September 21 Carrie's b-day weekend

In order to celebrate Carrie’s birthday, we took three days to have some fun. Friday, we met in Essaouira with a few the other volunteers in the region (known as the Essalliance). Carrie had some packages at the post office that we even wrapped in birthday paper so it was practically like a real birthday except that we had to ask permission to go, and the guy at the post office opens your presents in front of you. Afterwards we had birthday meals of chili cheeseburgers and chocolate ice cream. Saturday and Sunday, we spent close to Agadir in a valley called Paradise Valley in a tiny town called Tifrit. The town is really only a few mud houses and three hotels. Our hotel was over-priced, but nice nonetheless. The only bummer was that the pool was empty (and we even had our bathing suits). Breakfast and dinner were included in the price of the hotel. We broke fast was a few guys from the hotel staff, which included soup, dates, cookies, chocolate, and another special desert. Afterwards, we had a nice tajine dinner. We could only eat half, so we asked the staff to save the other half for us for lunch the next day, but although they said OK, the message must have been lost, because it was nowhere to be found the next day. Both Saturday and Sunday were also spent hiking in the valley. Rare for Morocco, a perennial river flows in the valley, and is consequently green with date palms, argan trees, and other plants like red sea squill, Urginea fugax. Much of the valley and surrounding mountains are folded limestone, and the largest cave on the African continent, Wit Tamdoun (about 12 miles) is only about 15 miles away. During our hikes, we saw several caves (and did a little real caving for the first time in Morocco). I hope to find out if they have been surveyed yet. If not, maybe I have a potential mapping project.
At noon on Sunday, the horror of public transport during Ramadan made itself apparent. We waited for about an hour for a taxi to come by our hotel: no problem. The taxi took us to the town of Aourir about an hour away. In Aourir, we waited for another hour, Carrie was harassed for eating in public during Ramadan, and we finally got a transport van to take us to Tamanar, about an hour away from Aourir. In Tamanar, we waited for another hour for the taxi to fill up. It never did, but we left anyway and were taken to Smimu about 45 minutes away. We arrived in Smimu around 6:15 PM, but no taxis would leave before the drivers could break their fast at 6:50. No problem, we waited and ate askif, dates, and eggs (staples during Ramadan that are eaten at the meal which breaks fast, aptly called lfdr or breakfast). Then we waited for the taxi to fill up. 8:00 PM came, then 9:00 PM came. At 9:30 PM there was still only Carrie and I and one other person. It takes 6 people for the taxis to be full, so the taxi driver came up and said sorry, we cant go tonight, we’ll leave in the morning. “Is there a hotel in Smimu?” we asked, frustrated and tired. “No” was the reply. We ended up paying for the three empty seats which still only costed about $10.00 US, but that is a substantial portion of our daily pay, so we were at the end of our ropes. We arrived at our site around 10:15PM after about 4 hours of driving and 6 hours of waiting. All in all, it was still a fun weekend and we plan on revisiting Tifrit after Ramadan.

Apt Pics, we do have a bedroom, but while it's hot we're using the living room. Also a very bleached pic of the kitchen. Not too shabby...

So last night I was laying in bed thinking about work at GWMS and how I missed it. How I missed co-workers, students and even teacher work days where you had time to catch up. Then I realized one of the things I missed the most was the structure of it all, the schedules, the deadlines and due dates. I realized that I’m one of those people, those list making, schedule creating freaks. I also realized that’s part of what so hard being here. Where meetings are scheduled by saying ‘how about November’ rather than ‘Thursday at 10.’ It’s hard for me to turn my organizing, controlling mind off, but I also realize that these are the challenges I wanted from being in a different culture. These are the challenges that give me perspective.

By the way, there was a snake charmer at souk today. If you can count sewing snakes mouths together while they slowly starve as charming…but it was pretty cool to see a viper and a cobra.

Spreading Peace, One brat at a time

Since small villages don’t have middle schools for students to attend, they come to larger towns such as ours for the school year and stay in dorms. With the new school year fast approaching, many new boys are hanging out in town, many boys who have never seen us before. Quite often we hear calls of “Aromi” (meaning literally Christian, but used to refer to all foreigners) from the distance and then “Bonjour!” At this point we have two options, one being ignore the brat, two being take a few minutes to explain who we are and what we’re doing. Usually we opt for explaining that we’re from America and therefore speak English and that we are living in their town for two years. In reward for our few minutes, they usually get a kick out of talking to the weird foreigners but also get a chance to realize, hey these people are living here just like me and they even speak my language a little, granted with a terrible accent! …Maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all! (And we leave thinking, hey that kid wasn’t such a brat, he just had no idea who we were and what to expect of us!) And there you have it, small steps to spreading worldwide peace. It may seem inconsequential, but slowly one turns to five then to ten and then the whole town sees Americans through a different light.

I believe that you should now be able to post comments on the blog!!!