Sunday, April 17, 2011

appleutely!

It is apple season in morocco!  To celebrate, several of the girls in my arabic learning group and I made an apple pie (or an equivalent....okay it wasn't a pie, but it was apple and it wasn't covered in oil, with bread or rice, therefore it was amazing.).

animals in morocco:

So we all know about the chickens in the bit lama, Hasak (bathroom, i'm sorry for speaking of dirty things, in arabic), but now it is time for the cats.  So my family has two cats and the mama cat just had kittens! So we have three little kittens that are about two weeks old.  They are pretty cute, but I'm glad I'm leaving my host family relatively soon and will not be forced to adopt one!

Anyway, Spring is in full force over hear which is really nice, but it means one thing....animals.  There have been many more critters around and I just do not love that.  For example, the other day I had a lizard in my room.  It was on the wall by the light switch and it made it very tricky to turn off the lights to go to sleep.

Thennnnn one morning, at 5:00 am I was woken with a start!  Now, as poor Stephanie Wiezbenski can attest, I am not the best sleeper and anytime there is a noise or movement I wake up, sit up and gasp.   and that is exactly what I did.  At 5:00 am the dad cat from my house was fighting a neighborhood tom cat in my room, right next to my bed!  It really startled me, so much so that I screamed, thinking there was a robber or something in my room.  When I realized it was just cats, I freaked out just as much and dove under my blankets thinking "don't get rabies, don't get rabies, don't get rabies, pleeeeeeease!!"   Now, I have been fully vaccinated, so that is a relief.  Anyway, after all the commotion, I kept waiting for my host family to come to my rescue!  As such a damsel in distress, i thought it would be natural for someone to escort those unfriendly cats back to the great outdoors of the desert.  No one came.  I had to wait, under my blankets, for a good twenty minutes until the fighting (and it was a loud and intense fight) cats found their way back out from under my door.  

In the morning when I went out to breakfast my host father sat next to me and said "meow, meow......AHHHHHHHH"  and then laughed like he had never laughed before.  This happened on repeat until I left for school.  From now on, any time the cats come in the room my host dad laughs and shoos them away.  

Clearly I'm becoming one with nature around here.

Anyway, today I learned some VERY EXCITING news!  We were told where our final site placement will be.  On monday we are traveling to visit our sites for the week!  I will be spending the next two years in a small town in the mountains.   I'm in the Mident province and actually about 20k's outside of a small city named Mident.  My town has never had a Peace Corps Volunteer before.  There are about 1500 residents and most are farmers.  They grow a lot of apples and figs!  ladies of 101: Do you know what that means?? apple day 2011, Morocco!  done.

I'm feeling very pleased with my site.  Of course, I can say that because I haven't been there and know three things about it:  they grow apples, its 20k's from the market town (the small city that hosts a weekly market where people buy all their goods and supplies) and its never had a PCV before.  I'm hoping for the best and will let you know more next week, enshallah.  :)

books read: 2
camels: 4
ankles: 2, but it was in the city
number of times I've embraced my non-existent jewish roots and said Hello as Shalom rather than Salam: 3.  


Missing and loving you all.

xoxo 

1 comment:

  1. Apples and Living Things! Love these stories Finn Finn. I am sure that if you woke up like how you awoke every time I used to crawl into my loft bed (until I got smart enough to learn to leap into it from my rolling desk chair) then you scared those cats just as much as they scared you!

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