Ten reasons that I know I'm a PCT in Morocco and not a dancer in NYC:
* I sit through "sessions" nowadays. ("Sit" also encompasses wiggling, stretching, doodling, whispering & twiddling).
* I've transitioned from 250 sq feet and one roommate, to 5 square meters and three roommates.
* I eat a lot of dates.
* I actually get in trouble for sticking my legs up in the air during class. (That's weird)
* I have exponentially expanded my library of acronyms, including TLA (Three Letter Acronym)
* I can tell you that Henna smells like spinach
* The people that I spend the entire day with never see my elbows. (I adhere to "culturally sensitive dress".)
* "Culturally sensitive dress" does not include the gold fringed dress that I wore to the laundromat the last time I did laundry on the Lower East Side.
* I made it through two weeks in rural Morocco and used only 1/2 of a roll of toilet paper, and accrued less than 1/2 a bag of inorganic trash.
* The taxi driver who drove us the 60k back from the countryside never had to stop at a traffic signal, in fact, there aren't any traffic signals, and he barely even slowed down to allow the flock of sheep to cross the street.
9.28.08 Family Life
We've completed our first week of "CBT" (Community Based Training) and with so many adjustments - but so much to learn - it's hard to determine how much we've progressed.
We are managing the Turkish Toilets (Read: Hole in the floor.), the bucket baths and the random hours of operation of the hanut. Language will continue to be our biggest challenge for awhile. After 4-8 hours of language lessons each day, I still return to my host family and can't say much beyond my name and the names of the food items on the table.
Because it's currently Ramadan, the eating schedule has taken some getting used to as well. A After the day's lessons, we're sure to arrive home for l-aftur, the breakfast at sundown. Dates, sweet chebekiya, crushed zmita, bread and more bread, and, of course, tea (with LOTS of sugar) are delicious. After a few hours of studying, I go to be early. I have to, because I have to be up in a few hours to eat again. At 3:30AM, my "mma" calls my name. Sarah! It's time for sHur. Meat, okra or carrots, sopping up the juices with bits of bread from a communal dish. The meal is followed by a flan-like finish. Again, delicious. Finished eating? Back to sleep. But I'm not fasting. I each lunch with the other trainees. I basically equate this eating schedule with college life - except instead of sHur, it's 3:30AM Pokey Sticks and Gumby's pizza.
The reason we are placed in this community is because of a co-operative of women weavers that live here. They're handiwork is incredible. Their current initiative is to begin to spin and die their own local wool rather than bringing in yarn from Fez, nearly two hours away. The PCV currently working with this co-op is helping them to update their brochure to distribute at festivals and conferences. We're here to learn about the community and to practice our technical methods for assessing their knowledge, skills, and attitudes. We'll then design individual short term projects to try to help them continue to improve their situation.
The walk home at sunset is my favorite time of day. One of the other PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees), Maggie and I have the longest walk home. Imagine a small rural village with only one hanut and one butcher in town. We live in that villages suburb. We walk past the cornfields and towards the mountains on a rocky dirt road. The clouds and the sky are incomparable. The clouds are a heavy white, and the the sky this lovely deep cornflower blue.
We are managing the Turkish Toilets (Read: Hole in the floor.), the bucket baths and the random hours of operation of the hanut. Language will continue to be our biggest challenge for awhile. After 4-8 hours of language lessons each day, I still return to my host family and can't say much beyond my name and the names of the food items on the table.
Because it's currently Ramadan, the eating schedule has taken some getting used to as well. A After the day's lessons, we're sure to arrive home for l-aftur, the breakfast at sundown. Dates, sweet chebekiya, crushed zmita, bread and more bread, and, of course, tea (with LOTS of sugar) are delicious. After a few hours of studying, I go to be early. I have to, because I have to be up in a few hours to eat again. At 3:30AM, my "mma" calls my name. Sarah! It's time for sHur. Meat, okra or carrots, sopping up the juices with bits of bread from a communal dish. The meal is followed by a flan-like finish. Again, delicious. Finished eating? Back to sleep. But I'm not fasting. I each lunch with the other trainees. I basically equate this eating schedule with college life - except instead of sHur, it's 3:30AM Pokey Sticks and Gumby's pizza.
The reason we are placed in this community is because of a co-operative of women weavers that live here. They're handiwork is incredible. Their current initiative is to begin to spin and die their own local wool rather than bringing in yarn from Fez, nearly two hours away. The PCV currently working with this co-op is helping them to update their brochure to distribute at festivals and conferences. We're here to learn about the community and to practice our technical methods for assessing their knowledge, skills, and attitudes. We'll then design individual short term projects to try to help them continue to improve their situation.
The walk home at sunset is my favorite time of day. One of the other PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees), Maggie and I have the longest walk home. Imagine a small rural village with only one hanut and one butcher in town. We live in that villages suburb. We walk past the cornfields and towards the mountains on a rocky dirt road. The clouds and the sky are incomparable. The clouds are a heavy white, and the the sky this lovely deep cornflower blue.
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