Widdle Student Wudents

Seven Souls signed up in the kick-off day of the reading competition. I would have preferred more, but I'll take it. Explaining the rules was difficult, and I'm paranoid about letting the books leave the dar chebab, so every kid has to initial a mini-contract with me.

































Aren't they so cute you just can't stand it??!

Near the end of yesterday evening, I tried to play Mafia with a group of them. It was a challenge. They uh were not as intense and competitive as the Americans I spent hours playing with during training way back in '06.

I've finally got a free morning to do housework, and maybe yoga. I need both desperately. Housework here--without a washing machine, dishwasher, and with five, large dust-gathering rooms--is more or less a full time job. As I give it about one day every two weeks, perhaps you can imagine the state of my house.

You may recall way back when, when I sort of stopped going to my host family's house because I thought they didn't like me anymore. I saw Host Dad yesterday and he was all, why don't you come by? I was all, I'm embarrassed now because we haven't seen each other for so long. He said, well, come...but make sure to bring Emme's phone number. Ouch...but I deserve it.

I've probably talked about this at length, though, but the whole Going to People's Houses thing is a huge topic of discussion for PCVs here. I would probably seethe with a combination of hostile jealousy and pity if someone told me they go to, say, five or six houses per week (but that's pretty unlikely for most people I know). So many people seem to revel in our company...but it's just that treatment and attention of being different that makes it sort of unpleasant to participate in. I absolutely love my work now. And I also do really like my friends and neighbors. But, I usually don't want to go to people's houses, no matter how desperately they want me to come. Getting over that guilt was a big step for me and has made PC easier.

Speaking of making PC easier: with this much time that one can spend alone in one's house, I've figured out there are a couple Coping Strategies that are a must, or one risks going completely insane. The main one is, don't become Obsessed. Obsessed with what, you might ask? ANYTHING. If you want to make it here, you risk to but simply cannot become obsessively preoccupied with any of the following: your work, a project, a person from your town, another PCV, all other PCVs, all people in your town, someone from home, your weight, the weather, the laundry, the cleanliness of your house, writing a book, teaching yourself a skill such as crocheting, the balance of your diet, your money, exercise, the injustices in the world, the injustices in Morocco, the injustices in America, Hurricane Katrina in particular, your family, your blog, taking pictures, adequately capturing your PC experience, PC administration, grant writing, your reflection in the mirror, fixing something that's broken that you really don't know how to fix, some interaction that happened six months ago, your childhood, your resume, your future, finding a job, your solitude, facebook.