Back to Work!

After the fun and games in Spain, it's time to get back to work. 

On the personal front, I am working on law school/ grad school applications and should hopefully be done with them pretty close to the middle of October. On a side note, I cannot imagine trying to apply from my old site, with no internet. The shear frequency of trips I would have had to take are hard to think about. Having internet is great. The applications are labor intensive but I am enjoying the structure and the thinking involved in completing them. It is just furthering my itch to get back to school.

On a more professional front, Sarah-Kate (my site mate) and I have been visiting sites, talking with community men (and women) and getting ready to start writing some grants for water access projects this fall. Sarah-Kate has already completed two running water projects in two small villages surrounding our town and now we are going to tag-team the next two, hopefully building a water tower and laying pipe so that the communities can have running water. There is also potential in a project for developing a septic system to help the community deal with waste water (right now they dump it into a dry creek bed). Sarah-Kate is hosting some health lessons with the women of the local clinic and I am hoping to get started on a women's empowerment workshop (similar to what I did in April) with some of the women in the cooperative here in town. There is certainly a lot of potential out there, a drastic change from my previous site. I will keep you posted as things progress.

Sarah-Kate and her team of local men working on building the water tower to provide running water to the small community.

Sarah-Kate talking with Lahcen and some other men of the small village to get started on another water access project this fall.

The men of the small village that are interested and willing to work to get running water access for their community.

We took a hike around some of the neighboring villages and I took this picture. It is pretty much exactly what southern Morocco is like, full of Argan trees, mosques and mountains.