In which Alisa lives her worst nightmare:

ZOMBIE CAMEL SPIDERS

Okay, first of all you need to see pictures and facts on camel spiders to truly understand just how frightening they are. See below.

this was in my house!!

Facts:
1. Camel Spiders can run up to 10 mph
2. While their bites aren't horribly poisonous, they leave jagged marks from their giant monster teeth that usually become infected.
3. They are f'ing TERRIFYING.

true story.

I finally have a house (pictures will be coming soon, I swear) and my 4th or 5th night in it was really hot (my site usually gets up to at least 115 these days) so I decided to open my windows. Little did I know this was an epic mistake. A few hours later I got up to go get a drink of water and see the devil monster above crawling on my window screen. I promptly began screaming and woke up my neighbor's newborn and then called another PCV in hysterics. Luckily she talked me up to ninja status and I was able to get a broom and whack the crap out of the spider. Unfortunately, they really are as fast as all the urban legends say and there was a scary minute or two when I couldn't find it. Once I did, whacking resumed until I thought it was dead, due to the guts kind of hanging out. Sadly, I was mistaken. Then an hour or so later I finally worked up the courage to go up to the window to take a picture and it started twitching and trying to crawl. It was a zombie camel spider. Zombie. Camel. Spider. My windows will never be opened again. Ever.

Thank god the past month hasn't been all camel spiders though. My site-mates had a scorpion. :( There's been another trip to Agadir, several trips to Tiznit and Tafraoute, and now I'm in Azrou, a small town near Fes for more Peace Corps "training". Azrou is amazing, mostly because of the weather. I actually get to use my blanket at night and there are trees here! And I had sushi in Fes and it was state-side delicious. As for work, which you all have started to ask me about, there's not really anything so far. Basically Peace Corps just wants us to survive this summer and Ramadan, get our house and all the admin stuff that goes with living in Morocco taken care of, and be ready to really start up in the fall. I also purchased my tickets for October, so I'll be in DC October 16th through the 24thish and in Bristol from the 24th until the 31st. 

And so many of you wonderful people have been asking me about care packages. I didn't want to do a wishlist post, but I think I'm going to cave. Check there for my address and things that will always, always make me smile. 

See you all in 88 days!