community based training

last week we spent the first of four weeks at our community based training site. we have one language culture faciliator and five other trainees. i love my group and am getting close to some of the other trainees. i went to a semi-rural village a little over an hour outside of azilal. we had intensive language/culture training for eight hours a day and then we would go home to our host families at night. i love my family. i live with my host mother and father, their son, their sons wife and two children, and their other daughter. the son and daughter (my host brother and sister) both speak a little english, and the daughter is a french teacher in a nearby town. it was an adventure. i learned to properely do my laundry (they got a kick out of the way i was doing it before). my host nephew wanted to play straje all the time (which is pretty much like checkers until your piece gets kinged, then it basically does whatever it wants, it took me a few games to catch on, then i won every time). i learned to cook soup and tagine (the main moroccan dish) pretty well. my langugage skills got much better last week (unfortuantly, i haven't been studying much this week.. hopefully i haven't lost too much). we did numbers, time, family, food, and the major verbs. i'm having a lot of trouble pronouncing one of the letters, which unfortuantly is used in every "i" conjegation of the verb. hopefully i'll get the hang of it. i still have trouble listening and responding to people's questions, but that should come with time. my host sister and sister-in-law understand me pretty well. i was able to go through all of my pictures and explain them in tashelheit. i was also able to compare some things in morocco to things in the states. this town that i'm in has close to twenty hanuts (like cornerstores) that they can get everything from. and i explained that we only have things in grocery stores and no real corner stores. i also explained that everyone has to have cars because things are so far away and we don't have a taxi system. i also explained my fear in riding in taxies (on the way back to azilal our taxi driver was going almost 130 kmph on winding roads and driving on the wrong side... it's pretty typical). during my trip i visited a nearby waterfall with my family, and my class and i went to the suk (market). my family told me that next time i come i can cook american food, which i look forward to.

we returned to azilal last thursday for more technical training. since then i have been learning about latrines and water sanitiation systems. i'm really looking forward to getting to my site and being able to get working on projects. i also had my first henna done in country. one of our staff members did a great design on my hands.

tomorrow is the Prophet's birthday, so it's a big celebration in morocco, and we get a special breakfast of traditional food. it will be lots of fun. then, on wednesday, we leave again for our CBT site for another week of intensive language.