Make Your Own Fun

Thanksgiving came last week and like most of the world, we found ourselves in the race for second place. This is what the all-time undefeated Turkey Day world champions were up to:

Defending their title in the bouncy castle.

But luckily for us, Peace Corps Morocco staff threw a really nice get together, inviting all the volunteers in country to Rabat on the flimsy pretext of mandatory vaccinations, and since we were in the neck of the woods, a turkey dinner potluck for 200+ volunteers, staff and hangers-on.

We came up via train with our friend Sarah, backs nearly broken from hauling 30 kilos of couscous on behalf of the Omnia Women's Co-operative, which we sold in short order to some generous PCVs. I guess they had a Black Friday itch. 

Bombs away, Sarah.

Even in my most elemental element, I wilt at the prospect of trying to socialize with 200-odd people. Never mind that I only ever speak English to one person anymore, and she and I have developed our own cloistered twin-language, and we were already pretty weird to begin with. But I had fun, in part because I landed at a really good table full of serious eaters -first group through the line, and frequenters or the dessert table- and in part because I hid out in the lounge and looked at the free bookshelves any time it got too hot for me.

The food was a surprisingly good mash-up of classic American and Moroccan dishes (though no actual mashed potatoes, to my great sadness). Couscous works well for soaking up turkey juice and cranberry sauce.

The next day we got our shots, three shots for me in fact, and caught a bus with our PCV friends Leah and Carly to Carly's site, a tiny town between Ouazzane (which Carly ironically calls "Land of Dreams") and Chefchaouen (which she earnestly calls "Land of Dreams"). 

There, we did typical PCV things like eat stuff from Carly's care packages, watch movies and youtube videos, play games at the Dar Chabab and walk around in the pretty countryside. We also took advantage of our Jewish contingent (and us, the Judaism enthusiasts) to celebrate Hanukkah.

Carly and Leah sang prayers in Hebrew.

We ate delicious latkes and applesauce, with plain yogurt subbing for sour cream.

That's a Frisbee Menorah. The world's first?

Carly's site is out of control pretty.

Looks an awful lot like northern California

At the Dar Chabab. The guy in the middle kept slapping our legs in this hilarious game/Three Stooges sketch.

After that we headed to to Chefchaouen, which we knew of only as the funky city with the blue and white medina and a heavy Rasta influence. The guidebooks have oversold those aspects. Yes, there's blue everywhere, and yes our waiter tried to sell us drugs at the dinner table. But Chefchaouen's real charm comes from the dramatic green mountains it's nestled against; the cleanliness of the streets and low-key hassling of tourists; the incredible fact of the presence of goat cheese. We were dazzled. Our new favorite city in Morocco.

A taxi to a bus to a train to a taxi to a bus later we were back in site, getting ready to teach an English class. Homesickness is pretty much a fact of daily life for us here is Morocco: we got a good home waiting for us back in the U.S. Thanksgiving and the holiday weekend, though? We made our own fun. No time to be homesick when you're too busy getting motion sick.