Here I am

S-salaam alekum!

It’s been a very busy two days here in Morocco! I guess I should go back to the beginning. We took off from New York in the evening on Tuesday and arrive in Casa the next morning. After clearing customs and collecting our luggage, we got in the buses and headed out across the plains towards our training town. It was unbelievably green! Morocco has had a lot more rain this winter than is normal. There were mudslides and flooding, but in general the rain has been a good thing, as it brought a two-year drought to an end. We were mostly in rural areas, but it was still very interesting. Finally, we started to go up a bit. It was very nice, and I was excited by the view of the distant mountains, but unfortunately, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, we were pulling into the hotel. We unloaded ourselves and our stuff, found rooms, and then had lunch. We had an afternoon session, but finished earlier than we have any other night so we could go for a walk around the town with the LCF’s (Language and Culture Facilitators.) It was fantastic! We walked to a supermarket, but I wasn’t so into that, so I headed back out with a different LCF and some friends. This particular LCF happens to be native to this particular town, so he was a very helpful guide! We wandered up the main street in town and through to souk (market). As the sun was setting, we heard our first call to prayer, which inspired what was almost my first “Oh my god I’m in another country” moment.

We headed back to the hotel as the sunset and slept! The rest of our days have been busy, as I mentioned before. We begin every day at 8:30 am and are generally in class from then until after five or so. We have several short breaks, two coffee/tea breaks, and one for lunch. After dinner we have free time, and the majority of us use that time to head out into the town for supplies or sight seeing, to study, hang out, play games, or use the internet. Today we had a bit of a different day because we had the US Ambassador here. He was slated to talk for well over an hour, but only talked for about half that time, so we had a surprise hour of free time. I used that time to lounge around the pool under the jasmine and get thoroughly freaked out by reading the Safety manual.

A lot of our time has been spent on “Survival language” practice. Which means Moroccan Arabic, which is called Darija. Standard Arabic is called Fusha. Most of us are going to be placed in Berber speaking areas, so we are only learning a small foundation to build upon later. We will probably only need it for travel. We’ve learned numbers, basic greetings, how to say that we aren’t tourists and work for the Peace Corps, and how to purchase things at the hanut (store.) My stajjmates are all pretty gungho about practicing and heading out into the town to use their Darija, which is just totally awesome. I love these people.

Aside from Darija practice and the ambassador’s visit, we had a special event. Several current Peace Corps Volunteers spoke to us in a panel about their training experiences and what had happened since then. That was pretty fantastic. I bought a beautiful hand crocheted bracelet and a little purse from the collective that one of the volunteers works with. Then I headed out with another trainee and one of the PCVs to visit the medina. It was fun! We stayed for only about half an hour and only bought some socks, but it was a good experience! It is always fun seeing how people react to crazy Americans speaking Darija!

Now I’m back at the hotel and feeling pretty tired. It’s been tricky getting the internet to work and all my pictures to upload, but, inshallah, it will work out!