Update from Taounate

1. This is a big town. City? Yeah let's go with city. The Internet says there are around 32,000 people here, but it feels bigger than that. It's really spread out over a few small peaks of some small peaks in the Rif Mountains. 

2. Our Dar Chebab is amazing. It was just opened in 2010 and they have a lot of resources and an eager staff. 

It's two stories. Biggest Dar Chebab we've seen yet. 

No but seriously. 

There are about 10 PlayStations in this room. They're all in good condition and it would seem this could be an ideal method of sharing American culture. Right?

Here's the computer language lab. YEAH. The last volunteer built this lab with like 10 computers that are all equipped with Rosetta Stone and all the equipment necessary. (Thanks, David!)

We've been a couple times and met with the staff and are very eager to get started with teaching English, aerobics, sports, chess, and anything else that presents itself. 

3. Funny thing that's totally worthy of being a thing on this list: our Mudira (boss lady at the DC) speaks German. For everyone who said that Toby's German would be worthless and Alexis' French would be the only thing helpful, feel free to openly laugh along with us here. It's awesome. 

4. Host Family #2: glorious humans. We have Mama Fatima, Karim, Ikram, Najwa, and a bunch of people who live close by and seem to stop in a lot. They all love Peace Corps and all the volunteers that they've met in the past and we love them. 

Bonus: there are a couple cats who mosey in and out of the house throughout the day. 

5. The weather. It turns out we're kind of in the Portland of Morocco. It's really green, we have fir trees, and they get a loooot of rain. It's awesome. 

More town pictures later, but here's the view from our house: