After a long morning of cleaning the daily layer of dust out of my apartment I retreated to my bedroom where I am now hiding from the heat of another July afternoon in Morocco. As I was catching up on my friend’s emails and blogs it occurred to me that I haven’t blogged lately.

After a few moments of contemplation I came to the realization that this experience has simply become my life. I much more infrequently look at my life here and think, “wow, that was a weird interaction, I should blog about that”. I have begun to accept the unexpected and simply live from day to day. But I also came to the realization that although my life has become very “normal” here it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t document it. So in a spirit of recreating and updating this blog I will run you through a quick synopsis of what has been happening the last few months and add more entertaining stories soon J

Life in Azilal

-My apartment is finally feeling like a real home, with new trinkets I have been collecting I have added the nice homey twist I was looking for.

-Due to the summer dust storms my apartment is NEVER clean and I have daily dance parties as I squeegee my floors.

- I found a lizard on my ceiling the other day. I began to scream and jump around on my bed until a fellow PCV came and shooed it out of my room.

- My work has died down in site due to the hot weather and closing of both my women’s center and youth center. This gives me more time to do art projects, make posters and, make up questionable recipes

Other fun adventures

-This summer I am coordinating a partnership Peace Corps has just begun with an orphanage program called SOS villages and I am loving this experience and it gives me an excuse to travel and work more with some other volunteers. I think my colleagues also have appreciated the fact that all of the meetings I hold for this project have taken place in air conditioned McDonalds; In my opinion one of the most productive atmospheres for PCVs in all of morocco.

-I just returned from an amazing trip to the beach town of Essaouira where our own Small Business Development volunteers held one of their annual craft fairs with small town artisans. I definitely spent a chunk of flus (money) on these amazing products.

-This week I venture to El Jadida to partake in a 10 day English Immersion summer camp. I am excited for the break from site and scheduled activities however I am also a little weary of spending over a week with 80+ cranky, hot teenage Moroccans.

Wish me luck ;)