Seminar site!

First of all, my apologies for the terrible typing; it's a French keyboard and I'm still learning it.

I have a very fitting "shwiya b shwiya" story for you. Last night, a group of us went out to find the beach. To put things in perspective, we had been in country three days but had really only had four or five hours to explore the town. We essentially ran to the souk and found the beach but didn't have a good way to get down to it. Oh, well. On the way back, I really wanted to stop and get a paper journal. I haven't started writing in it yet and there is really a lot to catch up on, but I wanted it.

We went to a small paper shop. I ended up having sort of a tri-lingual conversation. I tried in Arabic to get a blank book, then switched to French, apologizing for my terrible few words of Arabic, saying that I was learning. Really, I'll learn Berber first, but I absolutely have every intention of studying Darija as well. The shopkeeper smiled at me and said, "Oh, it's not bad, you'll learn shwiya b shwiya." It made me smile.

Training is long hours and especially the last few days have been a lot of information, but yesterday, one of the sort of introductions to the program really inspired me. I've realized that despite thinking I've been openminded, I really have made judgements on some things just from listening to what other people have told me and without having the opportunity to experience things for myself. No more. I explored this concept at Agnes Scott with the honor code and I think I'm experiencing it again and it seems to be appropriate for Morocco: sometimes when you give things up and are held to expectations, it's freeing when you meet them and accept things you have no control over. Accepting this, and thinking, really thinking about THAT and not negativity made it so that yesterday, a whole weight and a lot of fear was lifted from me and I've been able to relax and really try to experience things.

We left this morning to get to our training site and split into our separate groups: health and environement. The drive was beautiful and there were some absolutely beautiful mountains. All the colors seem to be supersaturated and it was hard to believe the orange of the ground was that deep of an orange, the blue of the lake so blue, the sky so wide.

We've met our LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators; PC loves abbreviations!) today and took a little tour of the small town with them. I lugged all 100+ lbs of luggage to the fourth floor of the hotel that will be sort of a home base for the next 10 weeks. I'm exhausted but I think I always will be. At least I should be able to sleep in on Sunday, inshallah. It feels great to be at the seminar site finally and feel like there's somewhere I'll be for a little more than three or four days!

Much love to all.