Day 6 of about 780.

Early in the morning I awake to the sounds of the call of prayer from the local mosque. While I have heard extensively (thanks Omer) about this 5 times a day ritual, it was quite an experience to hear it first hand. The song of prayer literally envelops the entire city. Yesterday, we were in one of many training sessions in our wedding style tent set up on the roof of our building, and the entire room literally filled with the sounds of the prayer. It was quite a site to see and hear.

All has really been going well and its quite reassuring to realize that everyone here (71 of us total) has the same apprehensions, anxieties and excitements regarding this new experience. Many people here are May 09 grads that followed a similar path to myself and took the last few months to work part time, move home and recollect their lives before embarking on this journey of a lifetime. We even have a few married couples in the group, who literally picked up everything and decided to come to Morocco and do some good. I am slightly envious of their companionship and the fact that they will not be going at this alone, but again there is always a flip side and there are quite a few challenges that also face married couples and all of us, really.

One of my greatest fears is committing a social taboo in regards to the role of women. I have always been an outspoken and fairly confident woman who managed to fit in quite well in American society, but Moroccan society is quite different. Women have a different role to play and I need to get started on learning that. Neither way is better than the other, but both seem to fit into their own respective society. I need to really get cracking on learning that!
The one good thing about Morocco so far has been the beauty of it all. Frankly, I have never found anything beautiful about the desert. I just didn’t see the beauty in sand and lots of brown but when I came to Morocco, I was greatly surprised. While it does have the brown “Aladdin” feel to it, it is remarkably green, lush and overall beautiful. Yesterday we made a trip south through the High Atlas Mountains and they were some of the most beautiful mountains and definitely one of the top three most beautiful trips I have ever made. While the road was curvy and one girl on our bus even got sick, it was stunning. The tall snowcapped mountains were paired with shorter mountains of rolling green trees and grasses; it was absolutely stunning (see photos below).

Other than that, they first few days have been committed to getting some basic knowledge out of the way, mostly some survival Moroccan Arabic and safety/ security issues. Today we ventured out (with the generous help of our trainers) and purchased Moroccan SIM cards for our unlocked phones, or a new phone. The phones were actually pretty reasonably priced and they work similar to the phones we had in Thailand, but considerably more expensive for minutes and texts.
Communication in Morocco is an absolutely amazing feat.

Most of the nation is rural but yet some cell phone providers have 99% coverage, better than even coverage in America. I am sure they have spent a significant amount of money on infrastructure to make this possible and I am quite appreciative. When I say expensive, I am using it relatively. In US dollars, it is actually quite cheap to make and send texts, with incoming being free, but in Dirhams and our PC salary, it seems like it may take up a decent chunk. We shall see, so I apologize now if I can’t call as much as I would like but I promise to do my best and you are always more than welcome to Skype my cell if you want.

In general, im feeling great. Scared? Yes. Nervous? Yes. Excited? Yes. This is all a part of the game and it was quite reassuring to hear from some current PCV’s and get better feel of life post training. For now, I am resting and preparing my brain for the intake of lots of language and culture over the next 8 weeks ☺