CBT greatness!

Bonjour! as all the little kids say as I or any of my classmates walk down the street.

What a whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been! Oh my goodness. So I have started to learn Tamazight and have been staying with a host family for the past couple of weeks. It has been so enjoyable. But before I get into that let me explain CBT. CBT is a two month long (in some other countries it’s up to 3 months) crash course in whatever language you will be learning and using for the rest of your service. This is a time where I and 5 other people get a better grip on what we might encounter in our service, and provides a great atmosphere for us to make mistakes and cultural faux pas, without it having to affect the integrity of our service. Everyone gets a host family in their CBT site and in my group it is quite a mix. I have a family that is fairly young, a host sister who is 5 and a host brother who is a little past 1. The mother is about 30 and the father a little older than that. I also have a grandmother who lives in the same house, but she is not out and about all the time. Mohamed’s (host father) sister also lives with us. I have my own bedroom and we also have an evil cat that eats bread and hides under the table during meal times. It is a really happy, loving, and hard working family. It has been so wonderful to have the kids around; I am still trying to master the basic commands. My sister LOVES the crayons that I gave her, and I will draw pictures for her to color in. I am wishing I would have remembered to bring those gosh darn coloring books. Oh well. I have also discovered that my host mother does not read, which I thought was interesting. Each one of us PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) has a different family dynamic and its cool to see and compare the different aspects of Moroccan culture.

OK story time… also some cultural stuff I have noticed:

1. We flooded my LCF’s (language teacher) house. The classroom for us is upstairs and the kitchen and bathroom and stuff are downstairs. One day the water wasn’t working, so somebody accidentally left it running in the kitchen. Well, as it turns out the drain was plugged, so when the water came back on it went over the sink… Good thing the floor is cement.
2. I got henna done on my hands, along with all of the other girls in my class! We went over to Roxy’s (classmate) house, had amazing lunch, then all these ladies came over and we got henna done all over our hands! The design was cool, and its defiantly something I want to do again and again. While our henna was drying, which they made us do for at least an hour, we got fed some bread. We are such princesses!
3. I saw the “Mama’s little shortening” song dubbed over in darija (Arabic), it made me laugh something fierce. My family was slightly confused.
4. They watch kind of a lot of TV here and LOVE their soaps! My host aunt likes to watch the English movie channel sometimes, so I was also able to watch part of Robocop 3, in case you were wondering, the part I saw was awful.
5. I made a paragraph yesterday in Tamazight describing my typical day. It was so cool! I feel like I am starting to get somewhat of a grip on the language! HORRA!
6. This last Sunday all of us when over to Heather’s house, and her host mother made us the biggest meal ever! So all of the meals are communal eating. It was so filling that we all went on a walk for a little bit then came back and ate some more. During the final course of couscous (seeksu) we were all so full and so we were just sitting there trying to let it all digest, and then Heather’s host mom hands me something. I instinctively hold my hand out, but then I realize I think it’s food. I look at it, and ask her what it is. It was an ear. I looked around and tried my best to not look nastied out, but I don’t think it worked. I laughed and said that I was really full. She took it back and it was no big deal. Soon after this Heather’s host sister got out some outfits and makeup and we played dress up. There was a bunch of ladies there and they were having a blast dressing us all up. It was fun, but I was so tired.
7. I was walking home one day after school, and there was a bunch of kids out, I think school just finished, so I was saying “ssalam” to one of them and then almost biffed it hard core, but luckily I saved myself. Close call.
8. I am tall, I have hit my head quite a number of times, and thank goodness it has been nothing serious. It gets worse when I get tired.
9. Mustaches are really popular.
10. They might be paired with a semi mullet. Such a hot combo.
11. So the gender boundaries are really divided. Men are usually the ones that are out on the street with little to do. They hang out at the cafes or the little foosball arcade room things. Its typically 80% guys out when I am walking home from school, and the women that I do see are typically going somewhere. Just something I have noticed.

There is so much more, but alas, there is not enough time to explain it all.

Safi! (done)

I hope this keeps you for a little bit.

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!

Landed, and my internet is in French.

I am here! Yes I have already swum in a pool, it was FREEZING, but worth it J. We flew in from JFK to Casablanca on a red eye and arrived at 740 ish this morning. I had gotten little over 1 hour of sleep on the plane… exhausted! After going through customs we, all 70 of us, took a two hour bus ride to Marrakesh. We are staying on night here in a hotel and then we are heading out to Ouarzazate tomorrow morning at 7:30! So far it has been wonderful. It is an amazing region which we have landed, its very green, but it is because there has been excessive rains... which in addition to the luscious which I so love, also causes flooding. I feel like the next little bit (two months, and especially the next two weeks) are going to be a whirlwind! I am going to try my little darndest to keep you all updated, but it might be a while.

Baslama!