March 31, 2009
The title starts to tell the story. Those of you who know me well know that I absolutely HATE bananas. I was forced to eat a banana in first grade (thanks Mrs. Woodfill), and I’ve avoided them ever since. The smell nauseates me, so I’ve stayed away from them for about 19 years. That all changed last week when I was given an orange and a banana for my post dinner “snack”. I didn’t want to turn it down, which is silly because the Peace Corps people said that it won’t insult your host family to turn down food you don’t like, so I ate it. I can honestly say that I had no idea what they actually tasted like anymore. I can also say that I still don’t like ‘em. I surprisingly kept it down, smiled, and excused myself towards my room. I think that my worst nightmare would be to be forced to participate in a banana eating contest to save a loved one’s life. I would probably have to say my goodbyes to that loved one, because there’s no way I could stomach another damn banana. The next night was interesting, because I had to use my very limited language skills to try to convey that that one banana was the first one I had eaten in 19 years. I’m now 6 days banana free.
Anyway, enough about my psychosis regarding the devil fruit. Things have been going really well here in central Morocco. I’m still enjoying everything that I’m learning, and am finding that I can actually excel at learning a new language. That said, I’m probably going to plateau on my progress at some point in the next 3 or 4 months, but that’s to be expected I guess for Peace Corps volunteers. Peace Corps Morocco is trying out a new format for training, so we are the lucky group that gets to deal with the frustrations that come with being the first set of trainees. I am liking, however, the chance to give lots of feedback. Past training groups had every other week with a host family for the first 11 weeks of training. We are staying with host families for 8 weeks straight, which will give us a better opportunity to learn the language, and then we are sworn in as volunteers. We have 4 hours of language a day, a big delicious lunch, 2 coffee and tea breaks, and then 4 hours of technical and cultural lessons. There is a lot of technical stuff to go over, so at times it feels overwhelming, but I think we’ll benefit from it. After we’re sworn in we go to our assigned sites (home, if you will, for two years) for a couple months before meeting up at a central location for 2 weeks of technical training. This will allow us to integrate a little bit into our new communities and find out what sort of projects we can participate in. The 2 weeks of training after early integration should allow us to tailor our training to fit our needs and the needs of our new communities.
Ok, story time. This past weekend we weren’t allowed to go out of town, which meant more family time. It turned out to be a really cold and wet weekend. It snowed for about 24 hours straight, but nothing stuck. On Sunday I went to my language teacher’s house with another trainee and that trainee’s 20 year old host brother. The other guy and I taught the two Moroccans how to play cribbage, which delighted me, because they both like it, and we were able to practice counting in Tamazight. Another trainee came over and we watched a couple episodes of Arrested Development, which is still my favorite show. After that I was invited to a trainee’s house for tea and cake. My host family is next door neighbors to 2 other trainee’s host families, and they are really close friends. It was apparently the 17th birthday of the trainee’s host sister, so she made a zucchini bread cake with orange curd frosting. That was probably the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here. It was basically a big dance party. We watched Tamazight music videos while we drank tea and ate sweets. Eventually the girls all started dancing, and my host brother’s daughter Rabab, who is two years old, provided laughter for all. She is adorable, and watching her get excited about dancing is so funny. The 4 teenagers forced the three of us trainees to get up and dance. I will be the first to say that I can’t dance, but it’s easy to dance to Tam music. We even got the host mothers to dance. Watching my 60 year old host mother dance and correct all of our mistakes made my day.
Well, it’s probably going to be another 2 weeks before I can post again, but I’m sure I will have plenty more stories to share. I am going to try to post some more pictures. (http://picasaweb.google.com/CDReim/Week3And4?authkey=Gv1sRgCIypssD-w7b8NA#)
