feel incredibly inadequate as a teacher. Good thing I don’t want to be a teacher anyway.
Other things lately: crazzzzzy mood swings. You’d think I was a woman or something. I had a streak of three or four really good days where I felt competent, aware of what the hell was going on and healthy in body and mind. Then Monday came. I woke up to lots of work-related emails that did nothing but make me stress out about my ever-growing to-do list (a list I knowingly force upon myself), then I made the mistake of leaving my house. A poor choice indeed. All I wanted to do was check my mail and instead I got accosted by a creep who’s been bugging me for English lessons. The rest of the day was spent wallowing in my house, stalking people on facebook, getting the latest gossip from the southern half of the country and eating a lot of Triscuits and Teddy Grahams (Dad: stop sending me food. I clearly am not responsible enough to handle it.).
Yesterday was a little better, if not slightly frustrating. We had a planning meeting for an upcoming environmental education activity, and I thought I got all my questions answered/ understood the gist of the meeting pretty well. However, it seems that in the sea of Darija, Fusa (standard Arabic) and French being spoken I totally missed the part where my counterpart said Peace Corps is just going to give us money for the event. Nedi nedi nedi. So I have to go back today and explain that in order to even ASK for money from Peace Corps we’d need to write up a grant proposal, a process I don’t even know how to do yet, and we should have started that months ago, like before I was even in site. All is not lost, there are other financial options, but it’s still pretty frustrating.
One last thing. I’m finally starting to remember some of my dreams, and now that I do I realize why my subconscious never really bothered before. Man, are they boring. The one I remember most vividly involved me trying to borrow a tall man’s bike but not being able to reach the pedals. I politely declined the bike, but the man didn’t understand why, and it dissolved into a pretty scientific discussion of why clown cars are funny and how this situation is the exact opposite. As in, a clown car is hilarious because there is way too much clown per square unit of car, but in the case at hand, there is far too little clown per square unit of car. That’s seriously a dream I had.
Coming up on the calendar: I get a free trip to Rabat! A perk of living near Peace Corps headquarters is that when they are holding some sort of event or training seminar (in this case they are training the new Darija/Tashelheit/Tamazirght teachers for the incoming Health and Environment stage) and they need to bring in a Volunteer they call me and I get to come to Rabat for a day or two, stay in a hotel and eat free food. And all I have to do in exchange is talk a bit about giving and receiving feedback when working with Peace Corps Trainees. Not a bad deal. They invited my friend, Ryan, too, so I will even have some much-needed American company.
The weekend should be pretty nice, too. There is a holiday so I don’t have to work Saturday. Lots of time for lying around my house, watching The Sword in the Stone, and getting some planning out of the way for upcoming projects.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
I like to make lists.
Jam du jour: Free Fallin and other Tom Petty classics
And now, a list.
You are starting to adapt to life here when:
1. It’s 50 degrees out and you are wearing long underwear (by choice, even. Not because your host mom made you.)
2. Every sentence you utter, whether in Darija or English, ends with a “yek?”, “fahimTIni?”, or “wakha?” (“yeah?” “do you understand me?” “okay?”)
3. Many sentences you utter begin with a “Mohim…” (“important…”)
4. Every time you shake someone’s hand you immediately tap your chest afterward.
5. You wear crappy plastic sandals around your own house.
6. Bread is dawuri (absolutely necessary) at every meal.
7. If it’s raining, you probably aren’t going to work. Let’s be honest.
8. You know how to use a squeegee attached to a broomstick correctly enough so that a Moroccan doesn’t forcibly remove it from you and start showing you how it’s done.
9. You know when to pretend like you don’t speak a lick of Darija (example: when the creepy man in the taxi that keeps ‘accidentally’ rubbing your arm tries to start up a conversation).
10. Upon seeing you do something ghetto (ie hording plastic bags and using and reusing them) a Moroccan actually tells you “welliti magribiya,” or “you became Moroccan.”
That said, I shudder at the thought of how far I have to go.
This week: planning meetings for a big environment/art project, "Make (insert my town's name here) Beautiful," planning meetings for a big reading race I;m organizing for April, running/walking club with some ladies, and tutoring my 16-year-old cousin. By that I mean eating lunch with her family, drinking tea with them, then teaching her to say "smell ya later."
And now, a list.
You are starting to adapt to life here when:
1. It’s 50 degrees out and you are wearing long underwear (by choice, even. Not because your host mom made you.)
2. Every sentence you utter, whether in Darija or English, ends with a “yek?”, “fahimTIni?”, or “wakha?” (“yeah?” “do you understand me?” “okay?”)
3. Many sentences you utter begin with a “Mohim…” (“important…”)
4. Every time you shake someone’s hand you immediately tap your chest afterward.
5. You wear crappy plastic sandals around your own house.
6. Bread is dawuri (absolutely necessary) at every meal.
7. If it’s raining, you probably aren’t going to work. Let’s be honest.
8. You know how to use a squeegee attached to a broomstick correctly enough so that a Moroccan doesn’t forcibly remove it from you and start showing you how it’s done.
9. You know when to pretend like you don’t speak a lick of Darija (example: when the creepy man in the taxi that keeps ‘accidentally’ rubbing your arm tries to start up a conversation).
10. Upon seeing you do something ghetto (ie hording plastic bags and using and reusing them) a Moroccan actually tells you “welliti magribiya,” or “you became Moroccan.”
That said, I shudder at the thought of how far I have to go.
This week: planning meetings for a big environment/art project, "Make (insert my town's name here) Beautiful," planning meetings for a big reading race I;m organizing for April, running/walking club with some ladies, and tutoring my 16-year-old cousin. By that I mean eating lunch with her family, drinking tea with them, then teaching her to say "smell ya later."
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Misty Mountain Hoppin with Zeppelin
Wow. So I am a total Negative Nancy. Seriously, I just read a couple of my previous blogs and I would NOT want to be friends with me.
As a result, I'm going to write The Happiest Blog. That's right, because I've actually had a nice coupla days.
It is just so damn sunshiny out today. And so welcome, too, after a good rainstorm! It rained most of the night and half of this morning, which is perfect timing because I don't work on Wednesday mornings. I spent a glorious morning curled up in my bed with a Faulkner novel. The great thing about Peace Corps is even when you have work, there is ALWAYS time to read.
Another amazing thing: this afternoon I went to the store on my way to work and managed to walk in RIGHT AS the kid from the public oven was delivering fresh bread. Fabbbuloussssss.
In other news most aspects of my life are going well. My mom is currently putting together a spectacular care package filled with girly high maintenance things, my host family has been really awesome since I got back from this most recent training session and for the first time in like a month Blogger has loaded on my laptop. Hamdullah.
Wow. So I am a total Negative Nancy. Seriously, I just read a couple of my previous blogs and I would NOT want to be friends with me.
As a result, I'm going to write The Happiest Blog. That's right, because I've actually had a nice coupla days.
It is just so damn sunshiny out today. And so welcome, too, after a good rainstorm! It rained most of the night and half of this morning, which is perfect timing because I don't work on Wednesday mornings. I spent a glorious morning curled up in my bed with a Faulkner novel. The great thing about Peace Corps is even when you have work, there is ALWAYS time to read.
Another amazing thing: this afternoon I went to the store on my way to work and managed to walk in RIGHT AS the kid from the public oven was delivering fresh bread. Fabbbuloussssss.
In other news most aspects of my life are going well. My mom is currently putting together a spectacular care package filled with girly high maintenance things, my host family has been really awesome since I got back from this most recent training session and for the first time in like a month Blogger has loaded on my laptop. Hamdullah.
Monday, February 15, 2010
the birds will sing that you are part of everything
I've lapsed yet again with my blog postings, apologies.
The last two weeks (in Morocco we say 15 days rather than two weeks, which kind of bothers me because a week is only 7 days long and, well, you get the picture) I was in the Middle Atlas, cooped up with 33 of my best friends in Morocco doing a follow-up session to Pre-Service Training. Do these sentences even make sense? I feel like I can't write anymore and it makes me sad.
I'm back home now, a little lonely and detoxing from a possible parasite I picked up in Fes, yet altogether motivated to get more integrated in the life here and get some hardcore youth developin' up and runnin'.
One of the hardest things for me with regard to adjusting to life here is finding a balance between "me" and "me as a Peace Corps Volunteer." I feel guilty when I stay in my house under blankets, surfing the internet and just talking to Andy, but then again I have to admit that life outside my little America can be really exhausting and scary. I was just reading a blog from my friend Ben where he talked about how life in another culture lacks the mundane, and that can be really horrible sometimes. Simple tasks like buying milk become stressful. Instead of ambling hand in hand down a sunny DC street to the supermarket, grabbing some milk and paying with currency you understand, milk runs in Morocco involve complex greetings and questions about my health, children staring at me while I speak Arabic, and fumbling while I convert the mul hanut's (store owner's) quoted price (in ryals) into dirhams. Everyone in the Peace Corps side of Morocco uses ryal instead of dirham, and in order to pay for anything correctly you have to divide the ryal price by 20. For instance, if the milk costs 2.5 D, the mul hanut will ask me for 50 ryals. In short, FML.
Anyway, I am slowly but surely gaining the courage to fight for my personal space. Sure, I will come to your house for lunch and then tutor your daughter next Sunday, but there is no way in hell I am going to the hemmam with you on Monday, because Monday is my one day where I have no reason to even leave my bed if I don't feel like it. Yes, I'd love to drink tea with you but no, I will not spend the night here.
Sometimes I read the blogs of the incoming Enviro/Health stage (mahriba bikum lmghrib!) and I think if I had any advice to give I'd say to start out by accepting every invitation to do ANYTHING at first. Eat everything, go everywhere, talk to everyone. Then, as you start to figure out your own needs, back off when you need to, and don't feel bad about it. I say this realizing fully that no one ever asked me for advice.
Something completely different: My vacay to Europe is coming up quick and boy howdy I could not be more excited. I'll have finished Spring Camp by then and hopefully will have gotten an exercise club up and running. Inchallah. Slowly, slowly slowly, I'm figuring my shit out. The best part is I think after two years here I will no longer be afraid to do anything.
The last two weeks (in Morocco we say 15 days rather than two weeks, which kind of bothers me because a week is only 7 days long and, well, you get the picture) I was in the Middle Atlas, cooped up with 33 of my best friends in Morocco doing a follow-up session to Pre-Service Training. Do these sentences even make sense? I feel like I can't write anymore and it makes me sad.
I'm back home now, a little lonely and detoxing from a possible parasite I picked up in Fes, yet altogether motivated to get more integrated in the life here and get some hardcore youth developin' up and runnin'.
One of the hardest things for me with regard to adjusting to life here is finding a balance between "me" and "me as a Peace Corps Volunteer." I feel guilty when I stay in my house under blankets, surfing the internet and just talking to Andy, but then again I have to admit that life outside my little America can be really exhausting and scary. I was just reading a blog from my friend Ben where he talked about how life in another culture lacks the mundane, and that can be really horrible sometimes. Simple tasks like buying milk become stressful. Instead of ambling hand in hand down a sunny DC street to the supermarket, grabbing some milk and paying with currency you understand, milk runs in Morocco involve complex greetings and questions about my health, children staring at me while I speak Arabic, and fumbling while I convert the mul hanut's (store owner's) quoted price (in ryals) into dirhams. Everyone in the Peace Corps side of Morocco uses ryal instead of dirham, and in order to pay for anything correctly you have to divide the ryal price by 20. For instance, if the milk costs 2.5 D, the mul hanut will ask me for 50 ryals. In short, FML.
Anyway, I am slowly but surely gaining the courage to fight for my personal space. Sure, I will come to your house for lunch and then tutor your daughter next Sunday, but there is no way in hell I am going to the hemmam with you on Monday, because Monday is my one day where I have no reason to even leave my bed if I don't feel like it. Yes, I'd love to drink tea with you but no, I will not spend the night here.
Sometimes I read the blogs of the incoming Enviro/Health stage (mahriba bikum lmghrib!) and I think if I had any advice to give I'd say to start out by accepting every invitation to do ANYTHING at first. Eat everything, go everywhere, talk to everyone. Then, as you start to figure out your own needs, back off when you need to, and don't feel bad about it. I say this realizing fully that no one ever asked me for advice.
Something completely different: My vacay to Europe is coming up quick and boy howdy I could not be more excited. I'll have finished Spring Camp by then and hopefully will have gotten an exercise club up and running. Inchallah. Slowly, slowly slowly, I'm figuring my shit out. The best part is I think after two years here I will no longer be afraid to do anything.
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