Well… It’s been a while since my last blog and I can’t completely blame it on being busy (although there has been a lot going on).  In the early days of training, blogging was super important to me to be able to pour out all the craziness and newness of Morocco, its people, and my experiences with them.

Now, I feel pretty much a part of Morocco and things don’t seem quite as new and crazy as they used to.  So the burning need to express what’s going on seems to be behind me, and now I need to find motivation elsewhere.  Keeping friends and loved ones quasi-up-to-date on my happenings is reason enough, certainly, but its only now that I’ve realized that I should be blogging for people other than myself J  I also use the blog as a pseudo-journal to memorialize my experiences, and so there is another very good reason to keep it going.

I have tons of pictures that I’ll post to give you an impression of some of the things I’ve been doing over the last several weeks, but here are some highlights:

First, I have moved into my own place, which is starting to look a little like a home, now that I’ve got some furniture and other stuff.  It’s a very nice apartment,  and what it lacks in creature comforts, it makes up for with my big blue bucket.  I don’t have a bathroom sink, so I use the blue bucket to wash my hands.  I just have a hole in the floor as my toilet, so I  use the blue bucket as m flusher.  I don’t have a shower so I use my blue bucket to pour water over the top of me.  I don’t have machine so I use my blue bucket to wash my clothes.  Of course, I also use it to clean the house and I was even using it (tipped over) as a chair, til I got some plastic chairs.  How many people get that kind of mileage out of a big blue bucket?

I’ve pretty much tricked out the place (I’ll post “before-and-after” pics of the salon), and so its not exactly the mud hut I envisioned when I joined the Peace Corps.  On the other hand, I do shower with a bucket, do laundry by hand with a bucket, crap in a hole in the floor, etc., so its not exactly the Ritz either.

Both my little sis and my pop came to visit in the last three weeks.  They, unfortunately, missed each other by minutes (Molly leaving as my Dad arrived), but I enjoyed 17 straight days of family bliss.  They both immensely enjoyed my host family and friends, and visa versa.  My sister got to see Tariq’s wedding ceremony, which was an awesome spectacle.  How many of us can say they ate dinner at 4:00am (sober) with plenty of festivities still to follow.  Tariq asked that I not post pictures of the event, so I leave it to your imagination.  Two “Barnam & Bailey” size tents, perhaps 250 people, traditional garb, dancing, food, and merriment.  Simply unbelievable.

Nasty rumors about the heat during African summers sure hasn’t disappointed!  We pushed through the “50 degree” threshold (I’ll let you look up the Fahrenheit equivalent) and have been riding that for a while.  It wouldn’t be so be so bad (actually, it isn’t really that bad), but there is no air conditioned car, mall, office building or home to run in an out of, so its just heat, 24/7.  I guess its “the good kind of heat” in that its not humid, but 125 degrees with humidity and we would all just be a bunch of  well-preserved corpses lying around the village J

Life, on balance, is pretty awesome!  I so enjoy the people and the way of life!  Marrakech is just a ½ hour away, and Essouiara is a three hour bus ride, if I need a coastal break where temperatures never exceed 75 degrees.

I haven’t really started doing anything meaningful as far as “Peace Corps projects and activities” go, mostly because the country pretty much shuts down in the summer, and my town totally shuts down!  After Ramadan (which started yesterday, and will be the subject of my next blog), things will start to happen (toward the end of August/beginning of September), but for now, its “chillin’” and enjoyin’.

"before" pic of my salon

...and the "after"

Til next time, Inshallah.