My own Winter Wonderland

Hello Everyone! Just wishing you a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a happy new year! Thanks for all the phone calls and emails! Miss you tons! Heres some pics from my 1st Moroccan Christmas! I had a great day considering it was my first christmas away from my fabulous family! We even made a tree and I got a new pair of wool socks! Lol! Hope to hear from you soon!
XOXO
Kris

Mbrouk Leid

12/23/2007
Hello Everyone and a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! I am so excited for you all to have a great holiday Inshallah! I myself just had a splendid holiday here in Morocco. It is called Leid Kabir and I spent a great time with my entire extended host family. We all went to my grandma’s house in the neighbor city and enjoyed 2 days of eating, talking and relaxing. I was very apprehensive about the holiday because the holiday is centered around the slaughtering of a sheep and then 3 days after are spent consuming all the meat. Since I didn’t eat meat in the states and have never even had lamb I was worried but I survived! I even ate heart and liver wrapped in fat. I was so impressed by the way my family knew how to butcher and prepare every single part of the animal. I felt so honored to be part of their family for this important holiday and its worth noting that the sheep that was shared with me cost about one months salary for my family to purchase and they tried giving me all the ‘best’ pieces. All the neighborhood families did that same thing and then people went from house to house just saying Mbrouk Leid and sampling each others food. One of the many things I love about this country is the hospitality and if its even possible people become even MORE hospitable during this holiday. Yesterday I went to my tutor’s house for a delicious lunch and her family was so welcoming. Then on the way home a shop keeper and a woman sweeping her front porch (both strangers to me) invited me in for tea. I declined because I was running late for dinner with my family but its nice to know that I would NEVER go hungry or homeless in this country. I am often caught of guard cause I was raised to be weary of ‘strangers’ etc but here that notion does not exist. One of the many things I hope to bring back to the US after this experience is the idea of an ‘open’ home. I want people to know that they are ALWAYS welcome in my house, stranger or not.

Aside from the big holiday, not too much has happened since I last blogged. I have been practicing my aerobic routine like a loser in preparation for this week. It will be my first real week of work and I will be teaching English and aerobics at the women’s center. Those of you who know about my severe lack of coordination are probably laughing right now but shut up these women can’t WAIT to have me teach them ‘sport’ as they call it lol. Oh I almost forgot the big news! I may have found my apartment! I originally wanted to live with my site mate Kirsten but the Peace Corps said no so we set off looking for two places. We spent a whole day house hunting with one of our Moroccan friends and we left feeling really disappointed. The idea of someone living alone (especially a woman) is nearly unheard of here so all the places we looked at where HUGE built for families. We also don’t have a lot of money for rent because of budget cuts. Just when we were about to give up for the day, Kirsten and my friend looked at one more place and they hit the jackpot. It is an apartment building with 4 apartments. The first floor is a large household appliance store then the second floor has 2 empty apartments and then the 3rd floor has 2 apartments where 2 local doctors live alone. Well since we cant live together Kirsten and I wanted to be neighbors and our doors are LITERALLY 3 steps away! Lol…the inside has a nice kitchen, bathroom, salon (living room) and a bedroom. It is a little small but since its just gonna be me and my small peace corps budget I figured the smaller, the easier to decorate with limited funds. We will be returning next week with our tutor to finalize rent negotiations and then the Peace Corps will send out an employee to approve it for safety reasons and hopefully we will have it in the beginning of January. I will still be living with my family until February but we want to have it early inorder to start moving in little by little. I am very excited cause it has been months now that I have been living out of suitcase and in some one elses house.

I am including some pictures. They are off my brother and cousins coloring with the crayons I brought, The ipod cover I made…I learned how to knit! One picture of my mom dad grandma and neighbor, & one of my mom and her 3 brothers all of which I adore! One of her brothers even yelled at my mom because the peace corps sends my family a small amount of money to cover the electricity I use, food I eat, etc. well my moms brother said she should just let me live here for free for 2 years because I am such a nice person etc. It was so cute. My mom assured him it wasn’t my money and he eventually let up. One pic of me, my brother and cousin, a picture of my scared face…that was my dedication face to the sheep. Pictures of my BEAUTIFUL henna that my aunt applied on my hands…it took 2 hours of work and then they wrapped my hands in cotton and slept with the henna on and then in the morning they wash off the actually henna and it stains your hands. I will not post the pictures of the sacrificed sheep but I have included one of the meat that was being prepared. It was really interesting, my mom cut up the heart and liver wrapped it in fat, put it on BBQ sticks and then they grilled it. A pic of my ADORABLE little cousins pounding on the window trying to ‘talk’ to the neighbors lol, and lastly a picture of the beautiful mountains that are my grandma’s back yard.

Well I hope that made some sense. I look at the pictures and get so lost in the story that everything I type sounds ridiculous. I am about the head to my site mates house to watch the new season of greys anatomy! I love her parents and ive never even met them cause they send ‘us’ GREAT burned dvds lol. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven yesterday when I found a channel on my family’s tv that plays OPRAH! OMG I swear it’s the little things.

I hope everyone has a WONDERFUL Christmas and I wish you know how badly I want to spend it with each of you. I am really sad and worried about this being my 1st Christmas away from home but I have a lifetime of Christmas’s ahead of me. Ironically enough its my first day of work here so maybe I will be distracted enough to go through the day just fine. You are all constantly in my thoughts and prayers and I hope to talk to you soon.

MISS YOU MORE THAN WORDS CAN SAY! Here’s a new wonderful year…may god bring us peace and joy in 2008.
XOXO
Kris

Cold but happy

Salam!
How are you? Good I hope. I hope this blog finds you in giddy holiday spirits! I tell you what, I will miss Christmas season sooo much but I certainly wont miss shopping or holiday traffic! Lol…silly Americans ;) jk. So everything is still going well and I am settling into volunteer life nicely. I have been in my site almost 2 weeks now and slowly but surely I feel a purpose coming on. ;) The cold has been a bit more bearable and I traveled to a close town this past weekend to see some volunteers and there the weather was awesome! I didn’t wear gloves for 3 days and I saw my feet for the 1st time in weeks lol.

Work has been a little slow because next week all the businesses and my 2 places of work will close for Leid Kabir which is a HUGE Moroccan holiday so there was no sense in starting anything until it passes. For now I just wander around town, meet people, make posters for my classroom and spend hours trying to type up flyers in Arabic script. Today was my first really boring day and now that its 10pm and I realize I am still doing my list of errands, it makes me rethink how boring it actually was. I think I am just use to American pace and things simply don’t work like that here. One of my frustrations is the role of women in public. For instance my town is semi-conservative so there are tons of sidewalk cafes but only men are allowed to frequent them. Sounds like a small thing but at times I just wander around town looking like the ‘lost American’ cause I am trying to meet people but women really just go to school, the nedi or home. I know it will be ok in the future but for now it would be nice to have somewhere to go to socialize (or to have a hot cup of coffee).

Once Leid Kabir passes my schedule will change drastically. I will most likely be teaching English twice a week and the nedi, Aerobics twice a week at the nedi, English 4 times a week at the Dar Taliba, and aerobics twice a week at the Dar Chebab. Later, once I have established myself and learned some more language I will try to start art, environment and sports clubs at the Dar Taliba. I am excited to start working but this free time has been great to start making my lesson plans and today I also found my Arabic tutor! Yay!

My town has been buzzing in preparation for the big holiday. I had a good laugh the other day when I was walking to work. There were people everywhere at the souk (outdoor market) and they were scrambling trying to auction off and buy sheep (every family slaughters a sheep for this holiday) and I swear to god it reminded me of a mall in America. It was Bouarfa’s version of Christmas shopping.

I am still really happy and really looking forward to beginning my hunt for my own house! By the end of January I will be moving out of my home stay family’s house. On December 11th we celebrated our 3rd month here…feels like I have been here much longer, daily I experience things that were not normal to me when I first got here and now I don’t even give them a second glance.

I have been receiving some really awesome mail from you guys thank you soooo much. Just as a reminder. My address is BP #158 Bouarfa Morocco 61200. To increase your chances of it getting here safely….write ‘Air Mail’ and ‘Teaching Materials’ on the envelope or box. It is my personal po box so now you can send packages of all sizes. Please don’t send anything of great value. Lastly people keep asking me what I want for Christmas. Postage is very expensive and I already won the lottery of life so I really don’t need anything. BUT lol…if you must send something I SWEAR this is what I want…don’t laugh. It’s the little things around here.

-Reduced fat Cheez its (my cravings for American food have become unreal)
-REESES PEANUT BUTTER CUPS
-M&M’s
-Baking Powder
-Magazines
-Books
-Fat markers
-Or just a friendly letter :)

That’s it! I am a low maintance girl…lol well that and it costs an arm and a leg to mail $2 worth of crackers to me.

I miss you all sooo much…I watched ‘My girl’ and cried for the 1st time since ive been here…I knew it was coming but one minute I was crying over Thomas J dying from bee stings and the next minute I had a full fledged ‘Im gonna miss Christmas’ meltdown. Hehehe atleast I can laugh at myself! While I will miss the holidays I know I am where I am supposed to be right now and I have a lifetime of American holidays ahead of me…enshallah. (Enshallah means god willing in Arabic)

I LOVE YOU! MERRY CHRISTMAS!
xoxo
Kris

Ps the pictures included are of my town, the main street I walk down everyday, the big mosque in town, a boy walking his goat, sheep crossing the street, my BEAUTIFUL sunset (hard to capture) and me with my two AMAZING site mates…hannah blonde on left and kirsten on my right. WE ROCK BOUARFA! :)

I Heart Bouarfa!

Hello All!
I hope all is well in good old America! I know I recently updated my blog but I am just having one of those days that one should write home about!

Let me preface this blog with some important notes as I always sit down to write my blogs and realize by the end that most of you are thoroughly confused by my babbling. (Also I am starting to think in Arabic occasionally which is awesome for fluency although does not help with the English I am already losing.)

-My site for two years: Bouarfa (Pronounced Boo are fa)
-Hannah: My site mate who has lived here for a year already working at the Youth Center
-Kirsten: My site mate who started at the same time as me although is not in Youth Development but instead Small Business Development
-Nedi Neswi- women’s center
-Dar Taliba- A dormitory for kids who’s families live so far out in the country side that they do not have access to schools. Also acts as an orphanage for some kids.
-Delege- The liason between the Ministry of youth and sport and the nedi neswi. The ministry of youth and sport is what I work under.

Ok so today was just AMAZING!!! It was technically my first work day and I was so nervous but it ended up being awesome. At 9 I woke up and ate my usual cheese and bread with mint tea for breakfast. Then I walked to the Nedi Neswi to introduce myself to some of the girls and to meet with my new boss Zhara. Well when I got there I had no idea what to do. The language barrier is bad enough but ontop of that the Nedi is so organized that I have limited time to interact with the girls when they are not in class. (As previously mentioned they have computer science, hairdressing and sewing programs.) Anyway I went in with a good attitude and a scared face. I was shown around and then dropped off at the hairdressing station where the gals were dying a fellow student’s hair. I had such a blast! We all just sat around and talked and laughed for an hour. I showed them some pictures of my family and my brother Dennis officially got his first Moroccan Marriage proposal! Lol! Then to my pleasant surprise they insisted on blow drying my hair. Since I haven’t showered in 5 days and was feeling rather unattractive I jumped on it! They did an amazing job and continuously told me how pretty I was. I get a lot of attention here for being ‘pretty’ even from the women which at times I find comical cause the girls telling me this are just DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL. Anyway it was so refreshing to feel so welcomed. When I asked the girls what they wanted me to teach them AEROBICS was the overwhelming majority. So if nothing else I will be an ‘over glorified pretty aerobic instructor’ for two years. Lol. No but seriously I will be teaching life skills, nutrition, women’s health and English but mostly I hope to end up as their friend and not teacher. I feel at times that they could teach me so much more than I can teach them.

Anyway then I went back to the police station to try to finish my visa issue but I will have to return tomorrow as I was missing a paper. Then I came home and cooked my own lunch in my AMAZING homestay families house and then headed to the delege with Hannah. When we got there, the person I needed to speak with was not there but I met some nice supervisors I may work with in the future. Afterwards we were walking home when Hannah offered to show me the Dar Taliba. Well it turned into and entire tour and meeting and I could not be more hyped about working there. The two guys incharge of the Dar taliba have been anxiously awaiting my arrival and made it VERY clear that they were excited that I was here. Basically the kids that live there go to school all day and then at 7pm are all locked in the dorms for safety issues. They have common areas, nice rooms, a few computers, a dining hall, and classrooms. At night time they socialize and occasionally have classes. With my arrival, I have to opportunity to do so many different things! I will start with English classes next month as there is a big holiday coming up where everything will shut down for a few weeks. Eventually I can add theater, art, music, sports etc. The ideas are endless and because of the set up I kind of have an automatic audience. The main person I will be working with is named Magid and he really seemed ecstatic about my arrival. Infact he came up with this amazing idea. For the 1st month what he wants me to do is meet every single student and ‘interview’ them and make a book profiling each child. It may be a lot of work because there are 112 students but I am really excited about it. Important to note that youth here in Morocco and that of America differ a lot. The age range at the Dar Taliba is 6 to 28 so my students are often going to be older than me. Tomorrow night they are having a small dinner/party to welcome their new teacher and that new teach is ME! Lol sometimes all of this feels so surreal.

After leaving the dar taliba I went to the cyber and received some great emails from all of you and now I am sitting in my room trying to ignore the cold and listening to the Christmas cd my sister sent me (thanks kel!) At first my site mate Kirsten and I were just going to pretend Christmas didn’t exist this year but as it turns out Hannah will be returning from Spain on Christmas eve with her parents who are visiting so we are going to spend Christmas morning together drinking hot cocoa and eating cinnamon buns and pretending like we are family lol. Certainly wont compare to Christmas with my fab family but beggars cant be choosers. J

Anyway thank you for listening to my obnoxious rambling about how great Bouarfa is lol I assure you this wont be the end of it. I will leave you with this bit of cultural exchange. Ever wonder how Americans are perceived in some parts of the world? Food for thought…Im my families’ bathroom there is an air freshener bottle with MARIAH CAREY on the front of it. She does however look like she smells great! Occasionally American television plays in my house this week two shows inparticular caught my host dad’s attention: ‘Dumber and Dumberer’ and MTV ‘Cribs’. Now he thinks EVERY house in America looks like Tony Hawks. Thank you pop culture…thank you very much lol. I tell you it’s a different world out here but right now I wouldn’t trade it for the world…or Tony Hawks house ;)

LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU ALL!
XOXO
Kris

I am a PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER!!!

Hello Friends and family!
Greetings from my site FINALLY! I am an official volunteer! YAY! Training has finally come to an end and I am sitting in my room at my final home stay families house. For the first time in 3 months I unpacked my bags today and you couldn’t have peeled the smile off my face if you tried. I will be living here for 2 months which at times feels like a long time to be in someone elses house but my family is extremely laid back a nice so I don’t have too many worries.
Swearing in was AMAZING! We had it at the nicest hotel in Fez and my old host father and grandma came to see me become a volunteer! Also in attendance was the American Ambassador and his wife and also the director of the Millennium challenge! There were also tons of security, cameras and homestay family members; And of course 67 eager trainees. After a few speeches and us taking our oath to uphold peace corps ideals, we had a lovely reception. Finally all the newly initiated volunteers went out for a wonderful day in Fez (our last day there) to celebrate making it this far. It really was an awesome day and it was hard to say goodbye to the great friends I have already made.
The next day we all officially left for our sites! My site mate and I spent some time visiting a friend in a neighboring town and then finally made it to our site today. So far things have gone great! I spent the day applying for my carte de sejours (similar to a visa), Hanging out with my family, picking up my tons of luggage that was shipped here and went to the post office. In the beginning something as simple as going to the post office or hanut (convenience store) and surving with the little language that I have is an accomplishment! I try to remind myself of this often as the work we do is often intangible and most volunteers get discouraged easily when they feel like they are not making a huge difference. In today’s day and age if I am just here, representing a good image of America, I am doing my job.
Its definatley colder than I even imagined. As I sit in my room typing this, I am wearing 2 pairs of pants, gloves, 2 pairs of socks, slippers, 3 shirts, a sweatshirt and I can still see my breath INSIDE lol! Winter is unreal without heating and Morocco compared to some other countries isn’t even that cold, I hope I never know how people survive in colder places. Hygiene changes a lot in winter also, I am interested to see how that affects my next few months. Because it is so cold and most families don’t have hot water (mine included) people go much longer without showering, also it is hard to do laundry because it takes forever to dry on the line outside. All in all I am apprehensive just because I have florida blood nowadays but I have 6 blankets to sleep under and purchased a winter jacket from a local souk so I am sure I will be fine. J
For the weekend, I will just be exploring and enjoying some down time and then come Monday I will be going to the nedi neswi to meet with my boss. She is the mudira (leader) of the Nedi and seems like an amazing woman to work with so I am looking forward to it!
I would like you all to know that I have been receiving some very good mail lately and it truly makes my day!!!! It costs 90cents for you to send a letter but it means so much more than that to me. I have kept all my letters/cards and when I move into my own place I will be hanging them all up as a reminder of how much love surrounds me everyday. I hope one day I can repay each of you for your undying support.
I have included pictures from swearing in…enjoy! One picture is with the Ambassador and his wife, some with my family and some with my friends. (By the way if you click on the picture it enlarges.) Its funny how I feel such a sense of completion and yet this is only the beginning!
Here’s to two years of love, hope and charity……
XOXO
Kris