Me and my entourage!

09/25/07
Hello everyone!
Hope all is well…sorry for the lack of posts, I seem to run out of time as soon as I sit down at the cyber. Well a lot has happened in the last few days and luckily it has all been good!

Just a few enjoyable highlights…..

I finally walked to work without a male escort today! Yay..its a sign of integration and a step in the right direction because I think my Host father finally thinks that I am comfortable enough with the neighborhood to find my own way around. Sounds silly but its just different to have someone walking you everywhere so it’s a weight lifted off my shoulders.

However yesterday I could not have been more thrilled with my ‘escorts’….funny story and so far one of my favorite Ras Elma memories! Coke bottles around here are mostly glass and when finished you return them to the vendor. So yesterday me and my fellow volunteers all drank a coke and then on our break I collected the empty bottles and set off to return them. Well as soon as I stepped out of the youth center some little girls asked if they could help me, so I let them each carry a bottle. We set off to the Hanu (store) and I just couldn’t seem to find it….we walked back and forth back and forth on the one main road and soon enough my 3 little girls turned into a crowd of 15 kids, all of us looking for this mysterious store. With every attempt to return the bottles at the wrong stores I started to notice that now all the people in the streets were laughing at me and my brigade of children. Luckily I have a sense of humor and took it as just another cultural lesson. Finally I gave up and decided to just take the bottles back to my coworkers and find out where we got them. Before I did this I lead the children to the closet store and told them in broken Arabic that I wanted to buy them candy as a thank you for their help. To my surprise not one of them took me up on my offer and they just kept repeating something I could not understand. So they followed me back to the youth center and I had my boss translate. All 15 kids in hand, screaming the same thing to me and me just repeating ‘mfismpsh mfimpsh` which means I don’t understand. Finally my boss dissevered the message and it turns out that they were saying `We don’t want candy we want to learn English` At this point my heart just dropped and I instantly knew that this truly is what I was meant to do. It is hard to explain but people’s priorities here are just so different. Life isn’t about money, power and efficiency, but instead love, family, good company and health. It’s a breath of fresh air and it’s something I will try to continue even when I’ve returned to chaotic life in America.

In the end the store had just closed for the day so the metal doors were closed and it appeared hidden. Apparently God works in mysterious ways but for that I am so thankful.

Another highlight is definitely the food! I really do think I am going to leave Morocco the size of a house cause I simply cant say no. To give you an idea of how much I eat…here is what I ate last nite at DINNER ALONE! My host grandma just looks at me and shouts ‘cori colri colri` which means eat eat eat and besides the fact that the food is benina (delicious) I simply cant say no to her adorable face.

Hard boiled egg with cumin
Moroccan pizza….(bread with peppers and sauce)
Dates
Avocado yogurt shake
Hot sweet milk
Bowl of soup
Spekia (the most amazing pastry ever!)
And then just when I was about to burst my family brought the 2nd course which was a hugggeee bowl of cous cous!

SOOOO MUUCCCHHH FOOODDD. And last night was the first time I honestly felt like I was going to die if I had one more bite but I guarantee you my death would have been a noble one cause this family can cook! Lol!

All in all things are great…I also started learning Arabic script this week which is beautiful and intriguing but very challenging. Darija, the dialect that I am learning everyday is NOT a written language so you simply write whatever sounds you hear…convenient sometimes because its impossible to spell anything incorrectly J

Anyway I must run…its time to eat another benina Moroccan meal! I miss you all and I am really starting to miss hot sauce too lol!

Xoxoxo
kris

will post pics soon!