Hello everyone! After a 3 hour drive to JFK, 2 hour wait to check-in, 1 hour check-in process, 2 hour wait in the gate area playing Phase 10 and a 6 hour flight...I safely arrived in the Casablanca airport, :). The flight passed by very quickly and I had minimal ear pressure difficulties! Then after we arrived in Casablanca we filled out several entry cards and made our way to our checked bags where none had been left behind, filed onto another bus and took a 2 hour drive to Rabat. The scenery was beautiful, but unfortunately my camera was in my bag under the bus, :(. But not to worry, I will take plenty of other photos during my 27 month journey here, :). We are staying at a very beautiful old hotel in inner Rabat and will depart for Azrou near the end of the week. We will then seperate into our different language learning groups in which us small business developers will either learn Moroccan Arabic or one of the Berber dialects while the youth development sector will learn Moroccan Arabic. It will be very difficult, but I hope to learn a lot.
I am also very excited to explore Rabat tomorrow! We're hotel bound until then and it is also the month of Ramadan here ending at the end of the month. Ramadan is the Islamic religious holiday in which Moroccans absist from drinking any kind of liquid (including water) or food during the day as well as sex or smoking during the entire month. They celebrate and eat well at night. The holiday is in honor to Allah, it is a time in which they celebrate Allah through cleansing their bodies during the day by not eating or drinking. It is all very fascinating and aweing. I might try to participate this time next year after I have acclimated to the climate and schedule and culture. They do not expect non-islamic religions to participate, but they do ask us to not eat in front of them in the public eye out of respect for their religion.
So thus far this is my intro into the culture. I still have much to learn and observe, but I hope to integrate into my future community as much as possible, :).
I am a young woman with high hopes and high goals of changing the world one person at a time, one idea at a time, one view at a time. After my two years of service in Morocco I hope to continuing making a difference in the world. "The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps."
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