CBT

Yesterday was our first hub day, which means the first day back from our training site. We're not allowed to post the exact name for security reasons, but it's about half an hour east of here off the main road. It's very sleepy and small. My host family is a couple in their 30s, the dad's mother (who's the same age as my mom, but looks about 80), and three boys, age 3, 8, and 10. The level of hospitality is completely overwhelming sometimes--they stuff you full of food at every meal, and if you walk past someone's house and say hello, they will probably invite you in for tea, even strangers.

Language is going pretty well, but it's still frustrating to be back at such a basic level of communication. My family speaks no English at all, but I have been able to communicate some amount of information through a combination of my limiting Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and hand gestures. There's a lot of laughing (mostly at me).

I started helping out in the house right away, partially because I wanted to and partially because silence is less awkward when you're doing something. My mom would be proud--I've become the designated dish-washer for every meal that I'm at home. There's no running water or drain or sink in the kitchen, so dish-washing involves sitting or squatting on the concrete floor with a bucket of soapy water and a bucket for waste water. I consider myself pretty competent at domestic tasks like cooking and dish-washing at home, but my host mom looks at me like I'm an idiot when it takes me more than three minutes to wash all the dinner dishes.

I'll post more about the house and family later, and once I feel comfortable I'll take pictures of them. (The little boy especially is so adorable.) We're going back to CBT today, which means no internet for another 10 days or so--a strange adjustment.

orientation/PST

I can't believe it's only been a week since I left New York! It's trite, but so much has happened since last Monday that it feels like at least a month. I'm now sitting on the roof of our hotel in Ouarzazate, where we've been since Friday night. After one day and night in Philadelphia, where we did intense but very general orientation with PC Washington staff, we took what was luckily a direct overnight flight to Casablanca. We got to Casa at 6:30 am local time (2:30 am EST) and got straight on a bus to Marrakech, and immediately started a full day of training. They definitely don't joke around with stuffing as much into these days as possible. This afternoon was the first time we've had free since we got here.

We're now officially Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) and are almost a week into Pre-Service Training (PST). (They do a lot of acronyms.) There about about 60 of us, split between Health and Environment, including 4 married couples and about 6 or so over the age of 50. There's a man here who's coming for his second stint in PC, and a woman for whom this is her third. It's definitely the most diverse crowd I've ever been in as far as geographic origins in the U.S. Talking to the other environment trainees has been particularly exciting, since some of them have some really awesome technical experience. After a lot of general training, we finally split into sectors yesterday to talk about the actual projects that PC Morocco does, which got me more amped about the rest of training and work. Sometimes it can be easy to get lost in the overload of information they throw at us, so the reminder was nice.

This morning we finally got our assignments for Community Based Training (CBT). For the next two months, we're split up into groups of 4-6, each in a different village outside Ouarzazate. In our CBT sites we work with a Language and Cultural Facilitator for up to 8 hours per day, learning the language and working on specific skills for our future work in sector. Of the 11 different CBT groups, some are learning Tashelheyt or Tamazight, which are Berber dialects that are spoken in specific regions of Morocco, and some are learning Darija, which is Moroccan Arabic. I was placed in a Darija group, which is exciting, since it means I'll be able to use a little more of the Arabic I learned in college.

We leave tomorrow for our CBT sites and go almost straight to our host families' homes, which should be interesting, since no one can say more than a few words in their assigned language. We come back every ten days or so to Ouarzazate for "hub days" where we debrief with the other trainees in our sector and occasionally get a few hours off. I'm sure the next few days before our first hub day will feel like ages as well.

The square in Ouarzazate from the roof of the hotel

The Atlas Mountains, seen from Marrakech

The mountain pass through the Atlas (yes, that's snow)

tomorrow!

What a crazy two weeks. I've been in DC, New York, and Connecticut, seeing lots of close friends. It was really nice to catch up with some people I haven't seen in a long time, and it reminded me of hard how I'm going to try to keep in touch while I'm abroad. As is totally typical, I've had six months to pack for this trip, and still found myself waiting until the last minute to actually put everything in a bag. It's tougher than you might think to choose seven shirts to wear for the next two years. (Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.)

Now that I'm finally all packed, I'm driving to Philadelphia tomorrow. We have about 24 hours there for Staging, which seems to just consist of a bunch of speeches. Then we fly to Casablanca, spend a few days in Marrakech, then go to Ouarzazate, which will be our "hub" training site. (They film lots of movies there! And it's really pretty. But that's true of most of Morocco.) I'll be training in a small group with other environmental education volunteers who are learning the same language as me (which could be Moroccan Arabic or one of two Berber dialects) in a nearby village, then coming back to Ouarzazate occasionally for more group training. I don't know where my actual training site will be, and I won't know where my final placement will be for another two months or so. Still so many things up in the air ....

People keep asking if I'm nervous--I don't think reality has set in enough for me to be nervous. Mostly, I'm just really excited to meet the rest of the trainees, and head out! So that's about it. Next update will be from the Maghreb!