Latest and the oh so greatest!

Ssalam alaykum!

Here is what I have written as of a couple days ago:

We took a bus from Casablanca to the Ouarzazate province, going over the Atlas Mountains. For some security purposes I cannot disclose where our exact location is... The scenery reminded me a lot of Southern Utah and northern Arizona, but with snow caped mountains further off in the distance. The roads were fairly windy and we were riding in a big tour bus, two people from our tour bus and one person from the other got sick, not too bad for such a narrow windy road.

Everybody here is really awesome; it’s so great to meet all these people who are very qualified and amazing stories of traveling the world. I feel humbled to be in such an amazing group of people. Most of us are slightly nerdy but we also are very social and fairly good communicators, so far as I have noticed. We have taken a somewhat “crash course” in the Moroccan Arabic, it was a half hour to an hour long. It consisted of numbers, saying hello, my name is, and a few other basic phrases. It seems like everybody is eager to start to learn the language, most of us have started to use the small amount of phrases we do know every time we can. Most the people I talked to did not study the Arabic lessons that we got beforehand, but there are many people who speak French. We also had some meetings about safety and security here in Morocco. It seems like much of the stuff that we could be victims of could be prevented by our own actions.

So far all the hotels we have stayed at and all the meals we have eaten have been fantastic. I am a big fan of the mint tea, which is a popular drink here. We have stayed at hotels with running water and sit down toilets, I think the Peace Corps is trying to ease us into this whole life real nice and easy. I think the jetlag is starting to wear off… But I am not completely sure. I still need to catch up on sleep from barely sleeping during the plane ride.

NOW, now, not then:

I am going to be learning Tamazight and I have found out my sight location for the CBT (community based training), but again I cannot disclose the exact location, if you would like to know it, email. In my CBT sight for the next two months there are six of us that will be staying in a place with running water, electricity, and also there are two internet cafes, or Cybers. This is really exciting, I think I will have to too easy ;) there are other people who will be living without these luxuries. I also bought a cell phone yesterday, if you would like the number email me. I think it will be good to ease my way into the culture.... I guess that is how I am rationalizing it. I am super excited to start all this fun funness! I have a really great CBT group and an awesome teacher. So far no diarrhea and everything has been peachy keen! Wishing everybody is having a blast in the states!