red sand and blue skies

i have been in azilal for four days now. the first day was my birthday. the trainers gave me a wonderful birthday cake to share and sang me happy birthday in both english and arabic (they started to in spanish, but by then it was getting kind of ridiculous..) azilal is a beautiful area, 4000 ft elevation in the middle of the atlas mountains. you can see snow covered mountains contrasted by the bright red sand on the ground. there have been completly blue skies every day and wonderfully clear skies at night.

yesterday we had eight hours of arabic script. that was tough, even worse that i don't remember it. i have been walking (sometimes jogging if we get ambitious) every morning at 6:30am, it makes the day much better.

last night we started a game of soccer with the moroccan kids in the area. it was great to be able to share one game that we all knew. we struggled with picking teams (some people in our group are fluent in french, which has helped), but once we started playing it was a lot of fun. i learned the arabic words for "hurry up" and "go go go" as well as the french words for "where's my defense?!" (everyone likes to play offense and no one will stay on the defense side).

i can't believe we have only been in morocco a week, it seems like it's been a month. as americans, we still get laughed at while walking down the street, but i think i've been used to that.

next week is our first field trip, we get to visit current peace corps volunteers at their sites. i think it will be a great learning experiance and a chance to get a feel for what my life will be like when i actually get to my assigned site.

anyway, i will post pictures as soon as i can (i think i have to download a program to do it, so patience patience). i really appreciate all the emails of support from the states that i've recieved, it's meant a lot to me during the transition.

p.s. my computers in french, and i can't find the spell check. my apologies.