Waxa

Waxa. This is just a shwiya update before heading out for CBT again tomorrow morning! Happy Easter! To sort of celebrate, some trainees got up early and made a huge American breakfast, and a few others hid candy and toy eggs around our hotel. It was a fun way to celebrate and some of us plan on having a sort of informal sunset service so to speak tonight. A fun and restful day for sure.

Being back at the seminar site is really nice. The group feels like a big strange dysfunctional family and it's really comfortable... spending so much time and so many new experiences with people certainly brings a sense of closeness that I didn't expect, and all in all it's a really good bunch of people. That being said, I also love the small group feel of CBT. Training is an interesting balance, for sure.

Something I haven't mentioned are the informal "tea talks" that we have some nights. Any of us who want to come and the LCFs get together in our conference room and have a discussion about a topic not covered in training. Past sessions have included things like the Hammam, jellebas, how to use the bit lma (Turkish toilet), and most recently, Islam in Morocco and romantic relationships. They're all interesting and really good information. Last night, after the tea talk, a bunch of us crammed in the conference room with sleeping bags and we watched The Princess Bride on a projector on the wall. Fun, but not what I expected in the Peace Corps. Hey, I'm not complaining.

I'm sick with a bad cold or sinus infection but I've been on medication so hopefully it's on its way out, inshallah. It's made me quieter and less energetic but I've been able to keep going to class and getting things done. The coughing is getting on my nerves though, but at least it's just a cold.

And... hamdullah! The taxi strike is OVER! With the taxi strike, we had to have the person in charge of our training pick up each group in the zween white 4x4 truck... and it took him all DAY! It also means that even in this small city it's hard to get fresh veggies and there's been no souk! We've been in country for a month and still have not really been to the souk, or big weekly market. Now that the taxi strike is over, it'll make transportation much easier.

There's always so much more to talk about: the PCT kawkaw man strike, hilarious dinner conversation about pineapples, our obsession with Coca Lite, the frustrations of trying to upload pictures in cybercafes, our hanut man Aziz, the bit lma competitions (I just about died laughing... yesterday we went over latrine building and had a sort of bathroom Olympics competition. I won the "get the dirham in the hole" (use your imqginqtion) contest and won a Snickers bar... we also tried to find out zho could hold the squat the longest, the best bitlma story, the zweenest...well, you get the idea), belly dancing with other trainees, the mshta story... and typing all thqt out makes me realize how so many of us have regressed as far as sexual and bathroom humor are concerned. It's fun though, practicing explaining the importance of using a latrine using a pile of trash as props, or stealing a sweater from one of our trainers and leaving a ransom note. I see training as part freshman-dorm, part summer camp, and part sort of laid back school. I think if I could just train with the Peace Corps in each country for the rest of my life, it'd be fun, fulfilling, entertaining, and, well, just amazing, honestly.

Okay... I need to use part of this self-directed-learning day to study some Tamazight. Righ ad-gngh imiq welani dugh ad-kra d ad-ulugh. I still need to memorize the parts of the body and I should do it before tomorrow. To the roof or conference room to make flash cards! OH- if you are thinking about PC, a word of advice- bring lots of flash cards pre-cut into really small cards. We don't have ANY here and it takes longer to cut them out of these fiches cartoniques than it does to actually write on the flash cards themselves!

In any case, I should be back on Thursday!

Much love...