Updates

Hi!  So, it's been a really long time since I wrote anything here.  I'd say I was busy, but that would be a lie.  Really, I was just lazy.  Pretty much all of these deserve their own entries, but since that's unlikely to happen, here's the past three months.

So, since I last blogged, I:

-- spent two weeks working at a camp for orphans in Rabat

-- fasted for Ramadan, which was long and hot

-- went to England and Wales to see Pru for a week and a half

-- went back to Rabat to help Peace Corps write a manual for spring camps

-- went to a moussem and a fantasia.

-- fielded a lot of worried phone calls from people back home who were worried about the protests in North Africa.  There have been a few, non-violent protest in Casablanca and Rabat, but things have otherwise been calm in Morocco.  I managed to freak myself out when the new broke about Libya, but then I sternly told myself to get it together because it's not like this was my first experience with sudden political tenseness.

-- had my one year anniversary in Morocco.  I spent the night at a party with some of my stagemates.  We drank a lot, and cooked dinner and talked about our summer vacations and our plans for the next year. We made a rule that anytime someone spoke in Arabic, they had to take a drink, which was really hard. I hadn't realized how much Arabic had slipped into my English conversation until I started trying to avoid it. We ended up just translating the God phrases into English and walked around the house shouting, "To your health!" and "My parents and yours!" and "If God wills it!"

-- had a tiny bit of a meltdown about the situation with my mudir (which is not... great) and oh God, what have I accomplished in the past year, what am I even doing here?  And then I pulled myself back together, because there's no crying in Peace Corps.  (That's a lie, there's definitely some crying in Peace Corps.)