Our television debut is on Youtube.  A classmate found it and forwarded the website to me, so I'm regurgitating those instructions here. I figured it out, so hopefully you can, too.

Here's the website: http://www.alaoula.ma/infos.php?lang=fr.

On the main page click on the tab at the top that says "Infos".
In the main video box where it says "journal televise" use the pull down box to select 20-Avril-2012.
You will then click on the top blue box on the right in the video box (actually, for me, the video just popped up on the screen, and I clicked the "play" button. Fast forward to minute 8 and the newscast starts.


I'm the really young, good looking guy!  The guy I'm playing ping-pong with is my hand-holding buddy!

"Roomies" in Azrou

The gang in Azrou

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.

The Four Season; Azrou  10 of us in a little one-room hole

The "estate" of my 1st host family

Azrou (Mosque on the left)

More Azrou (and same with the below pics)

Brenna at the Fishery (we took the kids there)

Gang at the Ifrane Sports Center

Gali (Cool LCF) at the Sports Center

Kids singing the Moroccan National Anthem (which I started learning today)

Nikki and Nadia at the Fishery

Ryan "Lebron" Buckley

My ex-host mother making Tajine

Kids at the Fishery

One person has blindfold and other (me) has legs tied, and its a game just like "Marco-Polo"

Feet tied...

...dinner.

Some of the gang from both Ifrane Groups

Hanging out in Azrou

Killer Sports Center

Homemade Hlwa (peanuts ground up in a coffee grinder, chocolate, and some sort of yummy center)!

Two pieces of news:

First, I moved!  I have a new host family!  It was a whirlwind affair with me leaving class at 12:30 yesterday, going to my old homestay family and doing the walk of shame as I had to pack up my shit (one of the PC people had already told them I was moving out), say good-bye, and hump it to my new home.  It was the right move and I think I was just too much of a chicken-shit to pull the plug, but Malika  (the director of the entire hub, which encompasses about 40 PCT’s) got the job done. 

I was out of the old place and into the new place by 1:00.  The crazy thing is that I’ve only met one of the family members, the sister of my “host father.”  Everyone else is on vacation, I understand.  …but she is awesome (Fatiha), and very welcoming and friendly.  So how they made the decision to accept me without meeting me is a mystery, but if they’re anything like Fatiha, its going to be just fine.

The new place is shaping up to be perfectly awesome!  The “man and woman of the house” are in there 40’s (okay… its hard to call them my host dad and mom).  The “dad” also has two siblings living in the house (Fatiha and Abdllah) , also in their 40’s, I think), and…. A 10 year old, a 6 year old, and a 9 month old!!!  Woohoo!  I’m not sure when they get back from vacation, but its pretty comfortable so far.  I have my own huge room with actual lights that turn on and, get ready… a heater! There is also hot water and there may even be a shower.  No western toilet but like everyone here, I to the point where the squatty potty is perhaps preferable.

And all that happened by 1:00, I had lunch at the host family of my classmate Brenna, and was in a taxi with two classmates, heading to Azrou, by 2:00.  That was awesome, meeting friends from 5 different sites (many of whom had to travel much farther than I).  There were 10 of us altogether that spent the night (although we hung out with some of the Azrou group for a bit), and we had a blast.  We basically hung out in this awesome room (dripping with sarcasm) that consisted of 3 double beds and 2 bunk beds, and played games, .  Of course, we played games in the room because the weather sucked, but it didn’t really matter. 

So I’m now back in the house, just met my host “uncle” (I guess) and found out we’re teaching at the Dar Chabab this next week as well (it was only supposed to be last week, and we had our big good-byes, etc.).  So now all I want to do is rest (…got about 4 hours of sleep), but we need to get together and plan our lessons for the kids (or at least plan tomorrow’s lesson).

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).

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