Dec. 28, 2014

I know what you’re thinking: sheesh, Johanna sure isn’t as dedicated to updating her blog as she was when she first arrived in Morocco.

I will grant you that, however, look on the bright side! What was once such a new and overwhelming place to live that regular blogging and journaling were necessary to help my brain process everything is now a normal life with routines and things that can be expected and so forth. My classes began just after 3id Kbir – which was the topic of my last post – and have thankfully left me quite busy with a schedule that comes pretty close to the Peace Corps recommendation for volunteer work hours and with so many kids wanting to come to class we don’t have enough space to fit all of them.

So really, no blog updates probably means I am finding everything so routine it doesn’t bear mentioning. Huzzah! I’ve only been waiting for that to happen for a year and a half.

On that note, something truly exciting just happened!!!

My mama came to visit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I was pretty much making that face the entire two weeks she was here.

Mom, being the good, kind, wonderful, amazing mother that she is, promptly began saving for a trip to come see me as soon as we knew where I was going, which amounted to giving me the best Christmas present ever. She stayed for the two weeks before Christmas and we had a lovely time doing a bit of traveling and doing a bunch of relaxing and sitting in the sun in T–. She got to meet my host family, as well as several other families that have become like my families here. My dar chabab youth were the cutest ever and decided to throw her a top secret surprise welcome party, complete with jumping out of a classroom en masse and shouting “Surprise!”

Us getting a tour of the boat building in Essaouira.

Why is it so rainy?!?!?!

Relaxing with ZundZund.

After lunch with Mounia and Jeremy.

Out in Taroudant!

We ate lots of couscous, wandered through the souk, did impromptu carpet buying, and played Scrabble. For Christmas Eve dinner we made French onion soup and it was delicious.

Mom and Leah at the zwinest hotel in Taroudant for lunch.

Mom gets henna done for the first time.

Eating all the cake at the Dar Chabab.

Almost as good as being together was the chance for Mom to see what life in Morocco is really like. As much as you try to explain things, you really don’t understand it until you’re here and I think Mom came away with a very positive impression of Morocco, which makes me happy, because this place has been my home for the past two years.

Now that she has successfully arrived back home, I have a week of class before I have to head up to Rabat once more for what is called our Close of Service Conference (COS Conference), which I am dearly hoping will include information on how to leave Morocco without becoming a sobbing mess (who am I kidding, that’s a given) and how to readjust to life in America. We also find out exactly which dates we will be leaving Morocco, so that will be exciting and terrifying.

And since it’s New Year’s, maybe my resolution should be to blog once a week? Let’s try that and see how it goes.