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Published: December 12th 2005
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Hi everybody! I've been in the small village of Sekhinat (near the medicinal springs of Sidi Harzem) for the last week with no internet access so that's why you have't heard from me. From all the e-mails I've been getting it sounds like everyone back home is doing well and thanks for the e-mail addresses you keep sending me. This list grows a little bit each time I send out a message and hopefully I'll have everyone I want on it soon.
By the way, if you're new to this list I'm currently at the beginning of 2 years of service working as a Youth Development Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco and either I requested your e-mail from somebody, or else somebody else thougth you might be interested in getting these e-mails. If at any time you'd like to be taken off the list just let me know.
Okay now that we're all on the same page...wow! There's so much to tell that I don't even know where to begin. I've moved in with a host family in Sekhinat that has four brothers, aged, respectively, 23, 22, 17, and 15 and they've been AMAZING so far. They love to
teach me Arabic words and take me all around their town, showing me everything and quizzing me on vocab and introducing me to everybody. There's probably about 1500 people in town so it's a pretty tight-knit community, and since my brothers are pretty popular I'm now friends with all the young men. During my free time from work (more on that later) we are either eating tons of food (lots of cous cous) or walking around town and hanging out in the cafes. Its not shuma (culturally appropriate) for women to go to the cafes so only the guys hangout there. I've had lots of late night conversations there concerning everything from history to geography to economics to religion and countless other topics. They really enjoy teaching me about their country and also learning about America, so so far it's been a successful cross-cultural exchange. They also love American music so I've gotten a pretty good workout with my guitar. 😊 The parents are great too. The dad is a nurse and he's facinated by America. I gave them a book about Boston and he and I sat on the rug in their living room for about two hours looking
through it while I did my best to answer all of his questions (delievered of course in Moroccan Arabic and broken French). Both he and his wife laugh all the time about everything, so it's a pretty happy household. I got really sick for a few days and they took great care of me so I feel very close to them even though I've only lived there for a week. Actually, about half the town came by to see me while I was sick and they kept trying to squeeze into my bedroom. That was really nice and kind of humorus, except for the the fact that I just wanted to sleep. Ah, the beauty/pain of experiencing a new culture! 😊
As for Peace Corps work, I'm now primarily working with 4 other Trainees (Cara, Arturo, John, and Amanda), one current Volunteer (Tim), and our language/cultural instructor (Mohamed). Our trainee group has gotten really tight as a result of our shared culture shock, and although Tim beats me in chess at least twice a day he's otherwise been really nice and helpful. Mohamed, a native Moroccan, is a great teacher and is extremely helpful in assisting us in communicating
with our families when our limited language abilities fail us. So far we've advertised free English lessons, conducting a Language Class Placement session, and each taught one English class. I taught a beginner class on basic vocabulary, introducing simple words contextualized as opposites (i.e. left/right, stop/go, hello/goodbye) and then taught the class the song "Hello, Goodbye" by the Beatles. The song has lots of the words that they learned in the lesson so by the end of it they could understand what they were singing and it turned out to be a lot of fun (picture me in a 15' x 30' classroom playing guitar and singing with 30 Moroccans of all ages and you can pretty much get the picture).
Now we have a couple of days off to get more vaccinations so I'm back with the rest of my big group in a really nice hotel in the town of Immouzer, and then it's back to Sekhinat for another week. This is probably the last that you will hear from me for that period so everybody keep rooting for the Red Sox (and the poor Pats) and please continue to write! It's always nice to hear from
home!
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simo el amrani
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moi
oui hadi hiya bladi skhinat