A Day in the Life - August Edition

When interviewing for Peace Corps, our recruiter spent a lot of time asking what we would do when we got bored (notice that it is "when" and not "if"). We both found it kind of strange and listed off some random hobbies. "I really like to bake and cook new things... Hopefully local food! And I'm really trying to get back in to reading more. I have a kindle, why not use it?" said Alexis. "I like to read. Maybe go on a hike now and then? I'll figure something out" said Toby. 

He went out of his way to be sure we knew that we would get bored and that it would happen a lot, and while we knew we would get bored, no amount of talking during an interview could have prepared us for our first Moroccan August. 

An average day (it doesn't matter which one, as they're basically all the exact same):

Somewhere between 6:00 and 9:00 am: wake up. Sometimes it's because it's so warm were already sweating and need a shower, sometimes it's because the cat has decided to try to pierce Alexis' nose in her sleep. Either way, now we're up. 

10:00 am: I guess we should eat. 

12:00 pm: laundry/clean the kitchen time (alright. You got me. This is a very ambitious day) play with the cat. 

2:00 pm: food again? Sure. 

3:00 pm: I think the post office closes at 4, so we should leave soon if we want to check our (likely empty) PO box. 

3:30 pm: yep. Still empty. Want to go to the cafe?

4:30 pm: Alexis still isn't a fan of the public toilets, so I guess it's time to buy some food and go home. 

5:00 pm: eh I guess we need bananas or cheese or beef or something. 

5:30 pm: okay now we're home. That was a big day! Let's study for the GRE (occasionally done at the cafe). 

7:00 pm: dinner! Alright. 

8:30 pm: why didn't we plan and buy something for dessert?! Well, I'm not getting dressed to go out again, so I guess we'll survive without it. Let's play with the cat. 

9:00 pm: movie/reading/standing on the roof and talking about food or something in the U.S.  

11:00 pm: yeah I guess I'm tired enough. Good night. 

Add in occasional meals with our various favorite Moroccan families, more playing with the cat, talking about going to Fes, one-on-one English lessons, and (depending on the heat) numerous cold showers and that's been the majority of our summer.  

We do feel much more involved with our community and like people really know us now, which was a big goal. We have also put together a whole list of things were ready to try with our classes at the Dar Chebab when they start again (September 10), which feels great. We have also planned a vacation! We'll be in London for a few days in December and will go from there to Marseille for our anniversary, Alexis' birthday, and Christmas. (Imagine here the faces we're both making in relation to the food.)

Random accomplishments:

Check out the reading list tab. We've read a LOT of books. 

We have mastered quite a few recipes in site. Yes, they're mostly American foods that we miss, but that makes it no less impressive. 

One of our pipes burst and Toby was able to buy a new one and have a friend call a plumber for us - all in Darija!

Our cat is still really cute. 

Being here is complicated. Sometimes it's a lot of fun and everything is great, and other times nice weather and lack of cheese can lead one of us (okay, it's Alexis) to actual tears. But then something happens to make everything better again, and the cycle just continues. Who knows what the fall will bring, or the next 20 months of our service for that matter, but we'll be slightly more ready for it. 

Community involvement

We've now been living in our house, on our street, near our glorious neighbors for four months, and we're really happy with it. Our house is still great and our neighbors are awesome. However, our street is a mess. When we first moved in, it was compacted dirt/gravel, but really easy to walk on. Three days later, we woke up to the sounds of the whole thing being torn up, and it was replaced with a bunch of rocks. 

It's terrible. Since most of the street is on a hill, it's very rare that we have an outing where one of us doesn't slide at least a few feet. 

There are also a few bits that are still cement, but have become more troublesome than they are convenient. 

To make matters worse, cars go up and down pretty frequently, so the road condition is actually deteriorating each day. 

We haven't even had to deal with the rain yet, which will probably just make everything gross and slippery. 

However, when we were coming home on Friday, we found a group of about 40 people out on the street with signs and taking a ton of pictures. They were about to march through town to the local government building a protest for a new street. What organizers! When they asked us to join, we were more than happy to!

Forehead for scale?

This is the local government building here in Taounate. We marched here (about 10 minutes from our house) and stayed for about 45 minutes. The leaders had different chants worked out and a few speakers to lead the event. 

Right as we arrived, so did local law enforcement. Don't worry! They were just there to watch and no one even had to interact with them other than to say why everyone was there. 

Local police. 

The Gendarmes (more like state troopers back in America). 

It turns out, the people on our street were promised a new, paved road back in 2012 and still have nothing, so they're understandable angry. It looks like they started and gave up, actually...

But now we have been invited by one of the lead organizers to join them on Monday morning to do the same thing again. It would seem that they intend on making this a regular occurrence until a new street is down, and, as active members of our neighborhood, we'll be there!

Chicken Dinner (warning: graphic pictures)

For dinner tonight, we decided it was a good night for chicken. We've had chicken a decent number of times here, so it didn't seem like that big of a deal, but it was a bit different today.

The process:
1. Go to Mul Djej (literally: owner of chicken). There are a few close-ish to our house, and a bunch throughout town. We normally go to the one in The Village (downtown area), because that's where we do most of our food shopping, but tonight we went to the closer option.

2. Order your chicken and figure out the price. Tonight, it was two chickens (one was 2 kilos and the other was 2.5) for 75 dirham (about $7.50).
3. Mul Djej goes to work. He walks to the back of his shop area and picks up the chickens, brings them up front to weigh them for you, and then sets in on the cleaning. It's a pretty quick operation, really:

• say "bismillah," or "in the name of Allah," which is said to begin pretty much everything (a meal, a taxi ride, a class, really anything)
• cut the neck and wait for it to stop flappin' and drain all the blood
• dunk it in really hot water a couple times and put it in the defeather machine (it's a big drum that spins really quickly and sounds like a dryer)
• pull out the not-so-fun inside bits (intestine, stomach, etc)
• put it in a bag and hand it over
• (our other Mul Djej quarters the chicken and cuts out the neck and inside bits, but that's optional)

4. Bring the future meal home, clean it, soak it in vinegar, cook, and enjoy!

Simple enough, yeah? Well tonight was our first encounter of needing to break down the whole bird. With a little help from this video from Alton Brown and our two best knives, Toby jumped in and did a wonderful job getting our dinner ready!

I warned you it was graphic! This is the first time the whole head came with it. 

Here you can see our two best knives. The purple one is actually supposed to be a bread knife, but it's the heaviest one we've got and handles chicken bone nicely. The other is a tiny little ceramic paring knife that's super sharp and has yet to fail us, until today. There are two chips in the blade now, and we might need to bid it farewell. 

Mmmmm look at all those tasty inside bits for Enib later. 

Here you can also see the vinegar soaking bowl. We aren't really sure why, but we were told by multiple Moroccans to soak our chicken in vinegar before we cook it and we see no reason to challenge them. 

And voila! Now dinner is cooking and Toby can count himself as a chicken butchering expert (basically).

Update: August 11, 2015

It's really hot.