Words I put into sentences......

Sorry I haven’t posted anything since I left home. Been soo busy and tired since being in Morocco. But I’ve been having so much fun thus far. The new people I have met are amazing including all the staff. Plus the people I’ve met in my CBT (community based training) site have been awesome too. So to start from the beginning, Jackie and I traveled from San Jose CA to Philly, PA for a brief orientation for a day and a half, had my last American meal which was amazing! Dropped $50 bucks on a nice steak, baked potato and a beer :) Good food and good new friends!! Then we left Philly and drove 2 hrs on a bus to JFK in New York. We waited pretty much all day at the airport haha. After all was said and done with checking in and security checks, we had about 3 hrs to chill in the airport before actually leaving for Casablanca. We left around 7p NY time and got to Casablanca about 7:30am. So needless to say, we were all VERY tired. Or at least I was. So from Casablanca we drove 2 more hrs by bus to Marakesh. We stayed in Marakesh for one night and it was my first introduction into the portion sizes of Moroccan meals. We had lunch and we sat at a big round table and everyone ate from a center plate (totally fine). It was like this veggie platter thing with bread (always bread! always!!). So that was cool and I thought we were done but no. Then the next course comes in which is some meat dish and it was amazing! Then the third course came which was fruit. You always end a meal with some sort of fruit. Right now it’s bananas and oranges which are BOMB!!! So I was blown away by how much food is given and how many times a day you eat. You have breakfast which is usually bread and some sort of dip like olive oil, honey or some jam/jelly. Then you have snack at 10 or 11 and lunch at 12 or 1 then snack at 4 and finally dinner at 7:30/8. At least that was the schedule when we were all in Marakesh and in Ouarzazat. But when I’m with my host family, we eat soooo late (dinner). Last night we ate dinner at 10pm and then my host mom proceeded to make cookies afterwards. So yummy! I’m really surprised by how late we eat dinner. Time is not judge the same way here as it is in the states. In America time is really important and not being late is really important. In Morocco, time is just this concept but you don’t really follow it. You run on your own time and get things done when they get done. Kinda cool in some situations and sometimes not. Anyway, after a lot of orientation and seminar type meetings we all moved to our CBT sites. Myself and 4 other trainees are in a small town about 20mins outside of Ouarzazat. It’s not on my map. BUT we do have running water that’s clean and electricity. So that’s bomb!! Mainly the water, I could deal without the electricity seeing as I don’t have the internet to use the computer and whatnot. So it’s been cool. The town is separated by a road and I live on one side with the LCF (Language Culture Facilitator) and the other members of my group live on the other side. Wish we were all on the same side but it’s been cool anyways. We go to school at the LCFs house from about 8-530 everyday and a half day on Saturdays. So we are doing language about 4 hrs everyday and then either studying or doing some technical assignment out in our town. This is the first time that a CBT group has been in my town and so they haven’t gotten the fact that we aren’t French, we aren’t tourists and that we are American Volunteers and we ae here to do good things. It’s been a constant struggle to try and get people to understand we are here. But thus far the people in the town have been really nice and welcoming, always inviting us for tea and bread. Always! And we usually accept.

My host family has been really fun thus far. Just two boys, 8 and 4 and my host Mom and Dad. Small family but a really nice family. They welcomed me with open arms, called me a gift, gave me a gift and have been really helpful in being patience with my lack of an ability to talk to them because I haven’t developed the language yet. But my host Mom does pretty much everything: makes breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, laundry, cleaning the house, watching the kids etc. My host Dad works outside of the home at the golf course. We watch soccer together and we just got a satillite dish yesterday so now we are ROLLING! lol. But yeah there was this one Mexican novela that they translated into Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and we all watch it. Sadly it ended this past Monday and a new one from India is going to start. But we all watched Margarita, Frijolito and Ignacio and their lives lol. But it was hard to get into since we really didn’t have any background info and it’s in Darija soooo yeah. You can all guess that it hasn’t been easy. But I still watched, actually most of the other members of my group ended up watching the show since we only have 2 channels, well that was before we got the satellite!

The town my CBT is in in pretty cool, we’ve got 3 mosques, 2 schools (no high school but when we interviewed the children about their community map, they all said that they wanted a high school), a video game store, some hanuts which sell food and like stuff you would find at target but at a much smaller scale. There are stores where you can buy clothes and butagas for stoves. Thus far my CBT and I go hang out at the cafe and have banana juice (soooo bomb!) and play cards. We’re all home before dark which is about 7ish right now. I get home, my little brothers attack me and wanna play basketball (taught them that game) or soccer. Sometimes I have the energy and sometimes I just wanna pass out haha. But I usually just put my things in my room and hangout with my family for a while and then study a bit before dinner. And since dinner is so late I have quite a bit of time to do that. And after dinner I’m usually up another half hour to A. digest and B. to get things ready for class tomorrow.

So this wedding……last weekend was my weekend off. I was going to go to Ouarzazat but then my host mom invited me and the other group members (Steven, Colin, Tina and Anton and Fatima our LCF), to the wedding. So all of us went except for Anton who went to visit another CBT group. So we all took a bus to a town that was about 30mins. We got off the bus and walked about 30 more minutes maybe more to the river. We then proceeded to decide how to cross the rivier. They said there was a bridge but then this guy who was walking with us said it was broken, so we were all prepared in some way to cross by foot. Not knowing how deep or how strong the current was mind you haha. We get to the river and my host mom’s family is on the other side waving at us and watching us all try to decide how we want to cross the river. My host mom just rolls up her pants, puts her flip flops on, grabs a stick and crosses by foot. Baller status! The rest of us on the other hand decided to use the bridge which was broken but might as well been. Now when I say bridge, I mean logs with the top cut off so they are some what flat, about 5 of them. They are strung across the river, supported by sand bags and some more pieces of wood. So not looking so good and sturdy but we decide to use the bridge. Steven goes first and makes it fine. I’m second and I was good until the last part which they said was a little wobbley. Almost lost my balance and then some guy came and helped me, that was nice. Then Colin and Fatima try to cross together. But Fatima is sooo scared that she stops and freaks out and Colin almost loses his balance and they both almost went in. Luckily the water was only like 3 feet deep but still enough to get soaked. The guys come and help them across. Next is Tina and she almost eats it on the second part and again a guy came to help. So once our survivor adventure was over for the day we met the family and hung out and of course ate bread and tea. Then we were fed lunch even though we already ate lunch haha. But we eat. Then we went and played hackysack out by the river and a bunch of kids joined us a little later, even my host mom came out. She was kicking but and blocking all the kids, soooo funny. She was really in to in. Play to win I say! We played until dark and then sat on a cliff and waited for the brides to come in by horse. So they come in with their respective wedding parties. The brides are all covered up, completely and are not to be seen by the rest of the guests until the next day. Only their husbands are allowed to see them that night.

Then after waiting for a bit and hearing singing and chanting of some sort, oh this was a Berber wedding by the way. We went in the house and the boys had to sit in another room while Tina, Fatima and I sat with all the women on the floor. There were some drum circles happening and it was hella awesome. Really enjoyed the whole call and response drumming going on. Then we had tea and cookies and sang some more, a little dancing by some of the ladies. One lady came up to Fatima and I guess asked her if I really was American because I look Moroccan. I was like SCORE!!!!!! That’s the second time I’ve been told that I could be Moroccan. SWEET SAUCE! haha. Then we eat cous-cous and some meat dish thing and of course bread and water. Then we waited around some more and then everyone came out side and we had another call and response dancing-singing thing going on. That was cool, the girls seemed really shy and even Fatima said the whole wedding was very different that ones in her town. But as expected all weddings are different. This wasn’t the traditional wedding I would think of. There weren’t any vows or anything like that. The brides were there and then they weren’t and went to their husbands’ houses. So really the wedding was a celebration for everyone else I think. Not sure. But very interesting and I’m totally down to go to more weddings. Not sure about crossing a river via tree logs but yeah…. haha. Then the next morning we crossed the river again to get back and Fatima and my host mom took a horse across. We all laughed and took pictures. I’ll try to post those later. Takes soo long to post pictures!

So that’s about it for now. I’ll try to be a little bit more consistent with this whole blog thing haha. I uploaded 14 pics on picasaweb.google.com/elvisrocks87 and I was going to do more but the internet took forever so I gave up. I’ll try again soon. Peace!