Random Peace Corps things I don't want to lose:

12 reasons to date a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer:

1. We can woo you in multiple languages. Who else is going to whisper sweet nothings to you in everything from Albanian to Hausa to Quechua to Xhosa? That’s right. Only a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.
2. We’re pretty good dancers. Yeah, we don’t like to brag, but after 27 months in Latin America or Africa we know how to move it.
3. We’ll eat anything. Seriously. No matter how bad your cooking, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers have had worse and will eat it with nary a blink. Sheep’s eyeball? Water buffalo gall bladder? Grasshoppers? Bush rat? Bring it.
4. We know all about safe sex, thanks to our very thorough Peace Corps health training. In fact, there’s a chance that we’ve stood unblushingly in front of hundreds of villagers and demonstrated good condom technique with a large wooden phallus.
5. We’ll kill spiders for you. Well, actually, we’ll nonchalantly scoop them up and put them out of sight. Same goes for mice, geckos, frogs, snakes. Critters don’t faze Returned Volunteers.
6. We have great date ideas: wandering a street market, checking out a foreign film, taking in a world music concert, volunteering…. Romantic getaway? Our passport is updated and our suitcase is packed. With us, life is always an adventure.
7. We like you for “you”… not your paycheck. Especially if we are freshly back from service, a local joint with “character” will win out over a pretentious eatery. Living in a group house? No problem. Does it have running hot water? What luxury!
8. You won’t get lost when you’re with a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. Navigating local markets on four continents, we’ve honed an uncanny sense of direction. Or else we’ll ask for directions. We’re not afraid to talk to “strangers.”
9. Waiting for a late train or bus with us? Don’t worry. Been there, done that. We can share lots of funny stories about “the bus ride from hell” that will make the time go quickly and put it all into perspective.
10. Our low-maintenance fashion style. Returned Peace Corps Volunteer guys are secure in their manhood and don’t mind rocking a sarong. Women often prefer flip flops to high heels. We don’t spend hours in front of a mirror getting ready to go out.
11. Marry us, and you won’t just get one family — you’ll get two! When we refer to our “brother” or “mom,” you’ll want to be certain we’re talking about our American one or our Peace Corps one. You might even get two wedding ceremonies, one in the U.S. and one back in our Peace Corps country.
12. And last but not least, we aren’t afraid to get dirty.

-courtesy of: http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2012/02/12-reasons-to-date-a-returned-peace-corps-volunteer/

12 reasons NOT to date an RPCV

1. You might get tired of hearing “In Peace Corps...” stories all the time.
2. While you like sharing with your partner you don’t want to catch whatever creepy contagious disease we got from living like the locals (parasites, giardia, guinea worm, the plague)
3. Peace Corps volunteers are nomadic by nature so if you seek stability, have plans to settle down, or have considered home ownership (really even a 1 year lease), we aren’t your kind of people.
4. Before going on vacation with us you will probably need to get a vaccine, at least one.
5. We will insist on preparing you food from our host country. You will never know if we are just bad chefs or if the food was really that terrible.
6. You might get offended when we have pictures of adorable barefoot kids all over our apartments, but none of you (or any other Americans)
7. We genuinely believe that tevas/chacos are appropriate for work, dates, exercising, weddings, and everything else, always.
8. We will complain about easy life is in America and how everyone takes everything for granted.
9. We love foreign music no matter how squealy, shrill, or bizarre it may be.
10. When we hang out with our RPCV friends we get sucked into a vortex of nostalgia that lasts for weeks. 

11. We don’t believe careers in developed countries are meaningful, this includes yours
12. It will be very difficult for you to get us to talk about any part of our lives besides Peace Corps

-courtesy of our country director

the ride down my mountain in ait ouafka
w/tashelheit music

Alisa and the coincidences:

And I'm back in America. It's been a whirlwind of a few weeks, so let me try to briefly catch up on everything that's happened. I found out about two weeks ago that Peace Corps was medically evacuating me to my hometown to get treatment for my heart condition. But because they were anticipating this turning into a medical separation (me not coming back to Morocco), they gave me a week to travel to my site, pack up all my stuff, and say my goodbyes in my community. They also said I had to have a baby-sitter the entire time to make sure I didn't pass out along the way. Luckily, I had a good friend/volunteer who was willing to travel across the country to meet up with me and then travel all up and down the west coast of Morocco (THANKS, LK!). Then, I flew out of Morocco last Wednesday and landed in good old Merika on Thursday. Now it's just lots of phone calls between me, Peace Corps in DC, and various doctor's offices, trying to get everything taken care of before my 45 days are up (when you're on a medical evacuation, Peace Corps only gives you 45 days to clear everything up before they medically separate you).

And now to get to the point of the title of this post, ever since I found out I might be leaving Morocco, it's been coincidence after coincidence. First, the Peace Corps doctor that treated me in Morocco had a brother who had the exact same heart condition. Then the Chief Medical Officer in DC that ruled on my case had a daughter who had the condition too. Then when flying out of Casablanca (a good 12 hours away from my village in Morocco), I met a cafe worker who was from my village and knew my host mother. After that I got seated next to a Kuwaiti kid on my flight into Knoxville, and got to practice a little Arabic. Then I got a notoriously grumpy medical contact officer at Peace Corps DC and she's been nothing but nice to me, all because my southern accent leaked out. I don't normally believe in signs or fate or whatever, but I'm seriously hoping all these coincidences mean I might be coming back? At least it's something positive to rest my hopes on.

And then life happened:

Man, if I had only known what awaited me after writing my last post. And that ending line, "Busted lip and all, I still have a feeling things are looking up"! Talk about jinxing myself.

Let me explain. After writing that post, I then traveled up to Rabat and began a whirlwind of slightly terrifying medical tests. I started by going in to see the Peace Corps medical staff (PCMOs) and doing a quick history and explanation of what I was doing when I fainted and discussing possible causes. They ruled out all the normal stuff like dehydration, stress, low blood sugar, etc. and because this is Peace Corps and the last thing they need is a volunteer passing out in the bled (backwoods... minus the woods) and getting run over by a donkey, they decided they better test me for all the not normal stuff. So then began a "fun" few days of getting wires strapped in all sorts of places to see if I had epilepsy, seizures, or a brain tumor, blood clots in my legs or lungs, or some kind of funky heart condition. All of the first two came up completely negative, but oh that last one. 

The cardiologist had me do an EKG/sonogram/something that showed him my heart (I am such a bad health volunteer) and saw/heard that I have premature heart beats. No cause for worry there, however, again because this is Peace Corps and liability is key, they decided I should wear a heart monitor for 24 hours to see if anything else might come up. I turned that back into the cardiologist last Thursday and then waited around for the results. Because Monday was a holiday (another l3id!?), I didn't find anything out until Wednesday. It turns out they found something else besides the premature heart beats. I also have a condition called SVT (supraventricular tachycardia). From what I understand from the PCMO's rather detailed explanation and wikipedia, it basically means every once in awhile (in my case a couple of times a day) the top half of my heart gets a funny signal and decides it's going to beat super fast and make me do fun stuff like faceplant into my bathroom floor. The condition isn't fatal or anything, but it does make being a Peace Corps Volunteer a little tricky. Untreated there's the chance I will faint again and maybe, actually get run over by a donkey. 

So then we talked about treatments. Basically there's two ways to go: medicine or surgery. The meds are beta blockers and seem to pretty much just suck. They make working out near impossible, you can't drink on them, and they're a rest of your life kind of deal. The surgery comes in two forms. One that involves radiation and another that involves freezing a bit of your heart. They both work in the same basic way (snaking a tube up my vein and into my heart and killing the funny bit that keeps beating super fast), however the radiation treatment has a slightly higher chance of complications (like needing a pacemaker or open heart surgery) but it's permanent. The freezing treatment allows doctors to play around until they're sure they've got the right spot and then freeze that tissue, but it has a small chance of impermanence, which means another surgery. So those are my treatment options. 

When I first talked it over with the PCMOs in Rabat, there was the hope that they'd maybe put me on the beta blockers and see how I do, but still let me continue service and then revisit surgery once I officially COS'd (closed my service) in May 2013. I just found out today that is not going to work for Peace Corps Washington; they won't let a volunteer continue service if they're on beta blockers. Because the surgery can't be performed in Morocco, my options are now to be medevaced (this gives me 45 days to start whichever treatment they decide and recover to Peace Corps' satisfaction) to DC or Bristol or to be medically separated (completely ending my service). Tomorrow I find out which one I'm getting and which treatment Peace Corps Washington is going to advocate. But no matter what it looks like I'm leaving Morocco. Inchallah (god willing) it will only be for a few weeks. 

In which Alisa discovers that busted lips do not make you look like Angelina Jolie:

I had this whole super exciting, positive post planned about how I got a site change and about how amazing my Christmas vacation in Spain was, and then this morning I fainted, busted my lip, chipped a tooth, and got up close and personal with my bathroom floor. Oh, Morocco you are a hard country to love.

Anyway, I'm fine. Angry about my tooth, but it was the wonky one so not too angry. Slightly fascinated by the size of my lip, it's HUGE. And headed to see the Peace Corps doctors tomorrow to find out why exactly I so gracefully faceplanted into the floor for no apparent reason. On the bright side I get a free trip to Rabat (land of hot showers, decent food, and internet) and maybe even some free time to squeeze in a visit to Fes to see a good friend studying there. Things could be worse.

So onto the site change and Christmas vacation. Since the last time I posted I went to our In-Service Training (IST or middle of service training) in Mehdia (a small beach town nearish to Rabat). While I was there I spoke to my regional manager about how I'd been feeling the last few months and we decided I should switch sites. That means I'll soon be moving off my mountain (kind of sad I can't say my mountain anymore) and closer to civilization. I'll be in a smallish town about 20 minutes outside of Tiznit and whole heck of a lot closer to the beach. :) And I just settled everything with my house this week! This house is amazing and kind of Posh Corps. But I think I'll have a much better quality of life there and I'm excited to finally start some work too. Pictures will be posted soon. As for Spain, it was a bit of a whirlwind. Let's just say there was much wine (a little bit of whiskey because I make bad choices), MUCH bacon and ham, boys whose sexuality was very hard to determine, and many hilarious experiences with wonderful friends.

And that's been life for the past few months. Busted lip and all, I still have a feeling things are looking up.

And that's the way we get by:

My last post was certainly not my most positive. And I just want you guys to know that I'm not dying over here or anything, struggling, but not dying. Some days are bad (like when I find a nest of earwigs in my house and can't come out from under my covers because it's too cold) and others are good (like when I go into Tiznit and can feel my toes again). When I wrote my last post, I'd had a few bad days in a row and it showed, but those feelings were true then and it's staying up. I think the best analogy for Peace Corps is a roller coaster, when you're up, you're up and when you're down, you're dowwwn, but every once in awhile you get to cruise along for a bit.

So this week I went into Tiznit for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving with some other volunteers and finally do some work (unbelievable, right?). I stayed in a hotel and showered and was warm when I slept and there are just no words for how much that helped my mood. Then I headed into another volunteer's site for our dinner and work. Dinner was really simple and pretty amazing. We got roast chicken from a restaurant in Tiznit, made some mashed potatoes and stuffing (courtesy of my family back home), and fried up some green beans. See:

Not bad for our first turkey-less Thanksgiving.

Then we went over to the dar taliba (girl's dormitory) in this other volunteer's site to do activities with the girls that stay there. There are about 20-25 girls that stay in the dormitory during the week because they live too far away from the school to travel every day and unfortunately they don't have a lot to do there but sit in their rooms. So we played musical chairs with them, which was a HUGE hit. They were dancing, cracking each other up, and getting super competitive which was so great to see in girls. The south of Morocco is pretty conservative and it really shows in how girls are treated. Then we (well, the volunteer in our region that speaks fluent Arabic and can actually communicate) explained to them Thanksgiving and all of the girls went around and said what they were thankful for. Most popular answers: us (little suck-ups!), God, their friends and family, and being able to go to school. Then we were getting ready to leave and the woman in charge of the dar taliba stopped us and told us we weren't to play games with the girls anymore because it was too loud and disruptive, from here on out we can only teach English. :/ We're going to try to go over her head, but we'll see how that goes...

And to end this post, like the girls we visited yesterday, I think I should take some time to remember what I'm thankful for:

• my family and all the wonderful care packages they send
• my friends back home and their patience in listening to me rant about the same things over, and over
• my amazing Peace Corps friends who are always willing to talk about poop
• my site-mates who feed me way more than they should, but are also probably keeping me alive (bacon bits, however tasty, are not dinner)
• hot showers when I can get them
• the patisserie in Tiznit that has AMAZING peanut butter cookies
• thermal underwear
• and every once in awhile, being here in Morocco