Random

A few random things today.

#1 Our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is in Morocco. She is here for a peace conference ending a week-long trip in the Middle East. Yesterday, the new group of Health Volunteers had the opportunity to meet her during their In-Service Training in Marrakech. I clearly left for Peace Corps a year too early. I could have met her!!

While she was meeting the volunteers, she acknowledged Muriel, the oldest volunteer serving in Peace Corps. Read about it at CNN.com!

#2. I miss Pumpkin Spice Lattes. This is my second year missing Pumpkin Spice Latte season and I just cannot believe it. FORTUNATELY, I can recreate other Starbucks lattes in my house. A certain guy named Wael sent me these Starbucks syrups.

The folks at Starbucks made sure to tell him that I have a month to finish the bottle of syrup after it is opened. Clearly, this is not an issue for me. I took this picture 2 weeks after opening the caramel syrup!!!

#3 I really enjoy trouble maker students. I can say this now that I'm done teaching for the day. Perhaps when this certain boy was acting up I wasn't as appreciative as I am now. But really. This certain boy brought a rubber bloody hand to class and tried to shake my hand with it. How clever! I mean, I had to confiscate the thing, but really I was impressed with this certain boy. In fact, that may be something I would have done in middle school........

#4 Chandler is getting very good at playing fetch. In fact, that is about all he ever wants to do these days. Recently I've been waking up at 6:30am to Chandler throwing his favorite fetch toy (one of my scrunchies!) at my face over and over again. I will make a video and post it soon! My cat thinks he is a dog!!!!

The Donkey Saga

So I teach at the middle school every Wednesday at 9am. Therefore, I leave my house at 8 in order to have enough time to walk the 5km. Sometimes I walk with one of my neighbor kids, who is on his way to the middle school, sometimes I run into some women and walk with them. Sometimes I walk alone. Today I walked with a donkey.

Well, kind of.

As I made my way down to the road from my house, I ran into some ladies and as we greeted each other, a donkey ran in front of us! Not a donkey with the bu-donkey (donkey owner).......just a donkey. And really, although he was alone, he seemed to know where he was going. One of the ladies ran out trying to grab him, but the donkey would have none of it. He just started trotting along the road to souk. I mean, we are talking a donkey walking down the road, as if it is the most normal thing in the world. As if he was tired of living on the mountain and wanted to go shopping in souk. He clearly knew what he wanted, and that was to get to souk. He didn't deviate from the road once. The ladies and I just laughed and laughed as we walked behind the donkey making his way along the road.

I wish I had a picture! We were really wondering if the runaway donkey had a plan for once he got to souk.

Finally when we were just about a kilometer from souk, a car trapped the donkey and caught a hold of him. We turned around and the poor bu-donkey was running toward us. Apparently his donkey was not satisfied with his life on the mountain and wanted to look for a new home. Ah well. His escape attempt was foiled.

But it provided me with an entertaining morning!!

The thing I was tagged in.....

So my SisterSteph tagged me in a photo memory blog dealio and I think that is just too fun! You have to open your first photo folder, and choose the 10th picture and post it. And tell about it. Stephanie's was too funny: her and her college friends in their tanning phase. I have to admit I adopted the tanning thing for a while too. I mean, what Sophomore in High School doesn't want to be like her cool college-aged sister?? Thank God that's over!

So here is my photo memory picture.....

Senior Prom!!! It was May 2004, right before we graduated from High School. Cathy and Keiko, two of my best high school friends (who are still important to me today!) and I went in a group together to the Prom. I miss dressing up like that. :)

Sufism

So I am reading a book, called "No god but God," by Reza Aslan. It is about the "origins, evolution, and future of Islam." My friend Meredith read it in one of her Islamic Studies classes in college and she passed it along to me here in Morocco.

I DEFINITELY recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about Islam. But I have to warn, it can be pretty dense at times. Right now, I'm reading about Sufism, a sect of Islam practiced mostly in South Asia

This passage from the book is supposed to be an explanation of Sufism, but I think it is something nice for people of all religions to read and keep in mind.

A Persion, a Turk, an Arab, and a Greek were traveling to a distant land when they began arguing over how to spend the single coin they possessed among themselves. All four craved food, but the Persian wanted to spend the coin on "angur;" the Turk, on "uzum;" the Arab, on "inab;" and the Greek, on "stafil." THe argument became heated as each man insisted on having what he desired.

A linguist passing by overheard their quarrel. "Give the coin to me," he said. "I undertake to satisfy the desires of all of you."

Taking the coin, the linguist went to a nearby shop and bought four small bunches of grapes. He then returned to the men and gave them each a bunch.

"This is my "angur!!" cried the Persian.

"But this is what I call "uzum," replied the Turk.

"You have brought me my "inab," the Arab said.

"No! This iin my language is "stafil."

All of a sudden, the men realized that what each of them had desired was in fact the same thing, only they did not know how to express themselves to each other.

- Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Weddings Weddings Weddings

Over the past 2 weeks, I have attended 3 weddings here. The first was my friend, and women's center participant, Fadma. She had a traditional Berber wedding, as do all of the girls in my site. The night of the wedding party, all of the guests eat and sing and dance (of course separated by gender), but the bride sits alone in a room. The next morning everyone accompanies the bride to her husband's home, where people from his village throw another party.

The first night, the groom's family brings a sack full of shoes, candy, henna, dates, etc to the bride's family

The second day. The women from the bride's side are bringing the bride to the groom's family's house.

Last Saturday, my boss' daughter got married in Rabat. Traveling up to Rabat for less than 24 hours was quite a hassle and very tiring, but DEFINITELY worth it to attend such a lovely wedding. We had a great time dancing and spending time with various Peace Corps staff....such a great time that we left the wedding at 4:30am. Just in time for me to meet my 5:00am train in order to travel back down to my site for Najma's wedding.

Emmy and I getting ready for the wedding at the Peace Corps office. Meredith was nice enough to lend me her beautiful takshita for the occasion.

The bride is brought in on this throne carried by 4 men.

She also changes her dress a lot. Every hour at some Moroccan weddings!

The bride and groom with the volunteers, the brides father, Mostafa, and our other boss, Rachid. Note the dress change.

Our first course. AMAZING seafood pastilla. It may be the best food I've ever had in Morocco.

Second course. Lots and lots of amazingly flavored chicken. Most tables put chicken on their plates and ate it with knives an forks. As volunteers who live out in the country, we used the communal dish.
Another dress change! Layla's husband looked more than a little overwhelmed.

Last dress of the evening. This is the one she wore for their wedding in France.

So after rushing from the train to the bus to a taxi to another taxi, I made it back to my site in one day. Just in time to celebrate my best friend in site, Najma's, wedding. Same type of wedding as Fadma's, but I was very sad to see my best friend leave!

"Ahwach" or singing and music at Najma's wedding

Same deal as before. Sack full of shoes and things. Oh, and I forgot there are always cones of sugar as well!

The next day I had to teach....but I tell you after one heck of a weekend, I slept 13 hours Monday night.

Visit!

After Ramadan, I was lucky enough have Wael visit. Egypt is close enough to Morocco, but most Egyptians have never been out here. However, Moroccans watch Egyptian TV and listen to Egyptian music, so almost everyone understands and can speak Egyptian Arabic (even though it is completely different than Moroccan Arabic!).

We got a huge charge out of various people's reactions to us. Wael looks Moroccan, like he should speak Moroccan Arabic. And I look pretty foreign, like I shouldn't. On MANY occasions people spoke to Wael in Moroccan Arabic and when he turned to me confused, I answered. And then we would move on, leaving that person scratching his head.

In Essaouira

Essaouira

Lunch with everyone in Essaouira

We rented a car to be more comfortable and save money. Neither of which happened!

The Marina in Agadir

Because we had the car we got to do cool things like go to Agadir Oufalla at night!
The road from my house to Tiznit. The first time I've been able to take pictures along the way!

Wael and Chandler bonding at my house for lunch.

Just Kidding!

So remember how I said it was cold? Well its not. I mean, it was then, but now it is hot again. Very hot. In fact, it got up to 110 degrees this week. 90 overnight. I have mixed feelings about this because the cold is pretty unpleasant, but at the same time the heat means bugs. And I thought bug season was over.

I wanted a picture to go along with this post. But I couldn't find one of the sun. So here is a picture of the drive from my site to Tiznit.