Sunday, February 22, 2009

English Mass

You know how you never really appreciate something until it is gone? I had such a moment today in Rabat. I knew there was a church in Rabat, and I decided to attend mass this weekend. Yesterday, I went to the church to check out mass times, and I was interested in the asterisk next to Saturday mass times. It said, “Messe en anglais un samedi sur deux.” Mass in English? What? When? So I called the church and sure enough there is mass in English every other Saturday! Today I arrived at the church a little early, and a nice gentleman escorted me to the sacristy, where the priest was speaking with a parishioner. In English. In American English. Now, to fully understand the profundity of this, you need to know that Morocco is full of foreigners. But French foreigners. Or even British foreigners. But Americans? Not so much. Turns out the priest is from Philadelphia, and has worked in Morocco for 17 years now.

Mass was incredible. There were about 15 people in the congregation, and about half were American. One woman is married to a US diplomat, and comes to church each week with her son and daughter. One family is passing on business. 2 other American men work for the govt. in some capacity. The other members of the congregation were African, from Christian English speaking countries. What a great group, and what a lovely mass.

It is hard to describe how meaningful it is not only to attend mass in a country where Christianity is illegal for nationals, but to attend it in English. I could barely hold myself together. I just wish Rabat was closer than 13-15 hours from my site!

On top of having the opportunity to go to church, today was a celebratory day of taking the GRE. This morning I took the GRE with about 10 Peace Corps Volunteers, 1 Peace Corps admin lady, and 15-20 Moroccans. Now the GRE sucks for Americans, but can you even IMAGINE trying to take the GRE when English is not your first language?? YIKES. Every time that I got stressed out during the exam, I thought of how lucky I am to naturally understand at least a portion of what’s on the exam, just from speaking English my whole life. But to be a Moroccan student and have to decipher the GRE? WOW is all I can say.

We celebrated this afternoon by going to TGI Fridays for lunch, where we can enjoy free refills and an American atmosphere.

And now, I have to make the long trek back to site. But it was a good stay in Rabat. Like always.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Valentine's Day

Although this year's Valentine's Day was slightly different than last year's (no flowers, nice dinner, chocolates, and of course, boyfriend), I STILL had a very enjoyable day.

It started on Friday night when I made heart shaped cookies with frosting and pink sprinkles.



then, on Saturday I met up with the local girls to spend the day hiking, hanging out, and having a picnic on top of one of the mountains near our village. We had a lot of fun, and naturally, since it was Valentine's Day, we talked about boys. :)



Unfortunately, I have a train to catch, so I can't write much...time to head up to Rabat for the GRE. How fun. :)

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Steph and Adam are coming to visit!

Well, in a surprising and very ecxiting phone call I received from Steph Sunday night, I discovered they were on the search for tickets to Morocco. And on Monday morning I learned that they will visit March 22-28. I CAN'T WAIT. For REAL.


I also thoguht I would post some of my most recent cooking adventures.


A Moroccan food, mismin, that we eat with tea in the afternoon sometimes. My host sister's mismin looks a lot nicer than mine. :)


Homemade tortilla chips. A lot of work, and very fried, but very good! (I made them for the Superbowl

Friday, February 6, 2009



I almost forgot to put up this picture from Christmas. Look how happy Christian is to be near his Great-Grandfather!

Rain

02-05-09

It is wet and cold and muddy and I miss that sun from last week! It has officially been rainy and cold for a week now. And now the water doesn’t just leak in a few places slowly, it leaks at a constant rate all over my house! Every morning I wake up and hope that today will be the day that the rain stops.

It all started this past weekend on my way to Taroudant, a region 4 hours north of me, where I went to attend a Superbowl party. I arrived a little wet, but it was a great time! We made buffalo chicken wings, homemade tortilla chips, and chili cheese dip. And even better, we actually got to watch the game. The commentary was in German, so there was a lot of ‘das linedrive Pittsburgh Steelers ein draie’ or whatever, but at least we got to see it! And because of loyalty to my dear Poppop, I was very excited in those last couple of minutes when the Steelers won!

Since getting back to my site, I have been very busy with work. This upcoming Sunday was supposed to be an AIDS Skit Competition, in Tiznit, that a Youth Development Volunteer and I were organizing. I met with the director of my middle school on Tuesday and Wednesday to finalize which students were attending and who would be chaperoning them. Everything seemed to be falling into place until this morning when I got word that the students coming from Tafraoute are flooded in and there is no clear road for them to take to Tiznit. Darn that rain! Soooo the other volunteer and I talked, and it looks like we will inshallah have the competition next Saturday. This means the kids will get taken out of school to participate, so I am pretty sure they are not too heartbroken about the delay. ☺

I also taught at the middle school this week, and it was business as usual. The second year students could almost be called angels, the third year students behaved with a couple of warnings, and DO NOT get me started on the first years students. Crazy I tell you. More and more teachers are telling me just to hit the kids, and I know, ‘when in Rome,’ but I just can’t! As I sat there hopelessly giving up on them, I thought, I work for free……I don’t have to teach these monsters if I don’t want to! And that helped me to get through.

And then there is the women’s center and I am about ready, hamdullah, to submit the grant proposal to Peace Corps. It is very exciting to be at this point, and the girls are thrilled! The local community partners are also looking forward to beginning the project.

And that is about it. Like I said, the rain and cold stinks, and my once black gym shoes are now completely coated with mud, since getting to town center includes about a mile of unpaved road. Its amazing how far your foot will sink into the mud when it rains this much. ☺

02-06-09

Now it is Friday morning, and I woke up nice and early (6:30am) to get a ride with my host dad to the town center. It turns out it started raining really hard at around 3am, and everything is flooded! I went to my host family’s for breakfast, and my host dad said that with this much rain, the roads to Tiznit will be completely flooded and impassable. I figured he was exaggerating, that is until our ride to souk. On the 3 mile trip, I saw that places which were completely dry a week ago have now turned into rushing rivers. Like wide, fast rivers. Fortunately, they’ve had winters like this before (not for the past 10 years), so people built bridges where the rain flooded years ago. I even remember thinking over the summer that it was so silly to have these bridges since it is always dry. Ha. Looks like the joke’s on me. So, now a couple of hours later, I really wonder why I even got out of bed this morning. I may try to get to Meredith’s site for some internet connection, but that’s a big inshallah.