Morocco on a French Keyboard
Hey all,
good to be able to get a letter off after almost a week with no phone or computer access. I want to appologize in advance for what i am sure will be an astounding number of typos as the only english alphqbet keyboards are from france and i am not quite adjusted to the rearangement of letters. Ahh.. nevermind. I figured out how to switch it.. Yay for several years of french class and many messanger sessions typing without looking at the letters on the keyboard. Now I only have to read french and not type in it.
Anyway... I'm sure that you are all much more interested in other things. I spent a couple of good days in philly making new friends. I have a couple of great ones now, though they work in the health program and we are about to be seperated to different training sites so I suppose that I'll have to make new ones, at least until the training completes in about 3 months and I can visit them again on my days off.
Life is pretty good so far. The weather while not hot is tollerably warm and hopefully will stay that way pretty much year round... though where I'm going for training in the south of the country is rumored to be the last oaisis before the begining of the sahara. Access to internet cafe's is going to be good for that first 3 months so e-mail is probably better way to reach me than snail mail, though I still may respond only once a week or so. After that three months I'll be staying with a second family for another 2 in a smaller village where internet might not be as readily available. Following those 2 months I will get my own appartment, so about 5 months from now my address will change again. Thank you for your patience on this issue. (I included previous correspondance in this e-mail if you need the address again).
So far we've been put up in 3 or 4 star hotels in the capital city of Rabat while we get our medical shots and introductions to culture and laungage. Tomorrow I leave for the southern city of Oarzazate (pronounced war za zat) for intensive language training, probably in arabic script and a dialect of berber. I'll keep you posted on which one of the three it is, along with environmental and project specific technical training. I'll begin the first of 2 homestays with a moroccan family which was carefully chosen to speak no engish so it should be interested to see how that works out. I'm excited.While those who know of my peace corps experiance up until this point will have known of how frustrating it is you'll be happy to know that once in country there is an abundance of information, almost too much to take in at one time even.... There are 48 other voulenteers in this group of traniees split evenly between health and environment and we are all crazy and curious most of the time, though tired has been the name of the game for the last couple of days.
Anyway, its time for lunch and the food has been absolutely amazing thus far. Can't wait to get some good home cooking eventually but the hotel buffet, as it has been in every middle eastern country i've visited thus far, has been supurb. I've missed all of you a great deal and hope everyone is doing well. Keep the e-mails coming and I'll talk to everyone soon!
Cheers
-Andy
good to be able to get a letter off after almost a week with no phone or computer access. I want to appologize in advance for what i am sure will be an astounding number of typos as the only english alphqbet keyboards are from france and i am not quite adjusted to the rearangement of letters. Ahh.. nevermind. I figured out how to switch it.. Yay for several years of french class and many messanger sessions typing without looking at the letters on the keyboard. Now I only have to read french and not type in it.
Anyway... I'm sure that you are all much more interested in other things. I spent a couple of good days in philly making new friends. I have a couple of great ones now, though they work in the health program and we are about to be seperated to different training sites so I suppose that I'll have to make new ones, at least until the training completes in about 3 months and I can visit them again on my days off.
Life is pretty good so far. The weather while not hot is tollerably warm and hopefully will stay that way pretty much year round... though where I'm going for training in the south of the country is rumored to be the last oaisis before the begining of the sahara. Access to internet cafe's is going to be good for that first 3 months so e-mail is probably better way to reach me than snail mail, though I still may respond only once a week or so. After that three months I'll be staying with a second family for another 2 in a smaller village where internet might not be as readily available. Following those 2 months I will get my own appartment, so about 5 months from now my address will change again. Thank you for your patience on this issue. (I included previous correspondance in this e-mail if you need the address again).
So far we've been put up in 3 or 4 star hotels in the capital city of Rabat while we get our medical shots and introductions to culture and laungage. Tomorrow I leave for the southern city of Oarzazate (pronounced war za zat) for intensive language training, probably in arabic script and a dialect of berber. I'll keep you posted on which one of the three it is, along with environmental and project specific technical training. I'll begin the first of 2 homestays with a moroccan family which was carefully chosen to speak no engish so it should be interested to see how that works out. I'm excited.While those who know of my peace corps experiance up until this point will have known of how frustrating it is you'll be happy to know that once in country there is an abundance of information, almost too much to take in at one time even.... There are 48 other voulenteers in this group of traniees split evenly between health and environment and we are all crazy and curious most of the time, though tired has been the name of the game for the last couple of days.
Anyway, its time for lunch and the food has been absolutely amazing thus far. Can't wait to get some good home cooking eventually but the hotel buffet, as it has been in every middle eastern country i've visited thus far, has been supurb. I've missed all of you a great deal and hope everyone is doing well. Keep the e-mails coming and I'll talk to everyone soon!
Cheers
-Andy
posted by Andy & Erin | 5:36 PM
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