Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World)

I am happily back in Tiflet after a few weeks of being on the road! The first half of my travels involved an 11-hour journey to a small town in the south of Morocco called Taznakht. One of my Peace Corps friends organized a camp called Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) and I joined 8 Peace Corps Volunteers and 10 Moroccan staff to help run the 4-day program. 

GLOW camps were first started back in the 90’s by Peace Corps Volunteers and since then have spread throughout the Peace Corps network as a way to educate girls on important life skills and to empower the girls to use those skills in their lives and to share with their communities. Our camp had a variety of workshops ranging from very serious topics to more lighthearted: gender roles, self-esteem, Morocco’s family code law, goal-setting, self-defense, women's health, beauty, calligraphy, rape laws in Morocco, harassment, henna, belly dancing and cinema. In between the workshops, we led them in singing, dancing, games, scavenger hunts, field trips, and did I mention dancing?

For many girls, this is often the first opportunity to leave their town and participate in a camp-like experience and it was really amazing watching them grow over the course of the 4 days, develop a sense of comfort with the group, and make lots of new friendships. For me, it was also a welcome challenge with my language skills - the camp was run almost entirely in Moroccan Arabic, and in leading some of the workshops and participating in others, I found myself talking about topics that I had not yet discussed with Moroccans. It was nice to step outside of the boundaries of typical language that I use in English classes and in day-to-day interactions. 

I left the camp feeling mentally and physically exhausted but so grateful to have had the opportunity to share this amazing experience with 45 of my newest Moroccan friends ;) Fortunately, my recovery came in the form of an awesome vacation with Justin. More on that in the next post - In the meantime, enjoy the photos from the camp!

First day of camp, getting everyone up and moving.

Homemade face masks in a beauty workshop.

A "Hands of Peace" poster that girls created.

One of the MANY impromptu dance sessions during the camp!

Girls practice moves in a self-defense workshop.

Some of the Peace Corps Volunteer staff, on field trip day.

Playing games with the girls on field trip day.

In my harassment workshop, girls wrote on slips of paper how
harassment can make them feel. In the middle, in Arabic,
it says "Everyone deserves respect."

Girls create a poster about a world without harassment.

With 2 other Volunteers, enjoying the beautiful weather!

Back where it all started...

On Friday and Saturday, Justin and I attended a Peace Corps planning workshop in Fes, held in the same site that was used as a training hub during our first 2 months in Morocco. So the building brought back a lot of memories - especially the second to last stair on the staircase, the scene of my majestic slip the day before we were sworn in as volunteers. Here's a photo to jog your memory (newer blog followers, you can read all about the incident here). Crazy to think that was almost a year ago!

 

Onto much better memories - After our meetings ended on Saturday, Justin and I hopped in a taxi to head to Moulay Yacoub, a town about 20 minutes outside of Fes where we chiefly spent our time during training. For 2 months, we lived with a host family, attended "school" along with 3 other volunteers for language, cultural, and technical training, and tried to do some of the work of Peace Corps volunteers in the community - meetings with community members, assessments of youth needs, and English teaching and other activities at the Youth Center.

Teaching kids a dance at the Youth Center

A "quilt" that girls created in an activity

Overlooking MY with our training group

With our host family

Justin and I spent 2 days catching up with our host family in Moulay Yacoub, and more than anything, being back where it all started made me realize just how far we have come. Whereas before we could only have basic conversations with our family, now we were able to talk about an incredible range of topics - politics, culture, travel, future plans, youth in Morocco, marriage, school, careers, I could go on and on. And whereas before I walked around taking everything in for the very first time, now I have a year's worth of living in Morocco to give me a more confident manner and a trained eye. Even the cultural side has come so far - knowing the appropriate phrase or response to say, understanding the roles of women and men, being able to relate better to our family's way of life - all of these things seemed to come so much more naturally now. 

Sometimes I get caught up with the daily struggles and challenges, and experiences like this help me to step back and truly appreciate how far we have come in our first year in Morocco - which can only lead to so much more for our second!

Language (and food) updates

It's been a long time since I talked about our language progress (here's the last one, way back in February!) so I thought I would do a short update.

This past week, Justin and I took a day trip into Rabat to help Peace Corps staff with "Language Proficiency Interviews" (LPI, for short). After the initial 2-month training period, all Peace Corps Volunteers take an LPI test that assesses their level of acquired language, ranging from Beginner Low/Medium/High, to Intermediate Low/Medium/High, to Advanced Low/Medium/High, and up to the most fluent level of Superior. To become an LPI tester takes quite a bit of training and practice, and Justin and I were serving as the guinea pig interviewees for the testers. We were of course excited to do this as it was more practice in language for us, and might help us get a sense of how our language has progressed.

So how has our language progress been going? In the few months after coming to our permanent site, I think our language skills were the strongest, as we were forced to use Darija to find and set up an apartment, meet new people, begin English classes, and generally explain who we are and what we are doing in Morocco. Nowadays, we tend to have similar conversations each day - greeting friends, shopping in the market, or discussing familiar activities in our Youth Center. We meet with a Darija tutor once or twice a week (he is an English teacher at a local high school) but neither of us have studied regularly enough to make much progress outside of our tutoring sessions. 

So our progress has been focused more on improving speaking, understanding others, and pronunciation, rather than acquiring new vocabulary or grammatical structures. Fortunately we both picked up the language pretty well during our training period, which has helped us here. Justin originally tested at an Intermediate Low level and I tested at an Intermediate Mid level (though I think I should have been Intermediate Low). After our testing in Rabat this week, we were told informally (as these were not official tests) that we are both at an Intermediate Mid level - which is high enough to be able to perform all of our tasks, make friends, and work well with counterparts. And apparently we have both developed strong communication strategies to make up for language that we don't know (so if, for example, we don't know a particular word, we just find a way to talk around that word to get our point across). 

So it may be difficult to improve our language levels, but I think if I dedicated myself to studying just a little bit every few days, it could make a big difference. My goal would be to speak at an Intermediate High or Advanced Low level by the time I leave Morocco... Inshallah!* 
* that means "If God wills it" - a very commonly used phrase here!

In other news - Summer is in full swing in Morocco. We are very fortunate to be in a site that's not too hot - Today it was 115 in Fes, and for us today only about 92 at its highest, so while it's hot, it's nowhere near as bad as it is elsewhere in Morocco. Ramadan is coming up next week, which I'll write more about in the next blog post, and I'm really looking forward to learning firsthand about what it's like. Justin and I will be in Morocco for the first few days of Ramadan, and then we'll be leaving to travel for 2 weeks. More on that soon. And I've been doing a bit more cooking since we've had some spare time - Check out a few photos of the latest dishes below, and visit my recipe page if you are interested!

Homemade lasagna bolognese - even the noodles were homemade. Took SO. LONG.

Gnocchi in a tomato cream sauce! Hopefully the Italian side of my in-laws are proud :)

French fries - very easy, wouldn't do often but fun to have!

Tortillas - have made these lots but never took a photo. Very easy and very good!

Language update

The Peace Corps recently asked me to participate in a focus group consisting of volunteers along with directors of the Youth Centers in which volunteers work. The meeting was run by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the division of the Moroccan government with which the Peace Corps works, and was intended to help Peace Corps and the government work together to develop a countrywide curriculum that supports shared goals and objectives for Moroccan youth. 

I was very excited to be involved in the project because I want to get involved in the strategy behind our programming, and I want to help provide resources for Peace Corps volunteers in meeting our goals and objectives. My excitement waned a little (okay, a lot) when I found out a crucial piece of information: The focus group would be held entirely in Darija (Moroccan Arabic). These days I have no problem using Darija in my classes, when I go to the market, greeting people on the streets, or just hanging out with friends - but I'm pretty sure that there is a whole branch of the language starting with the word "curriculum" that I have never used before.

We did have a bit of translation help in the meeting fortunately, but even without it, I ended up feeling really grateful for the experience. Why? Well, it got me out of my everyday language rut ("I'll have 1 kilo of tomatoes, please") and forced me both to use my language in a different way, and to listen carefully and even learn a few new words. Here are a few new additions to my vocabulary:

 

The focus group experience, while daunting at first, motivated me to find ways week to week to get out of my comfort zone, learn new vocabulary, and use my language in new and interesting ways. In the spirit of learning new things, I thought I would teach a few words in Moroccan Arabic that I most commonly use. If you recall from this early blog post, I included a few greeting words, so this is Lesson #2!

- Shnu smitk? - What is your name?

- Smiti Layla. - My name is Layla. (That's my name here, since it's easier to pronounce than Lauren. It's starting to grow on me!)

- Mtshrfeen. - Nice to meet you.

- Shukran. - Thank you.

- Aefek. - Please.

- Bslama! - Goodbye!

- Dar Shabab - Youth Center (this is where I work)

- Mudir (if a male), Mudira (if a female) - the Director of the Youth Center

- B Shwiya eafak - Slowly please (this is one we use a LOT!)

So study up on your Darija (particularly Mom and Dad Weinrich and Mom and Dad Bernstein who are visiting us in the upcoming months)... I'll be quizzing you on these soon!!

Vacation time!

Justin and I have only been teaching for a month, and now with our students' winter break comes a 2-week vacation. If the pace of life in Morocco is wrong, I don't want to be right!! 

We are happy to have the break, though - It's been an adjustment jumping into the role of a teacher. Each night, we scramble to review the lessons from that day and to adjust and create new lesson plans based on the students' progress. We are teaching 7 different kinds of classes: Beginner Adult, Beginner Kids, Beginner High Schooler (Moroccans study English in high school), High School English Exam prep (high schoolers here take a major exam at the end of their last year - like an SAT on steroids - and English is a big part of it), Intermediate, Homework Help, and Advanced Speaking. While some of those classes have similar lesson plans, we have to adjust the content and nature of the lesson for each audience, and of course, make sure we know how to say it in Moroccan Arabic! Needless to say, it's been a little nuts but our students are all very patient and respectful and we are learning just as much (if not more) than they are! 

Other than catching up on lesson plans, I'm trying to spend more time working on new recipes in the kitchen - recent successes have been falafel, tortillas, lentil chili, and cornbread (all fully from scratch!). I'm planning soon to put up a page on the blog detailing my cooking extravaganzas, so keep an eye out for that. 

And next week, we will travel to Mehdiya (northeast of Rabat, just on the coast) for a week of training with the Peace Corps - we'll be reviewing the things that we have learned in the few months in our community, and beginning to talk about future projects that we may want to implement. I'm looking forward to the chance to step back and think a bit more about my goals for the upcoming two years, and a change of scenery for a few days will be nice too!

Those are all the updates for now! Enjoy the below photos, from a recent excursion to the nearby countryside with our Moroccan friends (notice the essentials for any Moroccan picnic - tea (a lot), bread (even more), and don't forget your drums, or a device that can double as a drum). And Justin and I spent an afternoon being tourists in Rabat last week, which was a fun change!

our friends leading us into the countryside..
you can't see it, but at least 3 drums are being carried along!

Surprisingly the area was full of people. We found out that people were trying to hunt
wild boars (not to eat, just to kill). Didn't know that they had them in Morocco, and enjoyed
watching people spending the whole afternoon running back and forth after these guys.

Important Moroccan picnic items: Don't forget your tea glasses, your teapot,
your tajine pot, 10 loaves of bread, and a pound or so of sugar :)

Tajine success! Pretty impressive for cooking over a fire... beats my Girl Scout days!

Justin and I pose in the countryside

And the last important element of the Moroccan picnic is
the drum - any object that you can beat on will do!

Justin and I touring Rabat - this is the door to the Kasbah.
I love having the guy in the photo to get a sense of how big it is!

Inside the Kasbah. To me it looks like pictures I've seen of Santorini in Greece!

the water! Justin looks out in the direction of New York (we think) :)

Out with the old, in with the new...

Breaking news, just in time for the new year – Yesterday, at 3:46 PM, my cast came OFF!

before photo, nervously anticipating the doctor

after, furiously scrubbing 6 weeks of dried skin off my foot!

And for your entertainment, below is a video that Justin shot of my hilarious Moroccan doctor goofing off just prior to taking off the cast.

I'm already able to walk, though with a bit of difficulty as my foot is quite stiff and sore. I'll be starting physical therapy next week but I'm confident that I'll be able to gain back the strength quickly.

All of this is perfect timing for me, because I truly view the new year as a chance to take stock of the past, shed the things holding us back, and embrace the opportunities that lie ahead in the coming year. I know that there's really no difference between December 31 and January 1, but for me the new year is a symbolic street sign along the road of life that reminds me to mentally reflect and plan.

So with that, here are some of my initial goals and thoughts for the coming year. I imagine that I will  add to/develop these as I spend more time in Morocco and evolve the type of work I do here.

1. Take better care of myself

This has been a year of ridiculousness. In February I broke a bone in my right hand while walking our foster dog, and then in November I fractured a bone in my leg. Accidents happen, and the February break was an accident, but I attribute the November fracture to being careless and making bad decisions. With that, I have decided that I will no longer wear flip flops (anyone who has seen me wearing flip flops in New York in December knows that this is a bold decision!). I fractured the bone in my leg by slipping on stairs in flip flops and I am convinced that wearing a piece of slippery rubber with no traction is more trouble waiting to happen. Beyond my flip-flop decision, I want to make sure that I maintain a healthy lifestyle in Morocco – exercising regularly, making smart eating decisions, etc. There are some fantastic things about our lifestyle here – lots of walking, great weather year-round for exercising outside, and not a frozen meal to be found for miles! 

2. Improve my language skills

I've been blown away by how quickly I have been able to pick up the language. In just a little over 4 months, I have gotten myself to a strong intermediate level in which I do a pretty good job of communicating with people in the community. But still, every day there are sentences I don't quite understand, or things I want to say but just don't know how. Justin and I have a tutor that we will be working with twice a week, but beyond that I want to devote time weekly to learning new vocabulary, studying new aspects of the language, and evaluating my progress.

3. Explore and travel – mainly throughout Morocco, but elsewhere if possible

This is an obvious one. I want to make sure to spend lots of time in my community, but one of the reasons that I joined the Peace Corps was to get to know another country and its culture, beyond just one city. So I want to make sure to plan lots of trips throughout the country, and hopefully beyond.

4. Continue to develop a support network in my community

I'm really proud of the integration that Justin and I have already done in the community – we have an amazing host family who think of us as one of their own and will be so important to have over the next 2 years. Beyond that, we have developed friendships with youth in their 20's who go to our Youth Center and I expect that these will develop even further with time. I also want to be sure that Justin and I develop our own friends in the community – and the natural gender divisions that occur in Moroccan culture should make this fairly easy to achieve.

5. Consistently evaluate my work and what more I can do

We've only been in the community for a short time, but as we start to really settle here, it will be important for me to not just get into a routine of teaching classes, but to constantly be talking to youth and other members of the community about issues that are meaningful to them, things they want to learn, and activities that they want to do, and making sure that I am always looking for ways to address all of these. 

6. Maintain communication with everyone back home!

Whether that means letters, emails, phone calls, Skype conversations, Facebook, smoke signals, whatever... just making sure that I am still a part of everyone's lives back home. And keeping up the blog of course – I plan to continue posting new entries at least once a week. And I want to try to potentially develop a communication network between my classes in Morocco and classes in a U.S. school. More to come on that soon.

That about covers it. I'll be sure to write updates on how I'm doing with the above goals. Tonight, our host family is throwing a big party for 30 of their closest friends and family, to celebrate what Moroccans call Rass L'Ԑam (“rass” meaning “head” and “l'Ԑam” meaning “of the year”) and I'm looking forward to ringing in 2012 Moroccan style!

From Justin and me, wishing everyone a wonderful year filled with new plans, adventures, experiences, and relationships. I look forward to continuing to chart our journey in the coming year!

 

Ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges...

When it rains, it pours! A lot has happened over the past week. I’m happy to say that all of the things that I wanted to get accomplished within our first month or so in our site have now been ticked off of my list. You see these lovely things??

These are keys to our beautiful apartment!! A narrated photo tour can be found at the bottom of the post, but in short,it's better than anything I ever got living in Manhattan! :) As you’ll see in the photos, it’s mostly tile (which seems to be customary in most Moroccan homes) but the apartment is fairly new so the tile is beautiful and very bright. We are less than a 5 minute walk from our Youth Center where we’ll be spending most of our time, and the neighborhood is really nice – lots of very friendly neighbors, a preschool right across from us, beautiful trees, hedges, and flowers right around us, and several small bodega-type shops nearby (called hanuts, as I mentioned in a previous post) for any quick needs. When I joined the Peace Corps, I never expected to have some of the amenities that this apartment has (hot water, a bathtub, a western toilet, a lot of space) but it’s within our budget so I won’t complain! We will have to buy furniture but will probably do that bit by bit. 

Another big update is that we have a new volunteer who has joined us in Tiflet. She came from another site (it actually happens to be Moulay Yacoub, the site where Justin and I lived during our 2 months of training). We didn't get much notice on the addition but she is one of my favorite people from our training group, so I’m happy to have her company for the 2 years. We are still working out the kinks of how to work best together without being 3 Americans around each other all the time, but I’m confident that in time we’ll be able to figure out how best to each work within a pretty large town.

Also, Justin and I now have a Darija tutor! He is an English teacher at one of the local high schools so it’s a perfect match. We have already met with him twice and have been so relieved to get answers to many questions that have come up as we have been trying to learn on our own this past month. We’ll be meeting with him twice a week for the next year, so I hope in time to improve my language so that I can impress everyone when they come to visit – that means YOU!

And lastly, but equally as exciting as the other parts – Justin and I finally got a PO box! We were waiting until the apartment was secured as there are 2 post offices in town and we wanted to make sure we got a box at the one nearest to our apartment. Below is our address, so get out your quills, inkpots, and wax to start writing me some good old-fashioned letters!  

Justin and Lauren Bernstein

Boîte Postale N^o 739

15402 Tiflet Medina

Tiflet

MOROCCO (MAROC)

You’ve made it through all of the updates (phew!). The biggest one will hopefully be coming one week from now because next Friday at 3:30 PM Morocco time (10:30 PM EST time) this friggin cast will be coming OFF and you might hear my sigh of relief across the ocean.

Without any further delay, here are apartment photos – enjoy!

The opening in the center is the entrance
to our apartment from a flight of stairs. To the
left is a bathroom and then the bedroom.

A sink just outside the bathroom, to the left of the entrance.
At the bottom left is a buta, a gas tank that we have to light
in order to heat up water.

The view of the apartment from the entrance. Bathroom/bedroom are on the right,
straight ahead is what Moroccans call a "salon" (basically a living room),
to the left is what will become a kitchen space.

Justin and the kitchen area (right now has a rug and pillows in it)

a view from one end of the salon

Looking back at Justin and the kitchen area from the salon

in the bedroom - an awesome dresser/shelf set into one full wall

Looking at Justin through a window in the bedroom

Onto the bathroom. We have a bathtub and shower with hot water.
Seems like a good amount of people in our town have hot water
but this is the first bathtub I have seen.

And we have a western toilet. I haven't talked much
on the blog about squatting toilets, we have gotten used to them
but I definitely would choose otherwise if given the option!

Turning out of the bathroom

Going up the steps

Ahhhh Moroccan sun in December! This is our beautiful roof.
Home to what I hope soon will be flower pots and herb gardens!
And also lots of drying laundry.

A quick view of our neighborhood from the roof!