God bless America. I won't ever complain again about the Veteran's Hospital in DC (where PC referred me as a patient) or the Hawaii-based insurance my Virginia-based job provided me with.
I started this entry to write about my experience with a local hospital, but then I got distracted. Time flew, and I owe my mom an update. How about a news-headlines-esque blog entry instead?
Guess who happily eats watermelon and cantaloupe now? Although I once thought of these as puke-smelling fruit, I actually enjoy it! My friends have been serving platters of fresh, juicy watermelon, cantaloupe, apricots, and plums after our lunches and dinners together.
At a recent Jazz Festival in Rabat, yours truly heard a Scandinavian band and saw one of the musicians grabbing pizza afterward.
At a more recent Ganaoua Festival in Essaouira, yours truly joined a crowd of thousands of boys to hear a popular hip hop artist perform at 4am on the beach. She also promoted free SIDA (HIV/AIDS) testing and encouraged testers to wait in an orderly line.
My first Moroccan host family warmly welcomed me back to their renovated home. Despite having not kept in touch, knocking on a once-blue-now-black door, and having a stranger answer, I soon caught up with my host family (and met my host mom's father who was in Spain last year). We could actually speak well with each other, and we laughed over some miscommunication from the home-stay experience. My host mom impressed me with how much of me she remembered. Maybe she's Moroccan CIA...
Rumors are afloat of bringing an inflatable couch to the watering hole at my first training site. And of visiting a water park in Marrakesh. (get the afloat pun? ha ha ...ha).
I read an article about the Dunning-Kruger Effect ("our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence") and wonder how it can apply to us PCVs...
The screen-printers and I are patiently waiting to find out if our grant was approved. This would provide them with material to screen-print clothes for themselves and shirts to sell.
From 50 to 5: this is the number of weavers who still go to the workshop daily. There's an upcoming rug craft fair in site, and they are getting ready for it! Badges with pictures for all exhibitors to come.
Yes, the townspeople have acknowledged that sif (the hot season) has arrived. Wearing 4 pants and 2 long-sleeve tops underneath a jellaba, the local women still confuse this blogger.
The World Cup is actually a big deal here. With Brazil and Ghana out, who will Moroccans cheer for next?
And more importantly, how much longer will all the ice cream/potato chip/cotton candy vendors stay open after sif is over?
*So the blog title was to remind me to put things in perspective. My regional capital's hospital is a place I would never ever want to do another lab test, despite the selectively friendly staff. At least it does not dispose of its placentas and used needles out in the street (like some other hospitals in the world).
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