So what about projects? We have begun planning for a tree planting/ town beautification project. In addition to meeting with the local governing body, we have taken a survey of public places in order to decide how many and what species of tree we will plant. In addition to planting trees, we will also build a few gardens for prettiness sake. In a week, we will have a large meeting with Peace Corps staff and other volunteers to discuss the feasibility of our projects and begin implementation… hopefully. But we have learned that things move slowly out here.
On a different note, Carrie and I spent the weekend with the Association Sportive Speleologique: an explorers club from Agadir. These guys are interested in the natural history and archaeology of Morocco. They produce really nice films on these subjects and also travel all over the country exploring. This weekend, we visited three caves near Paradise Valley, east of Agadir. One of these caves, Imi Ouggoug I, is a little under 1 mile long and was quite interesting. It was very clean and filled with eroded flowstones, making for pretty swirling patterns in the rocks. Another cave, Imi Ouggoug II, had a large population of bats, Miniopterus schreibersi, and as a result of this and the presence of water, there were lots of cave adapted species present, such as terrestrial millipedes, isopods, and some insects that may or may not have been cave restricted species. In the water, we saw diving beetles, planarians, and copepods. After visiting the caves, we camped in an olive and palm grove next to the river in a large valley. The group cooked up huge lamb tajines and we compared jokes. Apparently, American and Moroccan humor is very different. How do you get a camel in a fridgerator in three steps? Open the door, push the camel in, and then close the door. How do you get a giraffe in a fridgerator in 4 steps? Open the door, take out the camel, push the giraffe in, and then close the door. The lion had a huge party for the birth of his son and all of the animals were invited (like in the beginning of the Lion King). Everyone showed up except one. Which one? The giraffe because he was in the fridge. Hmm.
Before returning to our town, we stopped and had lunch at the house of one of the associations leaders, Aziz. He has a little museum on his roof, complete with dinosaur bones, other fossils, man-made artifacts from prehistory, and preserved animals. All of these things, he has found over the years through exploration.

That doesnt look like Morocco!

Switzerland
Oct 9- Oct 16, 2008
We just returned from a week vacation in Switzerland with a one night stopover in Milan. We left our house on Oct 8 to catch our flight from Marrakech. The airport was a little hectic but went smoothly enough. The next morning we flew into Milan and took a train to Spiez and then Interlaken, Switzerland. We arrived at night so didn’t now what amazing scenery awaited us the next morning! In the morning, we looked out of our window to see misty, snow capped peaks painted with fall colors. Glacial streams flowed through the town which was full of picturesque wooden architecture. We stayed 3 nights in Interlaken at Balmer’s Herberge, which was a hostel/guest house. Balmer’s is one of the great European hostels with a kitchen where we cooked meals, pingpong table, and lots of Americans. We hiked around the two lakes that are on each side of the town (hence the name-Interlaken) and spent some time relaxing in town. We also took a bus and then a gondola to the Neiderhorn, where we spent the day hiking in beautiful fall colors. The views of the mountains Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau where breathtaking! Occasionally, we would pause in a mountain meadow or watch a paraglider take off to fly around in the valleys. After Interlaken we took a train, then bus, then gondola up to Gimmelwald a very small town in the mountains dotted with quaint wooden houses with well kept gardens. On the way, we passed through a glacial valley named Lauterbrunnen with small towns surrounded by 1000 ft cliffs and waterfalls crashing over the edges around every turn. In Gimmelwald, we stayed at the Mountain hostel for 3 nights enjoying nearby hikes through the mountains. Crashes of glaciers could be heard echoing through the alpine meadows. On the last evening we took the gondola one stop further to Murren where we treated ourselves to cheese fondue and filet of lamb. The next morning it was difficult to get back into the gondola and start our journey back, but our time in Switzerland had come to an end. We arrived by train in Milan around 5 pm where a courtesy car from our next hotel, the Malpensa House, picked us up. We spent our last night at a small pizzeria eating huge wood fired pizzas.

Sahara!

Yesterday we returned from a 5 day trip to the Sahara desert and back. Our adventure was pretty much exactly like every movie that has taken place in the desert, complete with buried treasure, ancient mysteries, mysterious Bedouins, and ambushes by armed nomads on horseback. I’m pretty sure that we even saw those guys from that movie windsurfing across the desert on an old fighter plane being chased by thugs funded by a corrupt Mali government. Our first night was in Ouarzazate, where we had our training. Carrie and I, Alex, Amy, and Jeremy met there, coming at different times and from different directions. Most shops and restaurants were closed because people were still celebrating L3id: the end of Ramadan. Our hotel manager set us up with a desert guide and transport for a good price. Thursday morning, we left for the town of M’Hamid in the Saharan desert, only about 25 miles from the Algerian border. The road to M’Hamid snakes through the Draa River valley which intermittently flows several hundred miles around the back side of the Anti Atlas mountains to the Atlantic coast near Tan-tan. The valley was filled with endless palmeries where world-class dates are produced. In M’Hamid, we quickly loaded up camels and headed out about 6 miles into the sand dunes (an environment called Erg in Arabic). Our guides were nice and the weather was actually quite pleasant with no wind and comfortable temperatures. The dunes were picturesque in every direction although we didn’t have time to trek to the really extensive large dune fields farther west. The dunes covered a squarish area about 50 miles by 25 miles, although the dunes are not continues throughout that area. We reached camp in time to scurry up the nearest tall dune and watch the end of the sunset. Afterwards, we had a dinner of tajine and tea followed by a little music.
The next morning, I woke up a little before dawn to take an hour walk to the highest nearby dune and back. The sand was covered with the tracks of birds, rodents, reptiles, and invertebrates. After breakfast, we headed back to town. Camels are a lot of fun, and we are pretty sure that we are going to get one as a pet. On the taxi ride back to Ouarzazate, we stopped at the town of Tamgrout to see an ancient library that contained 1000 year old texts from the Koran, history, and mathematics. Some were written on sheep skin. Back in Ouarzazate, we had dinner with a Spanish biker named Danny and a nice English speaking Berber from a town called Imi N’Ifri (which translates to Mouth of the Cave).
Saturday, we began the journey back home. Carrie and I decided to take the Tarhatine Pass between the Middle and Anti Atlas mountain ranges, that leads to Agadir. We had to take 7 different taxis to get from our hotel in Oz to our hotel in Agadir. The next morning, we met with our neighbor, Khalil, a teacher at our middle school who agreed to act as translator for a meeting we had with a couple of members of the Agadir Caving Club (Association Sportive Speleologique: A.S.S). The meeting was very interesting and the group also creates really nice nature films about Morocco. We agreed to meet up again in the future to go caving and take other adventures. Afterwards, we headed back to our little hamlet as quick as possible to watch another episode of 24. And that was the most egg sandwiches that I ever ate.

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.