Soo much to catch up on...

So as usual, a lot has happened in the past week and I am faced with the task of writing an entry that has a lot of stuff out of order. I have gotten my wallet stolen, experienced Moroccoween, and gotten my site announcement! My site is in a small town of about 17,600 people called Tinjdad, in South Eastern Morocco. It is about an hour south east of Errachidia, which is the closest semi large city, and about an hour and a half West of Algeria (See attached map with me confused and pointing).

I have just arrived here yesterday and my first impressions are that I really lucked out. The town is fairly big and seems to be very active. It is on the edge of the Sahara and surrounded by mountains. According to the current volunteer who I am replacing, there is a problem with sand storms in the summer. But not to worry, he said he'll give me his ski goggles for protection. Awesome.

The town speaks mainly Berber, although everyone seems to speak Arabic, and surprisingly, a good amount of people speak English as well. I continue to find the amount of different languages spoken to be amazing. There are kids here who are fluent in 3 languages or more and are the same age I was when I first began speaking English well.

The bus ride down here is an adventure in itself in which I should comment on briefly. It took me about nine hours total and was beautiful in that we went right through the High Atlas Mountains. If only I could have stopped thinking about Babel... When in Errachidia I was able to practice my Arabic by figuring out how I was getting to Tinjdad. I found a public bus to take me there, and had to stand for nearly the entire hour long ride. As uncomfortable as it was, it was a really cool experience(common PC theme).

As for Halloween in Morocco, it was better then I had ever imagined the celebration of a holiday in country in which it doesn't exist could be. We carved Moroccan pumpkins(which are crazy looking oval gourds), and dressed up for a costume party. I was diarrhea and a fellow PC counterpart was Pepto Bismal...which is a lot funnier if your in the PC. We even got our Arabic teachers and staff to dress up, although they must have thought we were pretty strange. To me it seems like Halloween to an outside makes slaughtering a lamb for a holiday look like a normal thing.

I am now off for an action packed week of figuring out the basics of my site. I shall be updating on this info soon, EnShaLlah.