Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Vacation from my site (sort of)

August 24, 2009

So it's been a long time since I've updated this here blog, and a lot has gone on, so let me fill you in a little. In the middle of July I moved into my own house, and it took about two weeks to get some things in order. The last week of July I went to two weeks of technical training. It was nice to see all of the people that I arrived in country with, and the hotel we stayed at felt like little America. The two weeks of training consisted of 4 two hour sessions with meals surrounding class. In the afternoon we'd walk around the town, which has about 45,000 people. I spent a miniature fortune on Magnum bars, which are the best ice cream bar EVER! I had my 26th birthday during training, a day shared with my doppleganger friend (same birth date, but a pretty opposite person from me).
After training I went back to my town and spent a lot of time by myself. At training I mainly spoke english, so my tamazight got pretty rusty. Use it or lose it I guess. It has been nice to get comfortable with my house, and with cooking and all the chores that go along with having your own house. This past weekend I had a very fun little vacation. It was a four day weekend in Morocco (Thursday and Friday were Moroccan holidays), so I went north with a group of 6 other volunteers to Chefchauen which is a very beautiful city about 3 hours south of Tangier. It was a pretty relaxing little vacation, travel aside. I spent Thursday traveling about 4 hours north, but waited until pretty late to get a taxi to my friend's site. Friday morning we left early and took a cab one hour north to Fes, waited for 3 hours for a bus, and then took a pretty comfortable bus 4 hours northwest to Chefchauen. The city is known for it's medina, which is painted white and shades of blue. The town has only 40,000 or so people, so the copious amounts of tourists were much more noticeable than in Fes, which is much larger. While waiting to eat dinner, we were surprised to find out that Ramadan would be starting Saturday instead of Sunday. That made Saturday pretty interesting. Some cafes were open for tourists, but most of the shops were closed all day. We met a group of 4 other volunteers at the hotel we stayed at, which was a pleasant surprise. It's always fun to hear more experienced volunteer's stories of their service. I made it to Fes the next day but ended up getting stuck there for the night, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I stayed with two other volunteers on the roof of a hotel in the medina. We explored the streets around the time people were breaking their fast, which was interesting, the streets were basically empty, and all the clothing shops were closed. That medina is a tourist trap during non-Ramadan daytime, so it was cool to see it empty. This morning I tried to fast while traveling the 5 hours south to home (pretty difficult to not drink water while trapped in a hot taxi). I felt I had to hydrate upon returning home, so I was unsuccessful in my first attempt to fast. I still “broke fast” when it got dark with my favorite snack shop owner.
I have posted pictures of my trip to Chefchauen, so check those out. I will write again about my first Ramadan experiences another time.