Ruth and the Super Exciting Trip to Kech

So, currently I am on a coach (the most scary coach ever, but I have a modem, yay!) to Marrakech. We've just departed a beautiful city called Beni Mel'al, which has the most amazing mountainous backdrop.

To backtrack - the last 24 hours have been a bit nuts - we all found out our final site assignments last night, and I think I lucked out once again! My douar is called Ain Chaib (Sha-yab), which is all the waaaaay down South. I'm in a town of 1600 people (which sounds perfect), 2 km from another, bigger town, Ouled Teima (which is on Google Maps!) and is about 60,000 people, and I will be less than an hour from Agadir! Agadir is one of the big beach towns in Morocco, a tourist site for sure, but I'm sure will be great for getting away. Ouled Teima sounds like it has a lot of commodities that'll come in handy, banks and the such, but I'm excited and glad to be somewhere slightly smaller. The next week is going to be very interesting and exciting!

The work that I will be doing looks to be with a group of women that produce I think wire crochet goods, but there's also argon oil, ceramics, leather making and tailoring in the area. I'm super excited, and I'm plan on coming back an expert in crocheting. I spoke to a PCV who's COSing next month who knows my town and the current PCV there, and she said it's a group of amazing women, super motivated, and making great product, so I'm excited to get involved. And sounds like there's a fair bit of opportunity for things like teaching, and other secondary projects. There are a number of other PCV's in the area (not in the same town) but 4 or 5 within about an hour of me.

So, as I said, I'm now on a coach to Kech, which is about 3 hours from my final site. We (who is me and 2 other PCT's who are in the same general area) will stay the night, and we're hearing reports that there are a number of Youth Development trainees also staying there tonight, so we'll be able to have some good catch up with them. Tomorrow I will make the rest of the trip (on my own, in darija - oh yes!), from Kech to Agadir, and then into Ain Chaib, to meet my new host family.

Unfortunately, all the way in the south, I'm far from most other people in our SBD group, and from most of the people in my CBT... boo. But, last time I checked, people always want to come to the beach, so hopefully I'll have lots of visitors.

That's all for now, before the computer dies, but I'll be sure to give another update soon - complete with pictures of Marrakech!

xoxo

Ruth and the Absolutely Terrifying and Awesome Genies

So the past couple of days have yet again escaped me, but I wanted to post before the inevitable madness of the next 10 days begins.

First - Saturday at the Hamaam. Saturday was freezing cold, complete with rain and mud - the perfect day for being warm and toasty inside. At 3 o'clock, Khadisha, who makes our food at school, came by to pick us all up, laden with buckets, stools, and dipper-thingys, and off we went. There are 4 rooms in our hamaam - first the changing room, so in we went, stripped down to bottom undies only, and stashed all our belongings. Then you go through to the first room, which is a little warmer than the first, but not a lot. In here hair washing and conditioning is usually done, but that's not the first step. We went through to the second room, again carrying all our buckets, dippers, and stools, and set ourselves up in a line facing the way. There are faucets at intervals all the way around the room (some of which are dysfunctional in this hamaam, and some apparently just have one set of faucets near the door), so we placed buckets under the ones in front of us and set about filling them. Then, using the traditional soap, which is argon oil-based, we began the scrubbing. And then scrubbed some more. And then the spaghetti began coming off us all. But we kept scrubbing. And then Khadisha called each of us over one by one to literally scrub our backs raw. There is also a women in the hamaam who will throw you down on her mat and scrub you all over, for a fee. Managed to avoid that, but it looked intense. So, cleanly scrubbed, you can then go in to the hot room if you so choose, where if you have mat you can lay on the hot tile floor (which you'll want a mat to do). I didn't make it in to that room this time, because it actually wasn't as warm as I had been told it would be - probably because it was fairly quiet when we were there - the more people in there, the hotter it gets. The point of the story is that I got really clean though, much needed. We came out, and per tradition everyone says bsHHa, which means, to your health - said after the hamaam, buying new clothes, a haircut, or such.

Sunday was the first that our CBT group spend in our site - usually we've been venturing off somewhere, leaving all our families undoubtedly wondering where we've got to, especially when we turn up again, covered in mud. So, first on my priority list was having a lie-in, the first since, um… yeah. In a while. After breakfast in the new house, I helped my host mum do some cleaning - reorganizing the salon, straightening the pillows, then in the kitchen with taking out the trash and the such. Then we all lounged in the salon, with various neighbors and friends flitting in and out, and I tackled the massive amount of homework we'd been given (all in good practice, I know). Lunch was the main affair of the day, yummy tagine with lots of veggies. The for most of the afternoon, neighbors continued to come and go in a constant stream, but it was generally pretty quiet. I managed to get in some much needed rearranging of luggage, and general sorting out, and even an episode of Flight of the Conchords. Since lunch was the main meal of the day, the evening was quiet, with my host parents both dropping off in front of the tv - it was funny how much it was like being at home!

This morning a few of us went on a early morning hike before school today, which was great - since we sit in school 10 hours a day, every day, it's nice to stretch our legs from time to time and scramble up the side of a mountain. We saw the sun come over the mountain, and had a great view of the whole town from the vantage point we ended up at.

This afternoon, we spent a couple of hours talking about genies, which are very much believed in in Islam, and a really interesting conversation. It is believed that genies are similar forms to human beings, and generally benign, unless you provoke them in someway. They are everywhere, although we can't see them, but our teacher told us stories of friends of his who had acted as innocently as pouring some hot water down the toilet, inadvertently on to a genie, who then basically possessed them. The tale that followed was of how this girl had the genie inside of her and became very ill, and acted very out of character, and the only way to get rid of the genie is to have the imam (the leader of the mosque) perform a ritual similar to an exorcism - reading verses of the koran, until the genie promises to leave the persons body and never return. It was really interesting to hear about it - especially as compared genies as I know them, which is pretty much based on Disney's Aladdin - they usually look and sound like Robin Williams. But in some ways the Islamic beliefs are similar to our ideas about spirits or ghosts.

Our teacher informed us after this discussion that we've officially worked our way through all of the material that we were going to be learning, so we're to spend the remainder of our time reviewing and getting ready for our language proficiency tests (eep!) which are on the 15th and 16th of November. We learned this week all the sorts of phrases that we're going to need for our site visits - we leave on Sunday, and are expected to negotiate taking a taxi or bus to our new site on our own, where (hopefully) either a current PCV or host family member will meet us. We are now slightly (not fully) armed with phrases like, where is my bedroom, please, and I will be here for the next 5 days, god willing, and the Peace Corps is an American organization, for those who have no idea why an American just showed up on their doorstep. Oh, and my favorite, b shwiya, aefak! Which, in context means, speak slower, please!

This weekend we also found out that while we're in hub we're having Halloween night, and a faux-wedding on Saturday as a cross-cultural experience. I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures from all that, so at the very latest I'll be able to post again when we're back in hub late next week, in'shallah.

Until then,

R.

xoxo.

Ruth and the Tale of the Tropical Frog and Tasty Eel

So last night, I got home around 11pm, and went in to the bathroom. The door in the bathroom sticks, so I leant against the door in order to shove it closed, like I usually do. And at this point, I realized there was a frog about 6 inches from my face - climbing up the wall next to the door! It was very cute, once I overcame my initial surprise - it looked like a little tropical frog! I have no idea how it got in the bathroom - the only window is high up on the wall, although it is open, with just a plastic bag over it, so it's possible. Either that or one of the drains. It looked at me, and just kept climbing up the wall, sliding down a little, climbing up more. Cute. Oh, and then I realized it was so cold in the bathroom I could see my breath. So I crawled under the weight of my 2 wool blankets and duvet, and tried not to think about it!

We've been eating a lot of fish lately - today we had eel. And I was going to not try it, but at the last minute decided I would. And it was surprisingly good. A bit mushy, but not very fishy at all. After all the fish was eaten, we put all the pieces of the bone back together - the fish ran nearly the entire length of our table. Impressive fish.

Also got my first stalker today - someone apparently managed to get my phone number, not sure how, and decided to call me 4 times and sent me two blank texts in the space of about 15 minutes. Whoever he is is now Do Not Answer in my phone. Apparently, this is fairly common in Morocco - being called by complete strangers. We've talked in school about how people can meet spouses this way. The lady who lives across the street from school met her now husband on the phone - he called her, and they got to chatting, and now they're married. However, Mr. DNA, whoever you are, don't even think about it. Denied. Luckily he gave up, just as we had decided that the next time he called one of the guys in my group would answer my phone for me pretending to be my husband.

Yesterday we learned about body parts in class, which had all of us in fits at times. We learned that the word for leg, is the same as the word for calf, and also for foot. And then we learned that toes are the same word as fingers, which is very close to the word for the number seven. So, to say toes, you say the fingers of my legs, which can be mistaken for you actually saying the sevens of my legs. In addition to this, the word for heart is very close to the word for dog. So you can bet we spent the next couple of minutes saying things like, "my dog is beating really fast" or "my heart was barking last night!" It really is the little things that amuse us when we're sat in our classroom all day long. I also learned how to say I'm allergic to olives, which I'm not, but I fully plan on using this sentence for the next two years. And yes, I have tried the olives here, for those of you who thought I was going to come back after two years liking them… sorry, I just can't make it happen!

Tomorrow finally going to the hammam - will definitely have an update about that after the fact. Very excited (to be clean again). The Sunday, a day of quiet (and trying to get my head around the conditional in darija.)

xoxo

Ruth and the Beautiful Zaouia Ifran

Ruth and the Tremendously Fun Sleepover

I'm not sure where the last week has gone to. On October 15th we hit the been-here-a-month mark, although it still doesn't feel like this is now where I live, probably for obvious reasons, mostly because I don't feel like I've had a spare minute to gain any perspective on the last month.

Today my family moved my room for me, so I am typing from the luxury of my two sofa benches pushed together, in my much smaller room, which is slightly warmer than my massive former residence - yay! I also have a lock on my door, which I discovered was not so much the safety of me and my belongings, but just because the door doesn't latch, so locking it is the only way to keep it closed. I'm the only person in the house at the moment, as everyone else is now sleeping in the new house that they have built right next door.

Our group went to the neighboring town this weekend to meet the CBT group that's there at the moment, as well as 4 PCT's from a group in the South and 3 from a group East of us. There were 18 PCT's and one PCV in total, which made for very cozy sleeping quarters, but we had amazing Mexican food, and a really fun night. The town is very small - between 200 and 300 people, and is the only Berber speaking CBT group in our staj. The next morning some of us hiked up the mountain behind the village - no idea what the altitude was mostly because I can't find the town or the mountain on my map of Morocco (sounds familiar, right?), but the view was amazing. My legs are not thanking me today. (Vicky and Al - think Yosemite Falls, times about 3. Yeah.) I managed to get sunburned, so when I got home my family spent the rest of the evening asking me if I was sick with a fever, and when I would say no and say it was from the sun, they would laugh at me and call me a tomato, and point out the fact that you can see my sunglass tan line. But my fellow CBT'er and I rounded off the night with a dance party in the kitchen, which was very amusing. There is video footage, which will be forthcoming as soon as I can work that out. Same with pictures.

So, now we're back to language this week, which I feel like pieces of which are starting to fall in to place - just takes me a (very long) minute to think of what I'm trying to say before spitting it out. The tenses are all mixed up in my head, but I did realize that I was starting to think in darija a little, as I was trying to compose a sentence in French in my head (it's a language mess in my head apparently) and started putting darijian prepositions in it. It was weird. We met with our taɛawunya dyal elayalat (co-op of women) again today, during which we all had questions to ask in darija, so that was sort of fun, and a small personal victory in the I-just-read-an-entire-paragraph-in-darija-and-they-actually-understood-what-I-was-saying arena. Yay me. Quite funny on the way home, we were walking past a couple of little girls, and I said hello to one of them in darija, who promptly replied with "F**k you!" Clearly someone had told her that this was the correct response when an American says hello to you! I was rather amused by said three-year old.

This weekend I'll be going to the hamaam, in'shallah, which I'm looking forward to, mostly so I can call myself clean again, but also so I can see how it all works. The weekend is the only time that we can go as the women's hours are between noon and 6 each day, so we're always in school. We'll be staying in our own town this weekend though, as next Friday we'll be off to hub again followed by 4 days of final site visits (eep!) so we'll be gone for about 8 days total. Must cram in as much language as possible before we leave so I'm not the idiot volunteer in my final site.

I realized I haven't talked much about the food, so I'm going to do a little bit of that right now. Fruit selection here is pretty fantastic - my family has a quince tree growing over the house, so they climb up on the roof and gather the fruit, which then gets cooked in quarters with usually a lamb tagine, with potato and peas, etc. We had prickly pears the other night, which I've never had before; was pretty excited about that. Apples, bananas, and grapes are pretty much staples at the end of a meal. We had the most amazing figs from the souq when we first arrived - the last of the season, but looking forward to getting them again next year. For lunches we have a lovely cook that makes our meals - Hadiša - who usually makes us a tagine with chicken or lamb or fish with beans, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and/or peas, and a salad on the side of tomatoes, onions and cucumbers. We have discovered more cheeses, only available in large cities, but this week we've had edam and camembert - something that I'm sure will be a rarity for us in the next two years. And most of you know how my relationship with cheese goes. I've found drinkable yogurts that I'm having for breakfast each morning, pomegranate flavored - as I didn't do well with having a large hunks of bread, olive oil, cheese triangles, jam, coffee, and tea for breakfast. A little too much for me at 7.45 each morning.

Back to the darija… 10 days until final site announcements!

xoxo

Ruth and the Curiously Cold Weather

Yesterday we went to a place that I can't pronounce the name of, and that I can't find on the map, still. But it was amazing! We hired two transit vans for the day, which picked us up at 7am (yes, on a Sunday) and off we went - drove for about an hour and a half, stopped for breakfast at a small cafe, and then kept going for about another half an hour or so. Not sure if we ended up at a higher elevation than we are now - but we ended up in the mountains, in a small town whose backdrop was a cliff with amazing waterfalls. We started hiking about 9.30, and off we went up through the town, and came out on this huge plateau, across which all the streams that formed the waterfalls were scattered. We found unicorns (aka white horses), and had lunch of goats cheese, tomatoes and baguettes perched on rocks (not the most comfortable - but the view was absolutely worth it!) Then we crossed the plateau and started up on the next mountain, which unfortunately we didn't make it to the top of, as it was a bit like sheer rock climbing towards the top. And on the way back down it started raining (thank god for North Face clothing) and so it turned in to a bit of a slip and slide through mud and rocks, which was… messy! Then we got a bit lost, ended up cutting through the back of someone's house (the woman was very nice to the crazy Americans) and scrambling up a mud path back in to town. My trousers and running shoes have never seen so much mud, but it was lots of fun!

It's turned absolutely freezing here, which is apparently a sign of things to come - we were talking to Saida this evening, who is the sister of our next door neighbor, who was telling us that this town can get snowed in for up to 20 days at a time - the road between here and the next big town (where all the food comes from) gets shut, and everyone just stays in their houses, buried under blankets. Last night everyone was sitting in the living room with massive wool blankets piled on top of them - and today when I got home, the stove top had been removed from the kitchen and in it's place was a furno - a small fire place, which gets attached to a vent in the ceiling, and warms the whole room. So the kitchen is lovely and warm, and the rest of the house is like a refrigerator! Tile floors and concrete walls really don't hold heat (shocker), and they also soak up damp when it rains (as it's going to all week - yay!) Our classroom is the coldest thing here though - we have one small electric heater that we all take turns huddling around. We discovered today that one of us was actually wearing three jackets, it's that cold. I'm thanking my lucky stars for thermal underwear, and am formulating a grand plan for wearing as many layers as I can when it gets even colder. My only consolation is that this town is one of the coldest places in Morocco - so anywhere I'm placed for final site HAS to be warmer than this. I have no idea what the actual temperature is - I would guess somewhere in the low 50's, but it feels like it's below zero, with the rain and the wind and the coldness... Can't wait for when it actually is below zero… um…

We had meetings at our hub site over the weekend, which was all the SBD volunteers back together again - great to see everyone (and have wifi to skype with home!), and catch up on everyone's stories. We're back there again in three weeks time, which is when we will find out where our final sites are - eep! Then we go directly from there to our site to spend four days with our new host families. So basically that means I have three weeks to master darija, and to complete the multitude of new assignments we were just given at hub. Big eep!

So, off I go to study. I can now say in Darija, tomorrow I am going to go get up, go to school, come home and eat Kaskrut. At least that's what I think I'm saying. It's anybody's guess really. Going to huddle under my blanket and get warm before trying to work what I'm actually saying.

Layla saida!

R. / N.

xoxo

Ruth and the Just Delicious Goat

(Tuesday)

In the continuing competition of oneupmanship over kaskrut, it was my family's turn to host us crazy Americans today. And I just ate goat. Which I was, I would almost say, pleasantly surprised by! Wasn't quite what I expected - almost like a corned beef, but I wouldn't have guessed it without being told, that's for sure. It was with couscous, which I think is almost unheard of on a Tuesday, since it involves an awful lot of work to make, and it's typically a Friday lunchtime custom. Tomorrow is the last day we're visiting someone's house, so hopefully it will be back to normal after that, and by normal, I still mean enormous amounts of food at 6.30pm, following by more enormous amounts of food a couple of hours later for dinner.

(Wednesday)

The craziest weather day EVER. Woke up this morning to an absolutely gorgeous day. We went shopping in town during class, and it was even what one would call hot. Went for a walk up on the rocks after lunch, and it was so nice out and beautiful light all around. Oh, but then. We went to meet with our co-op for the afternoon, and as we were waiting for everyone to arrive, it started raining. No big deal. Then it started hailing. Fine. Bit weird, but fine. Then the rain really started coming down, along with thunder and lightning. Then, it started hailing, no joke, pieces of hail the size of big round quarters - aka massive. And then a river appeared in the middle of the street, while the massive pieces of hail continued to pelt everything - building up so that it seriously looked like there had just been a whole night of snowfall. And then it all stopped. And we started to walk home, to discover that entire streets were flooded - water was pouring over the edge of cafe sidewalks. We had to get in a taxi to take us 50 meters up the road because there was literally no other way. I've never seen anything like it. The trees in the town, and in front of my house have all been shredded by the hailstones, and there are areas with 6 inches of solid ice now. Luckily wasn't wearing my boots today otherwise I would have been bum-first on the ice for sure. Trying to avoid those situations at all costs, my backside is still tender from my repeatedly hitting the bathroom floor last week!

(Thursday)

Much less adventure today, but we spent the day busily preparing for hub tomorrow, which marks the end of the first phase of CBT. We're hoping that we can go to a town called Michliffen after we go to the hub - apparently there's lovely waterfalls there, and perhaps we can go on a good hike. We were for a little explore around the other side of our town this afternoon and found what we think is the bridge to a large crown that over looks the town. One day we're going to have to hike up there - perhaps on Sunday I'll go exploring up there. We've crammed a lot of darija in to the last couple of days - we can finally say things in the present tense, not just past tense - yay! - but this will mean lots of studying and flash card making this weekend to try and get at least a little bit of it to stick.

Anyway, I'm off to pack and finally have my first shower of the week (no, that's not a typo), yippee!

R.

xoxo

Ruth and the Bewilderingly Bizarre Bazaar

Yesterday four of my fellow PCT's and I went to one of the large towns nearby to explore. This is the town in which we have our hub meetings (where all the small business volunteers meet every couple of weeks) - and where we walked through a few weeks ago, not knowing that there was an entirely different area that we didn't know about. Well yesterday, we found that area, and I was left with a whole new appreciation for the town. Honestly, I didn't think it had it in it. We even found goats cheese! Granted, it's not what I would call proper goats cheese (it's more like Boursin), but I'm guessing it's the closest thing I'm going to get in the next two years, and it's also the closest I've had in the last three weeks, so I'm jumping at the chance - real goat's cheese or not. I'm definitely going to miss good cheese for the next two years, so thoughts about how to get a lovely wedge of brie or Point Reyes Blue to me on a postcard please.

But, we wandered through a great little part of town that was all tiny alley ways, tiny shops, full to bursting with everything you could think of - shoes, rugs, buttons, thread, people spinning wool, a whole alley way of barbershops, tailors, chocolate shops, tagines, jellabas… everything. And beautiful doorways and arches throughout the area. I feel like it's maybe a taste of Fes, which I can't wait to get to.

Then came home, and had the most amazing bucket bath - outside of my house, there's a small outhouse with a turkish toilet. And I walk past this outhouse everyday, but I've never really thought about it being used or not, since there's two bathrooms in the house. But, last night I found out how it's used. There's a small fireplace inside the toilet, which when I went in, was roaring, and two large metal buckets strategically placed on top of and next to the fire, and then a tap for cold water. But because the room is so small - it was literally a sauna in there. Using a third bucket, I mixed cold water from the tap with the hot water from the buckets on the fire (which was near boiling) and had a bucket bath in the sauna. I don't think I've ever been so hot in my life… it was interesting having to take a shower in that heat, because as soon as I stepped out of the toilet again, nice and clean from my shower, I was sweating again from just having been in a sauna! But it was lovely.

Backtracking for just a second, Saturday night all the girls in our group had our hands henna'ed, which was really fun. The host sister of one of the other trainees, very kindly, and expertly, drew amazingly detailed patterns on our hands, front and back. Then we all had to sit still for ages, wait for it to dry, and when we thought we were done, she put a very strange mixture of oil, water, sugar, and we think tea all over our hands. And then we waited more. Then scraped all the dried henna off to leave the orange pattern, and even then, we were still not allowed to wash our hands at all that evening, which was quite hard to do. But it's very beautiful, and absolutely worth the wait. Everyone here that sees it for the first time says BHssa, which means to your health, and is what is said after things like going to the hamaam, or getting henna'ed, or a haircut.

Anyway, a busy week this week as we have a number of reports due on Friday, and we're meeting with our women's co-op again on Wednesday in order to finish up all our questions. Then to our hub town for most of the weekend, where we'll see everyone who's in the SBD program again (it's been a few weeks), which will be lots of fun.

Ruth and the Very Weird Week

This week appears to have flown by. Unfortunately I don't have any more stories about killing chickens - just about eating food, food and more food. We've been going to each other's houses in the evening for kaskrut, which has become a game of oneupmanship between our host families. It's very amusing to see what amazing food item we'll get next - last night we had 'pizza', or as close as you get to pizza in Morocco, as well as an amazing pastry thing - don't know how it's made, but am determined to find out - it seems fairly straightforward (she says) - just a flaky pastry with honey and sesame seeds. Yum. We did have a pita bread type thing stuffed with ground meat (of some kind) and fat the other night, which I will now be steering clear of for the next two years. It should have come with a warning sign: although delicious, may cause fainting spells and vomiting. So that was my Thursday morning! I skipped going to the suq this week, which I was sad about, but it was in favor of a nap in the classroom, which was worth every minute. Feeling much more human now. I will be going to the suq next week, and hope to go to the meat section, since we didn't go to that area the first time we went. Today we barbecued lamb skewers at school - since on saturday we finish classes at noon, we cook lunch that day, since every other day of the week all of our meals are prepared for us. The grill was a tiny little thing, but we had lots of tasty vegetables crammed on there - as our language teacher would say - just delicious!

We had our first proper meeting on Wednesday with the women's co-operative that we are working with while we are in this town, which was really interesting. There are nine women in the co-op, which was established in 2007. They currently aren't weaving their amazing rugs, as they have a lot of inventory, and they are having trouble getting invited to various craft fairs to sell their products, which is a real shame. There was a PCV here a couple of years back, so the women here are looking forward to having another volunteer working with them. We have several different activities that we're doing with the women as a sort of test run - we'll be doing the same activities (which are basically needs assessment tools) when we get to our individual final sites. We have plenty of reports to write this week with regards to these activities - some group and some individual - the group one we will then present on Friday when we all congregate back in our hub site with the whole SBD sector.

Anyway, we'll be off visiting somewhere tomorrow, so there will be more pictures forthcoming soon.

R. / N.

xoxo

Ruth and the Tale of Swiss Disneyland

Sunday we all went to the city of Ifran, about an hour away from us. It's a pretty big city, and a lot more westernized than where we are staying. I believe one of the royal palaces is there, so there's a lot of security around the place. But, we successfully negotiated a grand taxi there and back, as well as a coffee break and meal. Walked around in a massive park with meandering streams, and were accosted by men on horseback who were surprisingly offended when we told them no, we didn't want to ride on their horse. Shocker. There is one area though, that is so bizarrely out of place, where all the buildings are built looking like they are straight out of a small Swiss village, and restaurants with names like Chamonix. It's Swiss Disneyland in Morocco. But the whole city was very green, lots of trees and pretty flowers - again a bit out of place for the other towns in Morocco we've seen (we've only seen 3 others so it's not a lot to go on!)

This week we're doing visits to each CBT member's houses so that our teacher can communicate anything needed to our families, so we go after school and all have the 6.30pm snack called Kaskrut together, and see each other's bedrooms, which is sort of fun.

Yesterday we went and met with the president of the Nadi - women's center - of the town, which was interesting. The center has only been open for a little over a year, but is for women between 16 and 24 who are not in school to go and do sewing and other crafts. The center is also hoping to start doing literacy training soon. There will be one PC volunteer placed here when CBT is over - we're not sure if that's going to end up being one of us, or another PCT, but I'm sure they would be involved with the Nadi somehow. We then went over to the house of one of the weavers of the co-op in the town, who showed us the amazing rugs they weave. They are incredibly beautiful, with intricate patterns - it takes 2 women, weaving 8am-12pm and 2pm-5pm, 20 days to complete one rug! They're fantastic. We've not yet learnt all the technical terms that we need in darija for working with artisans, but we'll be getting to that in the coming weeks. Pretty sure I'm going to bring back a rug or two with me at the end of my two years.

It's definitely getting colder here - you can feel it as soon as the sun goes down it starts getting chilly. The wool socks are out, and I'll be picking up the thermal underwear when we next go to the hub site at the end of next week and I can get to my suitcase. I'm still hearing differing stories on when the snow will start - sounds like anywhere from October to January it can start. Still slightly under the weather with a cold, but most of you reading this know how my colds go! Joy! I managed to escape to bed around 9pm last night (unheard of in a culture that doesn't eat dinner until 10.30 or 11!) for some much needed sleep. Hoping for a shower tonight - it's been a while - no details needed there, but fingers crossed for me.

Until then, it's back to school - more language and more cross-cultural! More pictures when I have a chance.

R. / N.

xoxo