pre-camp lull

Early morning jam: “Wishful Thinking” by Wilco

It’s been another week full of shenanigans. Like you would not even BELIEVE. I am TELLING YOU.

Meetings in Rabat for FUCKING SPRING CAMP (sorry for the profanity and yelling, but this is how I refer to spring camp now because it is such a bitch to coordinate/convince your counterpart not to cancel it. FML.) then a weekend trip to visit some friends south of me. This trip resulted in at least one verrrrry drunk night for me. Interpretative dances interpreting Queen, never-before-seen intimidation rituals during a game of beer pong (to hide the fact that I am so awful at beer pong and hate playing), stuffing more carbs in my face than I’d really like to admit, the works.

Monday it was back to reality, except not really because my girl Mari is staying with me this week. She’s been really fun, coming to work with me, making men verbally harass her instead of me because she’s the new-ER American, and listening to me complain about how maskin (poor, ghetto) my camp is becoming.

But most importantly…

There is a puppy in my house. Her name is Timmy and Mari and I found her yesterday. After feeding, bathing and de-tic-ing her we didn’t really know what else to do except keep her around. The tic removal process was just such a bonding experience: forty-five minutes of chimp-like grooming, screaming when I actually found a tic, deciding who was going to take it out over rock, paper, scissors games, then removing the tic and setting it on fire. All the while Timmy sat still like a champ.

Update: Timmy is still doing fabulously and camp is almost here! Despite all the odds (and there are many) we are getting everything together pretty well I think. I am, once again, forever indebted to the amazing people that live in my town. Someone on Peace Corps staff told me once that if you have the support of your community and they trust you, it's nearly impossible for a project to fail. More on camp later, if you’re lucky I might post a blog right afterward, full of poorly-thought-out thoughts caused by a week of not sleeping and dealing with 49 teenagers who think I have the answer to every question they could possibly ask.