9.19.08

From Azrou, Morocco; I’m sitting on the rooftop dressed in white. Seems appropriate with the breeze of the evening, the quiet streets, the bold, worn tiles and cushioned banquettes. Can’t claim to be clean, necessarily, but I hesitate to wash the day away, for fear that I may forget new Tamazight words from the day’s lessons. Today we’ve begun to prepare for our visit to the rural villages of the Middle Atlas Mountains to continue our training. For two weeks, starting on Sunday, I’ll be with five other trainees in rural Morocco, learning an obscure Berber dialect called Tamazight. The l’auberge is all a flutter with speculations of what life will be in these new sites and who our host families will be. Language training is going alright, but we have so far to go, and no real method to our learning at this point. We have only to stay positive and allow the future to come. This is not a first choice for many of us who much more often take matters into our own hands. Good for us. Maybe we’ll learn something.

My roommates are brushing their teeth, and the dogs are barking outside; it must be time to get to bed. We’ll start with language first thing in the morning, so I need to get my sleep. So far things are going well. Everything is too new to have time to miss everyone back home yet, and I figure there will be plenty of time for that later on. For now, I’m loving this chance to practice just being here, learning, and sharing this experience with these new people. I feel the threads beginning to connect us together, and trust that we are going to rely on one another in the years to come.