Well… Spring Camp is over and it was not only fun, but there were a lot of kids that I/we bonded with and will miss.  The camp itself was not much of indicator of what I’ll be doing at my permanent site because the Dar Chabab actually hired a group of professional “cheerleaders” (for lack of a better word), composed of four guys who pretty much ran the camp by having the kids sing songs, dance, etc.  The actual English lessons and activities that we PCT’s engaged in made up about 5% of the time.  Nevertheless, it was a fun experience and I did get a feel for how much the kids enjoy the experience and US!  By the by, their national anthem is beautiful and 40 kids singing it in harmony with gusto and passion is awesome (it lasts several minutes).

We had couscous for lunch at the Dar Chabab, and I sure hope I can get my hands on a picture of me eating it.  Couscous, for those that don’t know, is probably the traditional Moroccan dish, and is a type of rice with assorted vegetables.  The skilled couscous connoisseur  reached their hand into the community plate and grabs a gob of rice and veges., and proceeds to knead it into a beautiful ball, and then basically toss it into their mouth with little fuss or muss.  …then there’s me…  It is truly an art to make the ingredients actually stick together, and I wore about half the plate all over my clothes.  If it wasn’t for begging a spoon from the kitchen, I would have starved to death.

Friday is the religious day of the week in Morocco (fyi, I’m typing this on a Friday evening, but am not sure when I’ll be able to post it, so don’t start thinking the days of the week are different here if I post this next week).  Couscous is the traditional meal on Fridays, and usually lunch, it seems   For some reason, my host family served couscous yesterday (Thursday) and they don’t even attempt to ball it.  They just serve it with bread like the other 142 meals I’ve had so far.

It snowed again this morning, and turned to freezing rain all afternoon.  I am so over this weather.  …no one home when I got home, again.  I don’t think any of my sitemates have had a single occasion where they were ever alone, and yet I’m alone about half the time.  The idea is supposed to be “family” and so if the family goes out, so does the PCT.  Me; not so much.  Again, I think its because I’m a guy, but I’ll learn more tomorrow when I meet my boys in Azrou, meaning whether they have better relationships with their host families.  In Ifrane (where I am), there are two groups of 6, with 9 women and 3 men (about the same ration as PCV’s generally).   But, the other two guys here are married, so I can’t really compare my situation to theirs.

In case you wondered, the second oldest PCT here is 25.  When the PCV’s arrived to help us work at the Dar Chabab, we all sat at the café and the PCV’s guessed all of our ages.  The guessed I was 39, but I didn’t really take it as a compliment because when you’re that young, anyone over 35 is just old, and so 39 is the same as 70 J

I so want to go to the hamman tonight, to get warm and get clean, but it is a ritual that you go with another same-gender person, and so if mention going, I know my host father will feel he has to go with me, and I know he won’t want to go.  I can’t remember how much I talked about the Hamman, but you either love it or you hate it.  It is indeed a public bath, but with different rooms of different temperatures, all steamy and awesome (I fall into the “love it” category).  You can just lie down in an open space and bask in the steam.  The reason you bring a “mate” is because you basically bathe each other.  It is the weirdest thing to sit in there and watch men scrubbing each other!  …and I do mean scrubbing each other, because they use this sandpaper-like cloth and scrub and scrub til your skin is pink/red/gone! Its definitely a scene out of Midnight Express.  But it truly is super-awesome when its this cold out. 

The guys wear shorts/boxers and are quite conservative, but I understand the women’s hamman is a different story entirely.  Not only are they completely naked, but my female sitemates tell me that their host moms scrub them entirely and I mean entirely (one of my sitemates said “I don’t think my vagina has ever been that clean”).  20 “la shukran’s” (no thank-you’s) doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference to the host mothers, and some of my sitemates were a little taken aback by the whole affair.  Hey… I’m comfortable with my masculinity;  if some guy wants to give me a scrubbing, he can just go for it (okay… maybe with the boxers on).

Okay.  My “host brother” just walked in and is preparing my kaskroot, so I better try to help him.  I tried to offer to help, but he has his marching orders from his parents to do it for me (he’s only 16 for crying out loud) and that is the problem.  They think of me and treat me as a guest instead of a family member.  Oh well…   Less than 5 weeks and I’m back in Rabat, and then off to save the planet, one kid at a time.

...ha!  Got to the ciber so posting the same day.  ...more photos to follow (I forgot to download from the camera).