Snow in May? What is this... Colorado!?

Having internet at site has been one of the best investments I’ve made while here in Morocco. It's so nice being able to connect with everyone at home, chat on skype (when it works), email and post blogs for the outside world to read. So far my schedule for myself has been coming along shwiya (sort of). Some days are a lot tougher than others and I constantly have to remind myself that just talking to new people is indeed work. Everyone in my family of 10 (seriously, I live with 10 people: my grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, 3 sisters and 3 brothers) is currently sick so I’ve been trying to keep to my room when I’m home to avoid having to touch or be around all the germs in the air. The idea of covering your mouth when you cough only seems to be important during meal times and washing your hands with soap only happens AFTER eating so it’s quite easy to get sick here. I'm attempting to lead by example with covering my mouth and explained that I wash my hands because of germs but I’m still a novelty in the house and everything I do seems weird, so they have yet to follow.

We got snow in the mountains last night and I got my first taste of what winters going to be like. I don’t really like winter in America when I can go from my heated car to my heated house so I’m really nervous about how I’m going to get through the winters in the mountains of Africa with one small heater that Peace Corps will reimburse (I’ll probably end up buying at least one more from my money) and mud walls. Other volunteers have told me you literally just wear as many layers of clothes you can put on and do as much work as you can in your home in the winters so that’s my game plan. I also decided I’m going to pick up baking, especially in the winters since the ovens here are just metal boxes with fire, and that will hopefully heat my kitchen where I will hang out like the little brother on A Christmas Story not being able to put my arms down.

I’ve learned I have quite a few people close to me as far as PCVs go so that’s been really exciting. There is my site mate, Andy. He's 28 and from Ohio. A little more on the quite side than I am but he’s collected a TON of information about our site so I’m excited to start working with him on some stuff. And I think he’s finally starting to open up to me too, so that’s exciting (I think I scared him at first). It's also nice that I’m a female so I can do a lot of work he wasn’t able to in the village. Steve is an environment volunteer about 25 K away (off-roading). I met him briefly during one of our first hubs in Ourzazate but he sent me a text welcoming me to the ‘hood’ so I think we’re going to get along just fine. Anna is 20 K away from me, in the town I switch taxis to come to site. I had coffee with her a few days ago and she seems super nice. She's 26 from St Louis and a Small Business Development (SBD) volunteer. Finally there is Linda, she’s about 30 K away, in the town where my post office, caid and gendarms are. She’s my PCV mom, had me over for lunch twice (with cookies) and helped me through the awkward marriage proposals at the gendarms. She’s 60 and absolutely FABULOUS! Overall, I’m SUPER lucky to have such fabulous volunteers within an hour away and cant wait to hang out with all of them soon (I’m hosting a 4th of July bash, inchallah)

With that I’ll leave you the advice not to try and nap/sleep in on Fridays in Morocco because It's absolutely pointless- It's the holy day if you couldn’t tell from the prayers and songs BLARING from the mosque. (which happens to be only a house away from my bedroom windows!)