emotional fatigue...

but in a good way!

today was insanity and awesomeness!

we woke up and prepared for our placements. i was teaching my first english class and was super nervous. i figured we would go over introductions and then talk about this big holiday coming up, Fete du Mouton. Thats the day when they slit the throats of the sheep and then have a big family sheep meal. my students now know how to spell 'sheep.' well, that took us up to about a half an hour, at which point i was out of material and needed to fill an hour. at which point, i asked one of my students for the time.

turns out, they hadn't learned time yet. aha! there went 15 minutes doing exercises about the clock. nice!

for the rest of class we just talked. they asked me questions about vocabulary mostly, we talked about what they wanted to learn and why. they're great people! the youngest, and best at english, is 19. the oldest, and chattiest, is 36. for the record, i wasnt going to even ask about age, since in the us that can be impolite, but these ladies offered up their ages without batting an eye. there are three women and two men, which i was surprised about at a placement called feminin pluriel. but the center is apparently about cultural understanding as much as it is about female empowerment, and i suppose the fact that there are men who want to learn english at a female empowerment center is pretty open minded.

so we ended up chatting for about the last 5 minutes of class while the center workers served us tea and cookies (not a bad gig). one of my students invited me to her wedding in december, which opened up a whole discussion about what moroccans do for weddings. they also said that i seem very american, that i look and act american. but then they said that they've only ever met three of us. anyway, it was a really cool morning, and i think i'm going to like my work here.

this afternoon we took a walking tour of downtown rabat and hassan tower, as well as mohammed v's mausoleum (which is at hassan tower). the rain let up just in time for the hour and a half long tour, and there were beautiful clouds over the ocean by the casbah (where apparently the pirates used to hang out). there were cats frolicking in the garden and in the market place and i was overcome with the cute kitty awwwwwwws.

so now i'm exhausted, looking forward to dinner, which is continually delicious, and i need to do my lesson plan for tomorrow!