In which Alisa makes a list of all the things she's going to do in MERIKA:

In just two short days I will officially be back on American soil and I am soooo excited. God bless you, Britany Skipper and your wedding, for getting me back home. :)

So here's a list of all the things I've been daydreaming about doing once I get home:

1. Showering without a bucket, but with constant hot water and water pressure. 
2. Finally getting all the shampoo out of my hair.
3. Washing my clothes in a washing machine and not just swirling them around in a tub of soapy water.
4. Walking around at night and not being considered a prostitute.
5. Walking around with guys and not being considered their prostitute.
6. Not being considered a prostitute.
7. EATING BACON.
8. EATING SOME MORE BACON.
9. Drinking in public and not feeling the least bit of shuma (shame).
10. Wearing real clothes (assuming my parents can ever find them, yes, I'm looking at you, Mother) and not bled clothes.
11. Driving a car.
12. Having a drink with ice in it. It's been 7 months since I've had ice.
13. Talking to people and having them understand what I say.
14. Using a western toilet.
15. Not having to check my sheets for cockroaches or camel spiders before I go to bed.

America is going to be AMAZING.

PS

So I don't really talk much about what's going on over here. I know that. But it's mainly because there's not a lot going on yet. I'm hoping once I get back from the States I'll be able to start teaching in the schools and will have more interesting things to say. Until then I can tell you about one of the more positive experiences I've had lately. 

I went into Tafraoute (my "big" city, where my post office and bank, etc. are) to keep my site-mate company until his bus to Fes came. I was wandering around and went into a store for a local Argan cooperative to look for souvenirs for all of y'all and met the nicest lady. For people in other regions of Morocco, I realize this experience will be pretty common, but for down South it's downright rare. Anyway, my site-mate and I introduced ourselves and spoke a little Tashelheit and that got the lady started. Then my site-mate left to check on his bus and I stayed with the lady and she had a full on conversation with me (not just "Hi, How are you, Are you fine?" which is normally all you get down here). She showed me how to crack Argan nuts and laughed at how bad I was at it, imitated a goat so I would know what kind of animals ate the nuts (side-note: this is one of my absolute favorite things about Moroccans. As long as you don't get a "Walu! Tsnt walu! (Nothing! You know nothing!)" person, Moroccans will generally go above and beyond to make sure you understand them, even so much as making what Americans would generally consider a fool of themselves, but for people with less than stellar language skills (like me) it's the farthest thing from foolish and beyond appreciated.), and promised me she would teach me Tashelheit anytime I wanted. Unfortunately, she doesn't speak a lick of English, so I'm not so sure that's going to work out, but she still made my week. 

From five star to five dollar...

Before I joined Peace Corps I used to work for an awesome non-profit in DC. Most of my time was spent doing leftover finance and event planning work for a scholarship program that was building a pretty exciting university in the Middle East. This meant I got to travel a lot. And in style. There were business class and sometimes first class (I somehow managed to get bumped a few times) plane rides, five star hotels, and fancy food. There was also absolutely no sleep, crazy stress from doing my best not to get screamed at by our nutty counterparts, and so many damn boxes that needed lugging across continents. Now I stay at five dollar hotels, pick bugs out of my salad and keep on going, and cram myself into taxis and souk buses (sometimes with cockroaches). But I've also actually had the time to see and enjoy some of the most beautiful sunsets, experience the genuine kindness of people I can barely communicate with, and to truly appreciate all the little things I never did before.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, other than it's funny how life can change so drastically and how easily we can adapt to anything. Maybe that's one of the big lessons I'm supposed to learn from this experience. 

In which Alisa talks about Ramadan:

Disclaimer: Just because I'm not participating in Ramadan doesn't mean I don't have a lot of respect for my neighbors for fasting every year and especially this year. 

For Muslims, Ramadan is a month of fasting (this means fasting from food, liquids, smoking, everything) from sun-up to sun-down in order to remind them of humility, submissiveness to God, and patience. Ramadan is based on the Islamic calendar rather than the Gregorian so it changes every year. Unfortunately, this year it fell during the hottest month possible: August. So just to be clear, all the Moroccans around me are abstaining from eating or drinking water for about 15 hours a day during 120 degree heat.

For good Peace Corps Volunteers, Ramadan is a month of experiencing a new culture and religion by participating in the fasting or making sure to break fast in the evenings with the people in their communities. It's probably also a time of introspection and self growth.

For Alisa, Ramadan is a month of going slightly batty. Because Moroccans are fasting all day, their energy levels are greatly depleted so they tend to sleep most of the day. This means transport is almost non-existent, shops are only open waaaaay early in the morning and for about an hour or two before sunset, and the rest of town is pretty much shut down. Because I can't leave my house at night (guys in my region tend to think women out at night are prostitutes) I only have about a two hour window where I can actually leave my house during the day. So I've spent the past month in site (new record!) catching up on bad movies and tv shows, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches without the bread because I always forget to buy it, waging war against the lizards and spiders in my house (Ramadan also seems to be the month of critterly invasions), reading trashy romance novels that I am beyond ashamed of, and daydreaming about my fictional boyfriend: Dr. Gregory House.

In my defense I'm not a completely horrible volunteer for not breaking fast with more families. People in my town are really reserved and typically don't just invite strangers into their house, much less talk to them other than the standard head nod and "Salam. Lebes? Lehamdallah. (Hello. You're fine? Praise Allah.)" I could break fast with my host family but honestly I'm terrified of the epic food poisoning I got there, so I'm thinking I'm going to wait until after Ramadan to visit them (visiting a Moroccan family during Ramadan = you will be stuffed full of food until you can't ever move again). I did manage to get invited to my site-mates' host family's house to break fast last week and since they've never given me food poisoning, I was pretty happy about the invitation. When the sun goes down Moroccans break their fast with a meal called lfdur (aka breakfast, get it?). For my meal with the Saidis this included my favorite Moroccan dish, askif (a really hearty soup with eggs, chickpeas, tomatoes, chicken, and sometimes lentils or pasta), dates, croissants, cheese, couscous with roasted peppers and chicken, tea, and fresh figs and grapes for dessert. I've never had fresh figs and didn't expect to like them because I've only ever had dried figs and those taste too much like Fig Newtons for my liking, but fresh figs are AMAZING. Why do we dry them in America?! Our country's palate is in need of serious examination if we can take a fruit that tasty and make into a nasty Fig Newton instead.

So that's been Ramadan for me. It'll be ending in about a week and a half and then hopefully I'll actually get to start some work. I've also got a lot of travel coming up, so it may be awhile before this gets updated again. In September I'll be going to Agadir for a regional meeting and Ouarzazate for a Volunteer Support Network (peer to peer counseling for Volunteers) training. In October I'll be going to Fes for a TEFL training and then to the wonderful, wonderful USA for my Britany's wedding! 

In which Alisa gets serious:

According to my good friend (code name Panda) my spirit animal/patronus (PC is full of Harry Potter nerds -- including me) is a flying squirrel, because at first I seem all cute and sweet and then I do something BA like fly (or drink lots of really crappy vodka).

But these past few months I've felt the very opposite of BA. Instead I've felt mostly guilty. Guilty that I don't automatically love Peace Corps and Morocco. Guilty that I'm still not so secretly hoping for evacuation. Guilty that I'm not integrating at the speed Peace Corps expects me to and guilty that I still have no freaking idea how to start or do work here.

But it's sort of hitting me that even if I'm hiding in my 50 dirham hotel room, eating pasta salad made from canned veggies, and facebook hating all of you in America, I'm still at least a little BA. Because every time I and any other female volunteer leave our houses we have to deal with ridiculous male machismo harassment and that takes strength. Something as simple as buying plates for my new apartment requires riding a souk bus for two hours and haggling in a language that I am daily told I know nothing of and that takes determination. And at least once every month having my insides explode out both directions and the only outlet being a Turkish toilet, that takes perseverance or stupidity or something.

And after my trip up north to Azrou for PPST (post-pre-service training -- gotta love government acronyms) I've realized I'm really, really fortunate to be in Morocco. Just in the past two weeks I've walked through a park that would have fit in in any town in the US, ate sushi (real, tasty sushi!), had an honest to god caesar salad (a salad without cinnamon, sugar, ketchup, and/or mayonnaise is a miracle in Morocco), and watched a bootleg version of the latest Harry Potter movie. All these little reminders of home and they're in my PC country. That's definitely something to be thankful for. And on top of all of that I got to explore a little bit of Fes, buy a supposedly real Berber carpet in Meknes (I don't really care about the realness, because it's beautiful and I can fake it if I have to), go on a fruitless search for wild monkeys (but still there was the possibility of monkeys!) and had a couple of Moroccans be disproportionally pleased about my Tash skills, which after months of "walu! walu!" is beyond refreshing.

The point I'm poorly trying to make with all of this is if you're (my fellow PCVs) feeling down, remember that A) just existing and doing your day to day thing over here is pretty bad ass and B) it could always be worse. We could be in a country where we don't even have the possibility of monkeys.

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!