I am now a fully fledged Peace Corps Volunteer. Today, after 63 days of constant language, culture, and basic-here-to-for-un-needed life skills training, I swore in to the United States Peace Corps. And the US Ambassador came to give us our oath; yes my friends, I'm kind of a big deal. I even had my picture taken with him, he and his wife are lovely people.
Now that I am officially a PCV I leave for my site again tomorrow but now it's for good; I don't know how often I will be qble to find a cyber in the next three months so I might not have a lot of posts until July of August. However, eventually I am going to get a small notebook type computer so after Ramadan you guys will probably hear more from me. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I had wanted to let you guys in on some of the big cultural differences here. I find them rather amusing.
1: Tide is the all powerful cleaner here. It removes tough stains from shirts, keeps the dishes sparkling clean, and some people have even been know to wash head wounds with it. That is one health concern I will be addressing.
2: Men hold hands with other men but they do not talk to women in public; parties are rather like 8th grade dances with the men on one side of the room and women on the other.
3: All parts of the body must be covered in public, this is true for men and women. But belching is completely normal wherever you may be.
4: During the month of Ramadan- they use a lunar calader so it is a deifferent time every year- everything stops and people just leave their cranky selves at home. My vote is that this is for the best.
Just some things I've noticed I'll make notes on more of them and post them as I can.
One last item of business; my mailing address has changed. Now that I have a final site I have a PO Box in mu souk town. I'm going to delete the other address so people don't try to send stuff there instead. Don't worry, anything that has been sent will be forwarded to me for the next couple of months. Although now I can get packages, dad seems to be having trouble with the US Postal system so you might see if Fed Ex or UPS is better. As far as needs I wish to impose on my dear friends to send me; books, any genre, any topic, any style. There aren't english books here so I need them from you guys. Also pictures of you guys would be nice, not to mention cheaper to send since those can be put into envelopes.
So from now on send all mail to:
Erika Pullen
BP 126
Rich 52400
Province D'Errichidia, Maroc
BP stands for Boite Postal which is French for PO Box, and to whom it may concern this is not anywhere near my home so it isn't a saftey breach to post this online.
I think that's all for now friends.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
It's just like home... only not
Sorry for the delay but not to worry I am still alive and everything is freaking awesome! So my site, hmm how to describe it... imagine Moab meets Glennwood Springs. It's totally desert surrounded by sandstone mountains; and I have a natural hot spring that's just a thirty minute bike ride from my place. My life is so hard, kind of like being on a two yaer working vacation.
I can't tell you exactly where I am for security stuff but I'm nearish a city called Rich. I will be working in the thirteen surrounding daours, too. I don't have a sbitar (clinic) in my site. The sbitar is a thirty to forty-five minute walk from my daour which makes it really inconvenient for the majority of my daours. So it seems that my next two years will be teaching people preventative healthy and basic first aid so they won't have to rely on the sbitar for everything. Also, my province (pop quiz, who remembers the name?) has a lot of PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in it b/c it's in a part of the country that gets very little attention from the Moroccan gov. (Something about an assasination attempt on the previous king.) Having so many PCVs nearby means that we all work together to help each other with projects. I have two PCVs within a fifteen km radius of me so that's really nice.
I recieved a very warm welcome from my whole community, including the local officials. I told everyoine I will be working with the sbitar and the school and they told me they would help me in anyway they could. I could not possibly have asked for a better site or better people. Although I'm going to have to work a lot on my french b/c the big city authorities, and teachers I will be working with don't speak the Berber language I learned. They only speak Darija (Moraccan Arabic) and French. I already know the basics of French so I'm going to work on that rather than starting all over with Arabic.
There was one surprise though, I mean I should have logically realized if there is one animal the other would be here too. We have camel spiders, but don't worry there mostly small here, they don't get Iraq Camel Spider size. So far I've only encountered tiny ones about the size of a cupcake, although the other PCVs in the area tell me they can get as big as the scorpions. Oh yeah! We have scorpions too; guess who doesn't walk around barefoot. Me! And I've grown very fond of the vigorous shake I give all my clothes before putting them on, it's kind of thereputic really.
We had our final language test to see if I've learned Tamazirte well enough to be on my own in Moracco and I not only passed the test but I aced it. I absolutly had to make Novice High to pass-that's roughly what you're at after two school years of education. I scored Intermediate Low so I learned roughly three years worth of language skills in two months. Yes my friends, I have overcome my language learning block and become a linguist. HUZZAH!
One last thing, I know I'm rambling. I want to play a game with you guys, I have a funny-blister-story and I want to know if any of you can beat mine. Here in Marocco we don't have laundromats or washing machines, we do all of our laundry by hand. Well this requires finding your own method and style. In my first to learn my method I gave my self a blister... on the top side of my finger. So, I want to know if anyone has a sillier blister than a laundry blister?
I can't tell you exactly where I am for security stuff but I'm nearish a city called Rich. I will be working in the thirteen surrounding daours, too. I don't have a sbitar (clinic) in my site. The sbitar is a thirty to forty-five minute walk from my daour which makes it really inconvenient for the majority of my daours. So it seems that my next two years will be teaching people preventative healthy and basic first aid so they won't have to rely on the sbitar for everything. Also, my province (pop quiz, who remembers the name?) has a lot of PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in it b/c it's in a part of the country that gets very little attention from the Moroccan gov. (Something about an assasination attempt on the previous king.) Having so many PCVs nearby means that we all work together to help each other with projects. I have two PCVs within a fifteen km radius of me so that's really nice.
I recieved a very warm welcome from my whole community, including the local officials. I told everyoine I will be working with the sbitar and the school and they told me they would help me in anyway they could. I could not possibly have asked for a better site or better people. Although I'm going to have to work a lot on my french b/c the big city authorities, and teachers I will be working with don't speak the Berber language I learned. They only speak Darija (Moraccan Arabic) and French. I already know the basics of French so I'm going to work on that rather than starting all over with Arabic.
There was one surprise though, I mean I should have logically realized if there is one animal the other would be here too. We have camel spiders, but don't worry there mostly small here, they don't get Iraq Camel Spider size. So far I've only encountered tiny ones about the size of a cupcake, although the other PCVs in the area tell me they can get as big as the scorpions. Oh yeah! We have scorpions too; guess who doesn't walk around barefoot. Me! And I've grown very fond of the vigorous shake I give all my clothes before putting them on, it's kind of thereputic really.
We had our final language test to see if I've learned Tamazirte well enough to be on my own in Moracco and I not only passed the test but I aced it. I absolutly had to make Novice High to pass-that's roughly what you're at after two school years of education. I scored Intermediate Low so I learned roughly three years worth of language skills in two months. Yes my friends, I have overcome my language learning block and become a linguist. HUZZAH!
One last thing, I know I'm rambling. I want to play a game with you guys, I have a funny-blister-story and I want to know if any of you can beat mine. Here in Marocco we don't have laundromats or washing machines, we do all of our laundry by hand. Well this requires finding your own method and style. In my first to learn my method I gave my self a blister... on the top side of my finger. So, I want to know if anyone has a sillier blister than a laundry blister?
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