Thanksgiving...Moroccan style. This Wednesday was l3id kbir in the Muslim world, and what a l3id it was. The streets of Ouaouizarht, and every other town, ran red with blood as each and every family celebrated by slaughtering its own sheep. The tradition comes from the story in the Koran (and in the Bible and Torah) of when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac, and, seeing that Abraham consented, God sent him a ram to kill instead. The point of the story is, of course, those who practice absolute obediance to the will of God will be favored. Although the [View Full Entry]

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Most experiences have their ups and downs. Morocco (especially Ouaouizarth) has mountains and valleys. My last two blogs were kind of depressing because, frankly, I was a little down. As I've probably told many of you, most of my favorite albums are the ones I hated the first time I listened to them. The more you listen, though, the more you hear, and sometimes you have to listen to something at the right time or after the right experience before it means something to you. Living in a new home, particularly an economically depressed one, can be pretty hard, especially if [View Full Entry]

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Dear Friends and Family, It came to my attention just before Christmas that Michael Cleary, a member of my graduating class at Hamilton (2003) was killed in action in Iraq last week. Michael was a First Lt. in the Army with a pending promotion to the rank of Captain. In addition to many friends and admirers in the Hamilton community he also had a fianceé whom he was planning to marry this coming February. Although I did not know Mike well I remember him as a kind and intelligent young man with high ideals and strength of character; the type of [View Full Entry]

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(Welcome new people! If you don't know what this blog is all about please check my previous entries for a full explaination.) Well it's official. I've been here a long time, but I still have a loooooong way to go. The first 3 1/2 weeks in site have been incredible in every sense of the word. It's been fun, sad, interesting, depressing, educational, frustrating, satisfying, and most of all exhausting. On an almost daily basis I run the entire gamut of human emotions as my mental state attempts to stabilize itself despite the endless influx of new data to process. Attempting [View Full Entry]

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Took my language test this morning. Haven't gotten the final results yet but I feel like it went well. All I had to do was sit in a room and talk to the tester for about 15 mintues in Moroccan Arabic, and he seemed pretty happy with my ability so I think they're going to let me stay ;) We've all been studying pretty hard in the last week to get ready for the test, but, more importantly, in less than a week we depart for our respective sites to begin work! Crazy! Last week I got to see my town [View Full Entry]

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I'm back! Community based training is officially over and we're moving onto the next phase of training. Before I get ahead of myself, though, let me tell you about all that has happened recently. Just before we last left Immouzzer we were treated to a royal visit of sorts. The king of Morocco, with his whole motorcade (which includes about 40 cars, motorcycles, and helicopters) passed through Immozzer and drove right past our compound. We got word of it about 10 minutes before he came through so we were all out on the sidewalk with a big Peace Corps sign waving [View Full Entry]

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Wow! It's been a long time since I wrote anything substantial here. Before I go into details about what I've been doing, there's just a little more business that I have to take care of. First, the Peace Corps is extremely wary of sensitive material, and particularly since Morocco is a conservative Muslim country with many proud and beautiful traditions concerning religious and family values, the PC doesn't want to risk any offense to our host country national counterparts and/or their communities. As a result, any deragotory or culturally insensative remarks, pictures, etc. that can be c [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog! Hope everyone found it easily enough. From now on I will be posting messages here so I won't clog up your e-mail inboxes anymore, so if you want to know what's going on with me feel free to check here anytime. I will still be checking my e-mail regularly so if you want to send me a message that you don't want everyone else to read, please do so. Otherwise, I believe, everything you post here will be availble to be read by anyone who checks this blog. I'm going to add my previous e-mails [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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"Kif Darkum?" That's Darija (Moroccan Arabic) for "How are you all?" For those of you who are new to this mailing list, salamu alaykum! Someone else on this list gave me your e-mail address either because I was looking for it or because they thought you would be interested. Just so that everybody is on the same page, I'm currently in Morocco training for two years of service in the Peace Corps as a Youth/Community Development muttawih (volunteer). I thought you all might want to know what I'm up to, so I created this mailing list to keep you updated and [View Full Entry]

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