FES then Midelt then Rabat and finally Midelt again

Hey everyone its been a while. I would apologize but I don't have time to :-P

Seriously things have been pretty busy over here. November 27 was the swear in ceremony and the following day I went to my final site of Midelt. The swear in ceremony was at a beautiful hotel (which of course we didn't stay at because remember this is the Peace Corps people :-). The US ambassador was there who prepared a nice speech making sure to say each one of our names that he had plugged into the story Night Before Christmas which he renamed The Night Before Swearing In (he's a clever one) After a nice 5 days in Fes for swearing in I returned to my final site of Midelt and things are going fairly smoothly but I'll let you in on whats been happening so far...

So I was in my site for about a week and ended up traveling to Rabat. Unfortunately my site mate Linley had a bloody nose for almost all of Thursday (12/6). It wouldn't stop, so the following morning we set off to the PC headquarters in Rabat to meet with the PC doctor. He asked me to accompany Linley in case anything were to happen during the 8 hour bus from our site to Rabat.

Looking back at it now, a week later, it was good I went. When our bus stopped in Meknes (still on the way to Rabat) for some reason we had to change buses about 3 times. It was crazy, we got off one bus got on another and sat in it for about an hour not knowing what was going. Finally the bus took off and we headed to Rabat. I was in deep thought about what I was going to read for the last 3 hours of our trip there, when suddenly the bus stopped right before exiting the bus station. Everyone started getting off the bus and people were arguing about something and among all the commotion Linley's nose started having issues again.

Now keep in mind neither of us are what you would call fluent in arabic, so you should know that neither of us had any idea about what was going on. Luckily I had made a friend on the bus using the moroccan arabic I know. He was nice enough to make sure we got on the right bus heading to Rabat. I thanked him a ton but he still insisted on buying us bananas, I guess we looked hungry who knows... One thing I will say is Moroccans are some of the nicest people I've met. Even in my city every now and then someone will invite me for tea or buy me a coffee. I always try to pay and find out that it has already been paid for most of the time. Anyways back to Rabat.

So we got to Rabat and Linley got some x-rays and blood work and everything is more or less fine. Our first night there we witnessed a moroccan girl fighting another moroccan girl in front of the McDonald's, Linley thought we should try to break it up but my gut was telling me we already had enough bloody noses for one day and I didn't think either of us had the language capacity to explain to any policeman what was going on :-) Returning from Rabat we took a train to Meknes to save some time, and let me say that the trains in this country are fabulous! It was on time and very comfortable. Since we got back on a Saturday I decided to use one of my two vacation weekends to meet some surrounding PCVs and go on a hike in a nearby mountain. We stayed at their house after and enjoyed some good food and we all exchanged stories from our first weeks in our new sites.

Now I am in Midelt and things are going well. Christmas is coming up but the big celebration here is the weekend before Christmas, and is called l'Eid Kbir. My host father informed me that we will be eating lamb and proceeded to show me a room behind his hanut (a small convenient store he owns that is below our house) where the lamb was being fed very well. As I looked at the lamb I tried not to make eye contact because I knew it would making eating him later more difficult. I'm sure I will have much more to write about this later on... beacuse if I understood my host father correctly someone is going to learn how to be a butcher.... uhhhh.... yea so anyways... Merry Christmas everyone!

Enjoy your Ham!