"Crash" strikes again

My New Years Resolution is to keep my blog updated inspired by all the e-mails, Facebook messages and wall posts urging me to update it. So, I am trying to be better.

Last week I was playing a game of keep-away with a few of the kids at the Dar Chebab, which turned into boys vs. girls and realized that I am really out of shape. I lived up to my nickname (Crash) when I managed to bruise my foot and jam my finger but I had a lot of fun doing it. I kinda was wishing they had some ice though.

Things at the Dar Chebab are constantly up and down. I have some students that come on a regular basis and others who just show up when they have a dire question or the power is out and there is nothing else to do. Since most days both classrooms at the Dar Chebab are occupied I am often left sitting in the office with kids crowding my desk, which is not an ideal teaching situation. Last Tuesday I though I would try something different, Tic-Tac-Toe! I had 3 separate games, one to review past tense irregular verbs, one for irregular plurals, and one for opposites. In order to put an X or an O they had to give the correct past tense, plural form, or opposite. It was also a good review of vocabulary. Hicham (one of my students) wanted to take my Tic-Tac-Toe boards to play with his friends. Overall I think it was a very successful activity and I actually found something that I could use while sitting at a desk that doesn't involve me being a walking dictionary! I was very excited and actually felt accomplished! I used it again the next day with a group of beginner students using numbers, I taught them the numbers as we played and it was a lot of fun.

A few days ago, I was talking to my parents on Skype and my neighbor Zuhir came in. He is a very sweet eight-year-old boy who is also the cousin of my host family. After admiring my computer, he noticed that he could see himself in my Skype screen. At first I think he just liked seeing his face on the screen and made some faces but then my dad started making funny faces back at him and that continued for about 10 minutes while my mom and I were talking. It was really cute. When I was leaving the cyber, I ran into him again and he made me play hopscotch with him.

A Blog Entry for the New Year

I am still a Peace Corps Volunteer and I am still in Morocco. I’m terrible at updating my blog. So what am I doing? I work Tuesday thru Saturday at the Dar Chebab from 2:30-6pm. Some days I teach English, other days I play ping-pong, soccer, or volleyball with the kids. I like tutoring at the Dar Chebab although lately with most of the girls it feels like I'm a walking dictionary. I tried teaching English classes but with the school schedules and my limited access to a classroom with a whiteboard it is hard to set up a schedule.

At the end of December I was walking the post office and I see all the gendarmes (police) in front of it. I didn’t really think anything of it but then the post office was closed for a week and I began to wonder because I was hoping for some packages: two from Peace Corps (one with books and the other with the always important prescriptions) and one from my mom (was really craving some gum from the US it just isn’t the same here). I started to ask questions and found out the postmaster had gotten arrested for stealing over 4 million dirhams. After a few more questions I found out that all the mail was stopping a few towns over, a town that by public transportation is not all that easy to get to. So don’t worry, I still get mail so please don’t stop sending it. I love getting mail and it makes the trip to the post office worthwhile.

In the beginning of January, an association (Youth for Youth) from a nearby city came with the Delege of Youth and Sports and put on a program at the Dar Chebab. The great thing is they were all in their early 20s and although we spoke a mix of broken English and Darija I actually felt like an adult. In my site, I'm usually with a group of old women or groups of 13 year olds. At the end of the day when they were handing out the prizes I got to be one of the "adults" handing to the kids and congratulating them (the others were my acting mudir, the presidents of the associations present, and the delege) I felt important until they wanted me to say a few words and I completely froze. I finally had gotten better at public speaking in the states but here being unprepared in a different language I was not ready for it. It all worked out and the delege talked for me.

I am hoping to move into my own house soon. It’s a small apartment above an internet café with two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. I’m excited but now I’m just waiting for the landlord to fix the roof before I can officially start moving stuff in. I can’t believe that the first time I will be living on my own I am in a different country.

I have a small notebook that I write down new words or phrases I learn. I was reviewing my notebook with one of my counterparts at the Dar Chebab when she pointed out that my notebook was a compilation of 5 different languages if you include English. Most of the words were in Darija (Moroccan Arabic), then French, then Tashelhit (the local Berber dialect of Arabic) and finally Modern Standard Arabic. It’s times like these I really wish I could find a tutor to help work all of this out, so I’m not mixing languages every time I talk.

And that's it!