Well, its now been 1 week since I’ve been in the country and all is going well. Currently in Ouarzazate which is a mellow, medium-sized city on the Eastern side of the High Atlas in Southern Morocco. The hotel we’re staying at will be home for the next 2 months. All the training takes place here and in our Community Development Training sites where we will be staying with host families. The hotel sits right on the town square so its easy to get a game of soccer going with the locals.
The group of 60 that gathered in Philadelphia has been split up between the health and the environment volunteers. The group is good, though much younger than I’d expected. I’d say the average age is 23-25 with most folks having graduated college within the last year. I guess I’d expected more folks to be my age in the mid to late 20’s crowd. But there’s a lot of positive strong energy from this group
We’ve done a few days of Arabic (darija dialect) and I expected to switch today to one of the three Berber dialects since that is what is spoken in the Atlas Mountains, where most of us will be placed. Much to my surprise though, I found out today that I will be one of the few who will continue to study Arabic. I can only assume that the trainers had recognized how quickly I was mastering the language (ha, ha) and wanted me to continue my progress. No....in all seriousness learning Arabic is incredibly challenging and is going to be an ongoing struggle. Yet, I’ve started forcing myself out into the community and its amazing how friendly and patient people are in helping me with my pathetic attempts at speaking their language. Sweya b’ Sweya (slowly, slowly) I’m learning.
So far I’ve yet to find an internet place that has decent speed. Trying to send an email is ridiculously frustrating between the Arabic keyboard and the computer freezing up. In the next few days I hope to purchase a cell phone so I’ll let you know when that happens.
Well.....thats all for now and Inshallah (God willing) I’ll be able to post this soon.
3 comments:
I remember trying to learn some Arabic when I was in Dubai for a week. I agree it is extremely difficult - I didn't have much success.
Sounds like you are having fun so far. I look forward to hearing more updates!
thanks for the window on your service. we were volunteers in cameroon 00-02. check out the blog http://thedeputyhead.com our students would love to hear more about your part of the world.
We're going to need a good tour guide next year when Doug and I visit so I'm fully expecting fluent Arabic from you and nothing less. :-)
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