Travelling

Excuse my short and inconsistent posts while I travel.

I met my family in Marakech, where we stayed for three nights while we waited for Frannys bag to be rerouted from Orlando Florida. Kind of a bummer but at least it came.

Marakech was OK. After 10 months in Morocco its about time I went there; since probably every tourist to Morocco has been there. Its really busy, full of tourists, lots going on, expensive (for Morocco). Worst part is that everyone there harrasses people to buy stuff. You cant leave your hotel without someone giving you a hard time. So that gets exhausting after a while. But there are really nice gardens there, cheap orange juice, and people there loved it that I spoke Berber. I mean loved it. It probably saved me like 100 dirhams and everyone was giving me the address of their house in another city to go to. So nice to me.

Then we went to my training host family near Klah Mgouna. If you are a old fan of my blog, you may recall that they are a big family that was really nice to me and I liked a lot. Well nothing has changed. They liked meeting my mom and sister, even though communication was difficult. And they were thrilled to see me again. They stuffed us with good food and it was good to visit. I definitely hope to go back again, maybe next august when they are harvesting all the fruit trees.

Going there highlighted some aspects of my community that I hadnt noticed. The people in Klah are much better to their women; it was really good to see that. The women have a lot more freedom and their lives arent as hard. Also it made me realize how poor my current community really is. My training family is pretty well off for a rural Moroccan family and they do not lack any necessities.

The other big difference was the language. Im pretty decent at Tamazight by now, but the language down South is much different. I understood, but not as well as I do in my community.

Tonight we are in Midelt. Tomorrow we go to my site for a few days. Im looking forward to going home. Which it does feel like. Hopefully there will be a longer blog post on Wednesday or Thursday of next week. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.