An absolutely gorgeous day, L’Hamdulila!!!!  My bones might even feel the heat if this keeps up.

My birthday was awesome (as far as birthdays go, which isn’t far when you need an abacus to figure out how old you are).  My classmates took, me to the local “fancy” coffee shop and bought me cake and coffee, and then the next day, at Hub, one of the PCT’s interrupted the “goings-on” to say that it was my birthday the day before, and so 50+ people sang me happy birthday (doesn’t anyone else have birthdays around here?).  …and my wonderful daughter sent me the most awesome email ever, that made me cry in the ciber (internet café), which freaked a few people out.

I have to share it and I hope I’m not breaching a confidence, but I think she’s okay with it…

GOOD MORNING.  HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPS!!

 youre such a big boy now. haha

 honestly, dad, i admire you so much as a person. youre honest,

 rational, open minded, egalitarian, frugal, down to earth, adventurous,

 very smart!, and very wise, immensely loving empathetic generous

 considerate respectful and caring!! the majority of the qualities i have

 come to appreciate in a person, you have. that might not be such a

 coincidence as i think. but i realized this the other day, (i mean ive

 always respected you and thought of you highly, but) you really have so

 many qualities i admire. NOT TO MENTION YOU ARE IN THE PEACE CORPS! you

 are really going to make a difference in the world. i am so proud of you

 for that.

 YOU ARE JUST SO AWESOME! I AM SO LUCKY THAT THE UNIVERSE GRANTED ME A

 PARENT WITH SUCH AN AMAZING AND LOVING PREROGATIVE!

There was a bit of drama between our teacher and the talamid (that’s we students).  Apparently, the words “silly and “jerk” were considered insulting and offensive to our teacher (of course, not directed at her; just mentioned in conversation).  I mentioned that that seemed silly, which somehow exacerbated the situation.  Then I said I was “crappy” at something-er-rather, and I might as well have called her a pig-eating infidel or something.  Anyway… the students were pissed that we weren’t able to express ourselves to our LCF, (the “F” being “facilitator”) when she is supposed to be the person we can rely on, but it was just one of those cultural things, I guess.  Anyway, she got her panties in wudge and we got our panties in a wudge,  and it ended up leading to all of our class talking to the “powers-that-be” at our hub about our unhappiness with our classroom situation.  We actually sat down with four of the “high-ups” and expressed some of the issues we were having, and they were very receptive to what we had to say, and had a lengthy talk with our LCF.  Things seem a little better now, although she sure is rigid!  What the hell… 4 more weeks.

…a couple of interesting cultural points.  First, of all the weird stuff that I’ve had to get used to (squatty potties, no toilet paper, eating out of a community bowl, etc.), one of the weirdest (why its so weird, I don’t know) is male hand holding between heterosexual men.  And I’m not talking about two other men holding hands.  We’re talking men holding hands with me!

 In Morocco, close friends can be found holding hands walking down the street or standing and talking.  No biggie, right?  I think that’s a great expression of friendship.  And I would say I’m the least homophobic guy I know.  So why, when the mudeer (head) of the Dar Chabab, took a shining to me and held my hand for about 5 minutes while we had a get together with the Moroccan Finance Minister and some other muckity-mucks, did my self-consciousness level rise about 500%?  I was told later that it was a great honor and an unusual situation for him to have “adopted” me as such a close friend in so short a period of time, and its all pretty awesome in retrospect, but just standing there with 10 other people, with the two of us holding hands was just a little weird.

Another custom that no one clued me into and thank Allah (damn, I like saying that) I didn’t trip on my zeb  (just learned that word today, if you can figure it out) is that there is a definite unwritten rule when we are all eating from the community plate.  Typically, there will be perhaps rice all along the bottom with any number of different vegetables stacked up in the middle, and some meat mostly obscured by all the vegetables.  Well, in every situation so far, it seems like everyone pretends there is no meat in the middle until the very end, because everyone eats the rice and vegetables (using bread, of course) but completely ignores the meat.  The plate is pretty much wiped clean of everything except the meat, but it still sits there.  It might be that everyone waits until the head of the family digs in to the meat (I need to be paying more attention to that cue), but all of a sudden, I look up and it’s a feeding frenzy.  Actually, I’m just kidding because everyone is very respectful and pushes meat toward each other and usually one of the women reaches in and breaks it apart and divvies it up by sliding it to “your” side of the plate (major Hshuma to reach beyond your triangle of the plate and eat from “someone else’s triangle).  I raise this custom mostly because I so didn’t know it existed and I’m so glad I didn’t just pull an Uncle Tom and reach in and yank off a drumstick to the shock and horror of all the other guests.

I met my host mother and father (who of course are much younger than me) and 3 daughters last night for the first time.  They’ve been on vacation for the last week or so.  They seem very nice, and the three girls (10, 6 and 9 months) are so f***ing cute!  It was anarchy and chaos all rolled into one last night, as company came and went for hours and hours.  We had supper at 11:30, and I finally went to bed at midnight, but everyone else (plus guests) partied on til Allah knows when. I snuck out this morning so no one had to get up and fix me breakfast,  but I know when I get home, they will all be very obsequious and apologetic (and scolding) for not waking them so they could fix my breakfast.  As an aside (okay… these are all asides), I have all this time to type because our LCF gives us an oral language assessment every Saturday, and they take about ½ hour each, so that means 2 ½ hours of ridiculous down time while we wait for the others to finish (I went first today).

Oh yeah… A super-cute Moroccan girl came into the dar (house) yesterday and it turns out she’s my cousin/niece/granddaughter; hell I don’t know how this host family relationship thing works.  Anyway… I think she’s the niece of my host father.  We really hit it off and she knows enough English (about the same amount as I know Darija) for us to hang out a lot the last two nights.  …but it turns out she’s only 21 (she looked a bit older to me, but whatever) and she’s only here on spring break til Sunday, when she goes back to Rabat  to resume her studies as a gendarme cadat (which is pretty cool).  Oh well…

One last item is that we were on TV yesterday.  I can’t remember whether I mentioned that we were filmed at the sports center a couple of weeks ago, but I guess it was a national crew, because we were on Channel One out of Rabat yesterday afternoon.  A lot of people saw it, but I missed it.  I think 99% of what was filmed was left on the cutting room floor based upon what people told me because the mudeer (yeah… my new boyfriend) had already taken a shine to me back then,  and wanted to be in lots of shots, so he would kick people off the pool table and have me and him play pool, and kick people off the ping pong table and have me and him play ping pool, all while the camera was running.  …but it sounds like that footage didn’t make it.

Okay… finally going to send this.  Another beautiful day.  Not much going on, because I decided to stay in town and get to know my new family a little.  Pretty much everyone else went out of town.  There’s a big “Earth Day” fair in Fez and some PC function in Immouzer (having to do with how to raise money for our community projects, or something).  Still others went to Azrou to see the qrouda (monkeys) in the Gaba (forest).  That sounded the most fun, but I’m being good and staying here (although here I am at the ciber instead of the dar.   ….and the cute 21 yr. old went back to Rabat, so there’s even less reason to be at the dar.

All is good (kulshi mizian) and we’ve been here over a month now, so time does seem to be flying.  …more to come.