Rabat

The past few days have been pretty amazing. Rabat is a big city on the coast and is very modernized. The home base where we are staying is an amazing house...very nice part of town, just 5 minutes drive from the city. The house we are staying in was previously the house of the spanish embassy...so yeah, we are pretty much living it up. Don't worry though; we are brought back to reality every time we have to do the dishes;) Yesterday, after orientation, I went to the medina with Noor and Heather, two awesome volunteers. We had a great time and ending up buying some very sweet scarfs. The scarf shop owner was a really sweet guy and he was watching the football game while we were in the shop, which inspired us to want to go to a football game. Apparently they only cost a few dollars to go to, so perhaps one of these days.

Funny story though...on the way to the medina, we were walking around the kasbah and some guy was trying to be our tour guide and we were trying to get rid of him (they act all nice like they will show you where to go, and at the end ask for an insane amount of money in return) but he just wasn't taking no for an answer. We were trying to really politely decline in french and he wasn't listening, when Noor pipes in with "nous sommes bien"...intending "we are good and don't need your help" but instead meaning "we are good...(insert the Friends tv show line that you say after fortune cookies fortunes....sorry but I must keep this pg)"...the guy just stopped, burst out laughing and said "have a great day!" ahhh, good times.

Today was the first day of placement, and I am volunteering again at an orphanage. Quite different from the one in Tanzania, this place is huge and has over 200 kids. They are taken care of pretty well and had an amazing lunch of potato/green bean/chicken stew with yogurt for dessert. We took the kids outside to play and I ended up playing "soccer" with a bowling pin and small plastic ball with two of the handicapped kids and another volunteer. It was a blast. I ran into a french family who had adopted two boys from the orphanage 15 years ago, and they were all there today visiting it. They were some of the two happiest boys I've ever seen...they loved playing with the kids.

We had a tour of the city today and went to see the old roman rooms (chesbah). They were pretty cool..apparently the ancient city was wiped out from an earthquake a long time ago. The weather has been amazing here so far...sunny and 70s during the day with the bluest sky ever. Made for some amazing photos.

We spent the evening figuring out weekend trips. The other volunteers rock...everyone is so positive and happy and excited about life. We are going to go to the Sahara this weekend and ride camels out to tents in the sahara and camp overnight. It should be amazing. and next weekend, I think I'm going to head back to Essaouira and soak up the sun on the beach some more, eating the most amazing fish ever;) eric, another volunteer, wants me to go windsurfing with him, so we shall see...perhaps I will try...essaouira is, after all, known as one of the best windsurfing spots. aaahhh, life is good;) hehe, not trying to rub it in or anything, but I hope you all are enjoying the lovely fall weather right now=)

I miss you all and can't wait to see you all!

Fes

hola,

My last day in Chefchaouen was very relaxing. It rained for the better part of the day, so the canadians and I spent most of the day trying out the various cafes trying to determine the one with the comfiest chairs and best tea/coffee. We grabbed some snacks from the street vendors...nuts and raisins, snails in a salty soup, and some sort of hummus concoction. The locals love the snails, and gather around the cart using safety pins to grab the snails out of the shells. We wandered around the medina and wiled away some time in various carpet shops, mooching some free tea...it was brilliant. We had dinner at our favorite carpet family's house. We brought some moroccan desserts and pomegranate...mmm, delicious. Dinner consisted of chicken, dates, lemon peels, and eggs in a saffrony sauce with bread....Moroccan style, and with about 10 guys centered around a dish, it was serious business. the food went fast, and there was little to no conversation until the food was gone.

The next day I hopped on a bus to Fes, and spent the night at a youth hostel in the nouvelle ville. It's a pretty westernized city and looked very similar to back home. Met some cool kids from Poland and the next morning I headed into the Medina. Fes is an ancient town and has two medinas...it is ginormous. It is a huge university town and has ancient quranic universities dating back to around 1200 ad. There were some beautiful buildings scattered throughout the maze of streets. Some guy who claimed he wasn't a tour guide showed me around town. He showed me a lot of the local craftsmen at work. I saw an old palace that is now a sort of ghetto where a bunch of poor moroccans live...even though the palace is falling apart, it is still not too shabby of a place to live. Apparently some German guy bought the whole thing and is planning on fixing it up. I went to see the tanneries, which are pretty much amazing. They take the skin from sheep and goats and such and turn it into leather for making goods. It was pretty amazing to see. The leather products were so soft and such great quality. I was then sneakily ushered into his home where I was fed tea and fresh crepes and olives, and then hennaed up...no choice there, they just kind of grabbed my hand and went to work. Turned out pretty cool though, so no complaints there.

I did a bit of shopping in the souks and then grabbed my bags from the hotel. On the way out, I ran into the canadians (who left chaouen the day after me) and we had some more tea and snacks. I then took the train to Rabat, the capital of Morocco, and went to the CCS homebase. All the volunteers were gradually filtering in from random parts of the world, so Saturday was mostly spent unpacking and getting to know everyone. So far, they are a pretty sweet group of people. Should be a fun next couple of weeks.

hope alls well back home. look forward to hearing from you all!

Chefchaouen

I am currently in a small town near the atlas mountains in northern morocco. It's called chefchaouen and the houses here are a beautiful white with various shades of blue for accents. It's quite lovely to walk around. The people are very friendly and I've been hanging out with two brothers from canada a lot. We have made friends with a family that sells berber carpets and we go over to their shop every night for tea. (I think the fact that we all bought some carpets from them helped a bit;) They invited us to dinner tonight so it should be cool. They are a very entertaining (aka crazy)group of people and have even done some dancing for us...quite cool. Their entertainment primarily consists of making fun of the younger boy who works there who they call Mr. bean. he is about 15 and jumps around like the energizer bunny, knocking over tables with tea glasses all the time. fun kid. one of the guys has all these crazy sayings that he's picked up from tourists, like "plastic fantastic" and others that probably aren't too appropriate. some guys have given him some pretty good pickup lines though that are hilarious.

most of the town speaks arabic and spanish, so it is a bit difficult to communicate well, but some people understand a bit of english. It is a fairly cheap town...we grabbed lunch of fresh bread, fresh goat cheese, green olives and dates for not quite $2. and last night, I had a really good sandwhich for less than a dollar...they put everything on it including tuna, salami, noodles, fries, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, ketchup...you name it. It was amazingly quite good, but that may have been due to the fact that I hadn't eaten much all day;)

before coming here i spent a fairly miserable day in tangier, the port town close to spain. it's a pretty shady city and most people try to get out of there as fast as possible. not the best place to be. essaouira was amazing though. met some really cool people and had a great time. on fridays the shops all close down and people get together with friends and family to have a lunch of couscous. I met some guys and they took me into their shop and I had some authentic couscous...a huge, heaping tray that we all ate out of with spoons. It was delicious. I met a huge reggae/hippy fisherman who was pretty sweet. he took me to his friends spice shop where I had the most amazing tea ever. no sugar added, but it was delicious. they put about 11 different spices in it, and it is out of this world. he showed me where the locals go to eat fish, and it was soooooo good. they buy the fresh fish at the market, and then just off the market is a little restaurant where they take the fish you just bought and grill it ith some spices. they then give you bread, olives, a cucumber/tomato salad, and some spicy red pepper sauce that is delicious. probably the best meal I've had in a long time. the whole thing, including the fresh fish, was about $5.

anyways, I'm gonna head out now, but hope everything is going well back home. Take care and big hugs!

Essaouira

I left marrakech yesterday and took the bus to essaouira...a lovely and fairly relaxing town on the ocean knozn for good windsurfing. It is a smaller town but the people are less in your face compared to marrakech: lots of european visitors here, and apparenlty not too many americans journey to these parts. which is sad because it is a beautiful country. I think I may have to move here one day. the ocean and beaches are beautiful; there are mountains and the sahara; and on top of that the towns are really fun to explore: the big ones at least are comprised of the old medina which is a labyrinth of narrow streets with lots of shops and souks and character; and then the nouvelle ville which is the newer and modern part of town that is similar to an american town although no sky scrapers.

arman, you would love it here: the guys play football on the beach practically all day long and apparently on the weekends they have tournaments that anyone is open to join. its so pleasant here that ive decided to extend my visit a few days to relax in the sun. apparently the north is a bit more intrusive, which after marrakech i dont knoz if ill be ready for it;)

morocco is quite a change from tanzania; it is much more modern and built up/ the public transportation probably beats that of mn: they ahve a lot going for themselves; but apparently it is very difficult to find jobs here; even if you have a college degree: the food; thank goodness; is much better also: lots of good french and italian food: moroccan cuisine definitely trumps that of tanzania:::i was getting really tired of bananas and relatively bland food: wish you were here aunty; i know you wouold have loved it: they speak much slower also than the french; so it is a lot easier to understand them; anyways; maintenant je vais à la plage: à bientot!

morocco

oofffta: last week was a bit crazy as i was finishing my last week in tanzania; i went to a dispensary )like a clinic) and a catholic primary school: very cool to see: the lady at the dispensary was so kind and taught me a lot about how they function: i got to see the, do a test for hiv; and luckily the boys zere all negative: she spent about 45 min talking to the, though first about all sorts of diseases and what they do and hox to prevent the,: they were asking lots of questions and treated her with so much respect; i was quite amazed b!c that never happens in the us: the doc is usually in and out in 2 min:

anyhoo; i left early sat ,orning for morocco and after a mere 30 hours in planes!airports; i finally arrived in casablanca and slept for the next 18 hours straight: you are probably wondering zhy im using such crazy punctuation:::im using a very frustrating keyboard right noz with a ,ix of arabic and french letters and my brain cant handle so much crazness: btw; the period is too difficult to use; so im choosing to abstain; thus you get this:

i spent the last tzo days in casa and went to the third biggest mosque in the world: complete zith a retractable roof; turkish bath; and a,azing washing room: it was very neat: part of it was built over te ocean and it can hold 25000 peopla at a time: i was lucky enough to see the roof open::::apparently it rarely happens and the guide was quite surprised: i managed to get quite lost until i found out i was pretty close to the hostel: the old medinas can be quite confusing at first because they are just a maze of narrow streets and no signs or anything:

i took the bus this morning to marrakesh; and it is absolutely incredible: im staying in a really cute hotel in the medina 5 min away fro, an open square where they have snake char,ers; a huge souk )bazaar type thing); acrobats; story tellers and ,uch more: its quite fun to get lost in the crowd: i bought some amazing olives:::1 kilo for about a dollar: they are oh so tasty: anyhoo; im off to explore some more: take care:

The last week has flown by with many interesting stories, but given the unreliable electricity and my desire to go sit in the sun right now, I will only tell a few. I can now add malaria meds to the list of medications I have taken. Don't worry, they don't think I actually had malaria, but it was more of a precautionary thing, since I had many of the symptoms. Not a very pleasant experience, but I am back to normal now and I got to experience firsthand what it's like to be a patient in a Tanzanian hospital...a private and good one too, at that. To begin with, the doctor sat at a desk in a room with other people around and "background info" consisted of name, age and symptoms. They get right to the point;) She then handed me a slip of paper and told me to get my blood tested in a room across the courtyard. I got my finger pricked and watched the nurse put my blood on a slide. About 30 min later, the doc called me back in and handed me another slip of paper and told me to get those meds at the desk around the corner. She then said goodbye, at which point I was like "holdup, what do I have and what are these meds for?!" She told me the names of the medications (big help there, I could see them on the paper and still had no clue what they were for) and then briefly told me they couldn't see any parasites but that since I had all the symptoms of malaria they were putting me on the meds just in case. The whole experience cost 18,000 TZ shillings, or about $15. A funny thing happened though. While waiting for the test results, a friend that was with me was told that she had a phone call. She'd never been there before and really didn't think it was for her, but they kept insisting so she went to talk on the phone. Turned out it was someone that spoke broken english and she had no clue what they wanted. Ibrahim (our program manager that had taken us there) laughed and told us that they probably thought since the person spoke english they wanted to talk to a mzungo and randomly chose Anna.

Nick, a fellow volunteer, took the daladala (local bus that gets crazy packed..we're talking like 25 people in a bus a bit larger than a minivan) back from town. He had just gotten a bunch of cash, and on his way off, his wallet got yanked. When he was trying to pay for the ride, he realized his wallet was missing and went back to look for it. Some guy on the bus told him that some guy had grabbed it and ran off into a house close by. Nick was a bit confused and had no clue who to look for, so the guy got out of the daladala, and went into the house. He came out with a bunch of other guys dragging a guy who gave Nick's wallet back to him. The locals then proceeded to crowd around the thief and started kicking and beating him with rocks. Nick at first was shocked and tried to tell them everything was ok, at which they told him everything was ok and to leave and that "he gets what he deserves." Apparently the stealing used to be a big problem and the police did little about it so the people took things into their own hands. Luckily Nick was in a village, because if it had happened in Moshi, they would have put a tire around the thief and burned him alive. Crazy eh?

Last night we had an interesting experience also. We went to a cultural dance put on by a school here (turned out it wasn't so cultural, but it was fun nontheless). Towards the end, another volunteer realized her camera was gone....it turned into a very awkward end to the night and the poor kids were very quiet and uncomfortable. It was kind of a bummer that it had to end that way. As we were driving off, we saw a bunch of kids going into the nearby houses, carrying a torch...hopefully nothing happened.

Last Friday was my last day at the orphanage....Mama Lynn, the Brit who runs the place is a crazy religious lady and she randomly told us we couldn't come back one day. We think she's up to some pretty shady stuff, and doesn't want us around cuz we ask lots of questions. Anyways, I posted some pics of the kids up online, so you should take a look. They are the cutest kids. Today I spent the morning at the Mawenzi hospital, and saw an appendectomy. Very interesting to see....there was only a surgeon and a nurse (luckily the kids dad was a doctor, so he helped out some giving injections). The kid was only given local anesthesia and braved it very well. Sadly, it reminded me of doing surgery on the rats in lab...same type of tools and very minimal. No monitoring vitals either. The only difference was they sewed up all the different layers separately, rather than together like with rats. The surgeon told me that if I was here for 3 weeks and watched them do c-sections, I could do them by the end, no problem. He was joking...I hope. The surgeons here claim that they see more complicated surgeries than back home, because the patients wait til it gets really bad before going to the hospital. Whatever the case, it is amazing that they conduct surgeries with the equipment they have. Mama Betty told me Tanzania is 400 years behind the US technologically speaking, and that def seems to be the case in the hospitals...maybe not 400, but def a few.

Anyhoo, the sun is beckoning me and I'm (reluctantly;) giving in. Take care and audios amigos.