after a year

oh, sorry guys. it's been a long time since i've updated anyone. my sincerest appologies. anyway, lots of exciting things have been happening.

first, i just passed my year anniversary as a volunteer. congradulations to me. one more year to go, and i have a feeling that this coming year will be even better than the last.

second, i've had some great visitors lately. my brother came to visit for three weeks. we had the chance to travel around a bit, essouaria, marrakech, and my site for about a week. then we went down to the sahara dessert and the sand dunes and took an overnight camel trek. we rode camels out for two hours, then we had the chance to sandboard and sled in the dunes (very similar to snowboarding, but well, with sand).. then we had dinner in tents in the desert, slept under the stars, and returned in the morning. it was one of my favorite trips ever.

one of my good friend, joanna is coming to visit the first week in june. i'm looking really forward to it. we're planning a trip up to the north, fez, meknes, and casablanca. i've never seen that area in moroccan, and i am excited to experiance a new part of morocco.

as far as projects, i'm currently focusing most of my energy on the solid waste managment program and the school library. i have been working closly with the technician in the local commune to plan out a trash collection system, work out a budget, and create a lasting system. i suggested a landfill system with trash collected once a week. we would put several trash receptacles in the village and promote them with various educational activities and signs. he is more interested in doing an incinarator/compost combination. while i think a landfill would be easier and more sustainable, i want this to be the communes project. although, i did try to talk him out of an incinarator, because at this point you still have to bury the ashes, and the smoke can cause a lot of health problems. so, at this point, we're looking at a compost/landfill combination. this does rely on people seperating the trash before they dispose of it, and i'm not sure how relistic it is. but the system, if it worked, would be better. when over half of the trash in compostable material, it seems like a shame to simply throw it away when compost could be used as excellent fertilizer. i'd love to see them develop this system future and sell the composted dirt generating a profit. but again, i'm not sure how plausible this is. hopefully, we'll have put together a project proposal in the next month or two and get something off the ground.

my library project is also going fairly well. i've gotten several book donations from peace corps (mostly arabic and french). while some of them are good, some are a little above the students level. i am working with the teacher to create an organization system, check-out logs, and some sort of reading promotion (book club, reading hour, etc).

that's about all for now. next month i will go up to rabat and have my mid-service medical exam. i get to find out how many parasites i have (!)... i promise i'll write another update soon.