Final Site Visit

Hello readers,

It has now been well over a month and training seems to be going well.  The dogs are still annoying as ever, but that should soon change.  On Friday, I was given the location of my final site, and I am pretty excited.  For security reasons I will not include the name of the city, however I was told that this city was new to the Peace Corps.  Next week, I will be spending a week at my final site with another host-family.  I have to take a train to the site, which should be fun.  Also, I heard that the city is fairly large.

In all, I will be able to check out the city, meet the Artisana association that I will be working with, and get acquainted with my surroundings.  I will make sure to take many pictures and post them at the end of next week.  In the meantime, here are more pictures of my training site and Azrou.

Thanks,

Week Four

Hello readers,

Well, I am now completing my fourth week in Morocco, and things are going pretty well.  My Darija is getting much better, and I am making more conversations with the locals.  Last Sunday, I jogged out of my town for about seven miles, and enjoyed every minute of it.  The road that I was jogging on was no wider than the Burk Gillman trail in Washington, so it felt like I was running on a regular trail.  The scenery was amazing.  Unfortunately, I had to turn around due to a bunch of dogs.  Luckily the dogs were afraid of fake rocks, or at least some of them were.

My group and I began performing some business and operations analyses on a local association in our town, to prepare for future business analysis procedures at our final sites.  The Artisans here are very talented.  The association even taught a little bit of web technologies.

Once I get to my final site, I will be meeting with a local Artisan association to determine their organizational needs, and institute a project or projects to meet their needs, and hopefully transform the project into a sustainable program.  This is no small feet given the language and cultural barriers.  To imagine, in the states, even in an organization where everyone speaks the same language, projects seem to never come to fruition.  If I can execute a worthwhile program here in Morocco, I guess this will be a great accomplishment.  I have to applaud the current and past PCV's who have successfully implemented worthwhile projects and programs for the Artisan's here in Morocco.

Anyway, as time goes by I will continue to comment on my business development activities.  I am here for two years so time is really just a frame of mind.  That is about it for new news, just lots of training and cultural immersion with a few crazy dogs on the side - ha ha.

Thanks,

First Week

Hello readers,

I think I am finally finding my voice for blog posts.  I usually do not write journals, so my posts may appear a little dry.  Hopefully this will change as I progress through the months.

Anyway, my group and I have successfully completed a full week of training, and are steadily completing our second week.  Training is going very well.  We are learning Darija at a very fast pace.  Some days, we will go out to the market and try out our Darija, however our accents really inhibit our capacity to bargain.  Also, we spend time speaking with random strangers, in order to hone our language skills.  I think what really helps us learn Darija is our daily interactions with our host families.  Everyday, I am able to have much more in-depth conversations with my host family, although I revert to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) often.  It is amazing to me how common it is for Moroccan families to speak and read Darija, MSA, and French all within the same households.

I am finally getting acclimated to my new home.  During a typical day, I will wake up at 6:00 AM and run for an hour.  I then take a bucket-shower, eat breakfast, and go to training by 8:00 AM.  Training gruelingly goes until 6:00 PM.  After training, I head back to my host family's house and practice my Darija.  During Sundays, my group and I get free time to do other things.  The city is surrounded by miles and miles of foot hills and magnificent ridges.  This Sunday, a few of my group members and I are going to do some serious hiking.

I haven't experienced anything too negative except for kids throwing rocks at me and another group member.  The kids were around 6 or 8 years old.  I almost turned around to chase the kids, but decided to just grin and bare it.  The Peace Corps briefed us on situations like this.  Another interesting encounter or situation that had occurred more than once was the locals not believing that I am from the US.  They assume that I am from Africa.  In my opinion, I think US media is basically transmitting crap to other countries.  I've seen the commercials played here in Morocco, and they are just grossly ridiculous (i.e. they do not portray an accurate representation of the US).  Oh well, I suppose this is an issue within the US, as well.  Other than that, things are going steadily, albeit incredibly slow.

Thanks,