Tuesday - August 31

Hallelujah!!! I finally think I may have figured this whole photo/computer/blog thing out!! What a miracle! Well, not as big as the miracle Marcia mentioned in her blog today....finally getting a pencil sharpener in the art room!!

But......now it is getting past my bed time and tomorrow is my first day of class with my new kiddos, so, I will make this short!

Here are some photos of our weekend! The first several are sights we saw on an evening walk through the neighborhood....many beautiful flowers, some young men that were happy to have their photo taken. They were working in a sewing shop with gorgeous fabrics. (I thought of you, Elizabeth!!) :) Wish you were here to share in the fun!

Next, we ran onto a couple of fun stores just a couple blocks away.....one is a fitness place (we are wondering if it will really open up again after Ramadan??? The other is a lovely little boutique for women's clothing!! :)










Ok....




still don't quite have this moving around the photos thing down yet.....still a work in process......God keeps reminding me of that DAILY!! :)





Lastly we saw this lovely building. It was kind of half built - half not (we see a LOT of that here). but I especially loved that the electric meter is wired to the post out in front of the building!! :)
















On Monday we hired two very sweet cleaning ladies to come at 9am (of course they left their house at 9 and got here at 9:15! :) They did laundry, changed sheets, cleaned the floors, the counters, the laundry room on the deck, washed windows, toilets, showers AND.....cooked us dinner! And all for $ 8.00 to each of the ladies! What a wonderful treat to come home to! The photos are of Marcia eating this great meal at our dining room table, the cool pans they cooked the meal in (the top one is a steamer that they cooked the couscous in) and the meal itself....couscous, chicken and vegetables in a wonderful Moroccan sauce!






































Next we have a photo of our VW Jetta that gets us around town!!

















The last few photos are from a trip into Casa on Saturday. Robin (the gal that was going to room with us and then plans changed....took us in to shop at the old Medina. This is a place that is just rows and rows of hunuts (shops) that sell everything from meat to belts!!


Well , Marcia ended up getting a great "deal" on a fancy watch!! She even asked if it was from China and the guy assured her it was the "real" thing!! (So, our next guess is that is was "hot"!!)







































This one is for you, Max and Monk (Jim and Jenny's cats - my grand-cats!), to look at whenever you think that your mom and dad aren't treating you well.....this is what our neighborhood kitty looks like.....very sad indeed! Most of the animals look kind of like this. :(


Ok....that's it for tonight...off to bed! Blessings to all of you! My love, Jill

Monday, August 30th

Sorry.........can you say FRUSTRATED!!

I seem to be able to figure one of the two things out....either to load photos from my camera to my computer OR to be able to have help loading them but then finding them on my own...but NOT both.....So, tonight it went like this...

I took me 45 minutes to be able to get on line!
Then I loaded the phots.......thought....GREAT!!
Then I went to do my blog and can't get the photos from iphotos to the blog........
GRRRRRR!!!

Bed time....back tomorrow to try, try again! :)

Today, the big accomplishment was to finally get insurance for the car we have been driving for a week and a half. We were told last Friday that it was not insured and if we got stopped they had the right to tow us in!!It cost us $112 us dollars for three months.

Then we hired cleaning ladies today and had them cook our meal for tonight as well. They were here for 8 1/2 hrs and we paid them $8 each (2 ladies). They are very sweet. They cleaned, washed windows, did laundry and cooked our meal. It smelled so good as we walked in the villa! The had made couscous, chicken and vegetables. They explained in part Arabic/French/English (thank goodness Marcia knows a lot of French) that they went back to their house to get more spices and vegetables. We offered more $$, but they said no and smiled!!

I met part of my class today. We had parent/student "Greet and Meet" today from 4 - 5 and tomorrow from 8:30 - 9:30. Most of the parents could speak a little English, but mostly French. I will start taking French lessons soon. One little girl translated from English to French and then back for her Mama and me! :) The kids look wonderful! I think the language part will be a challenge, but I hope I will catch on quickly.

Marcia and I also went for a walk around the neighborhood tonight after dinner. What a place....I will TRY to add photos tomorrow for you to see. We went by the hunut (little shop the size of a 1/2 of a single car garage) and Marcia tried to get them to work on her phone. They ended up saying," No fix it here....", then onto the donkey cart man with the almost too old to buy friut. We wanted to buy ONE pomegranate.....he smiled and loaded up a bag with various fruits and charged us 2 dirhams (- cents!!). Then we found a bakery and bought some dessert for us....had it when we got home and it was lovely....the first kind of "gooey" filling....most have been layers of pastry mostly. Next we walked by young men that were sewing beautiful pillows for frashes (sofas). They smiled and wanted in on the photo we took of the gorgeous fabrics.
Then we walked for a few more blocks and just laughed at various places and took photos of interesting sights (again...I'll TRY to put them on my blog tomorrow!)

Then, a cool shower felt wonderful, and then the nightly praying started. Marcia was skyping someone and had to bring her computer in my room to give her friend the "full" effect of the sounds outside our window!! Speaking of sounds and skyping....I may have mentioned that we have a Vontage phone now...well, SOON we hope it will be hooked up and ready to use...I'll keep you posted.

To bed..........

Friday, Aug. 27

Greetings from one tuckered out gal in Morocco!

Oh my.....this has been an exhausting week! The heat, the lack of AC, the amount of work to be done to be ready for school next Wed. and Open House on Mon and Tues, the disorganization of the school, EVERYTHING just takes FOREVER to do and is SO hard!!!!

We stayed until 6 tonight, came home, grabbed a bite to eat and then headed to the beach for a short walk. We had the beach to ourselves because everyone had headed home for their big meal of the day. Our walks on the beach are soooo wonderful. I have always been a "mountain gal", but the beach is sooo relaxing and soothing after a long day. It's like the water between my toes is washing away all the stress!! Then we come home, I shower all the sweat from our hard day off, come to my room, plug in the mosquito spray, turn on the fan and fall into bed!!! Ahhhhhhhh........maybe I am too old for this tough place! A new, young friend gave me a Bible verse today that was PERFECT for the day.....Isaiah 41:9 - 10!!

Okay, are you ready for a few photos??

The first one today is of a Muslim lady walking with four little ones on the beach. I asked if I could take their photo, she smiled and said yes...they were adorable!

Next is the donkey cart and man that come to our neighborhood every day about the time we get home and sell us fruits. He has wonderful fruit for us. New foods I tried this week: a fig and a cactus fruit. They were both very interesting to look at and to eat!!

The next photo is of a small strip of grass and beautiful flowering trees right out in front of our place. One day this week I felt bad.....my car alarm went off and on (it has a mind of it's own!!). We looked up and the same man that had been down on his hands and knees the night before cutting the grass with clippers jumped up (from sleeping) and started cutting the grass again! Opps!

The last two photos are of our home. The kitchen and the deck on top of the building. We have one floor above us (a German Pilot supposedly lives there...we have yet to see him!). So, we come in the front door and come up a flight of lovely marble curving steps to the second floor to our door, one more floor to his door and then one more set of steps to the roof. On the roof we have our laundry (35 steps above our apt to be exact!) and some deck furniture and a wonderful view of the city and the ocean.

Well, as I said, I am totally wiped out tonight.....I am headed to bed. PLEASE, pray for strength, patience and endurance.........it's been a pretty rough week! Thanks!!

Things we see along the beach! - Monday - August 23

Well, the men are praying (with a loud speaker much less!!) right below my bedroom window. They are working on the main Masque in Dar Bouazza (the town I live in), so the have a temporary one made in the street below our bedroom windows!) The happens from 9-10pm and then again from 4 - 5AM!! So, I thought I would write a bit more on my blog!

The beach is always a FUN place to see things.....

The beach can be sandy and smooth OR there might be areas of layers and layers of rocks


Look closely and see the wonderful designs in the sand!!



Shells and moss and who knows what.....but very cool to look at!!




Notice the Moroccans....the man in swim suit gear and the women covered from head to toe??!!











These are sights we see on our morning walks. We were walking along the sidewalk near the ocean. The Moroccans put up these "tents" at the end of the school year and "live" on the beach for the summer.....satellite dishes and all!! It's crazy....we are walking along and we will hear a TV going inside one of these homes! Dishes are free here so EVERYONE has one....along the beach, in the slums.....everyone! :)

We also saw a couple of sweet young girls tending the sheep. They waved hello to us and smiled back to us!

Lately, Marcia and I have been walking in the late afternoon when it is cooler AND right along the water on the beach. We carry our flip flops and enjoy the water and sand in between our toes.....it was wonderful today after a long day at teacher training!

Well, it is 9:58 pm, the men are done praying and my battery is running low....guess that means I am off to bed. Except that the neighborhood is bustling with noise of children playing and teenagers riding mopeds up and down the street. Ramadan.....I am anxious to see how different things are when Ramadan is finished (Sept. 11, I believe)...!
Blessings everyone! Jil

...more of Monday - August 23

Wanted to show you two of my favorites here in Casa.....the gorgeous flowers and the great/very interesting food!

This was couscous night! The wonderful Moroccan cook spent all day in the kitchen making 6 of these plates of food to feed all of us. We ate "Moroccan style"....sitting in a circle, all with a spoon and sharing the plate of food! (Actually, they probably would not have used spoons!) It was an amazing blend of sweet and sour that is very hard to explain....but so very good!

The really remarkable thing is that the cook is Muslim and they are in the middle of celebrating Ramadan this month. This means that she isn't allowed to eat until sunset....so she didn't even taste all this wonderful food while making it for us! One of the guys from HR went into the kitchen to see if she needed help and she asked him to be her "taste tester"!! What will-power!!!

Monday - August 23

Okay....since I FIANLLY have access to my photos I thought I would back up a little....

These photos are from right before I came to Africa.

I'm still learning how to "arrange" the photos....but here they are.....eventually, I will learn how to put them just where I want them. For tonight, they will continue to have a mind of their own and I am too tired to do any more! :)

Anyway, one is of my sis, Phyl, and her daughter and granddaughter (Amber and baby Taylor).
The next is of my kids in Chicago for Jenny's brother's wedding reception, one of Jenny and her mom (Nancy) in their beautiful dresses they wore to the wedding. (Don't they look great!!) and of the "after-party" group!! It was a fun way to spend my last weekend in the states!

Sunday - August 22

This was dinner tonight.......??!! We have a little pastearia across the street from us that Marcia loves to visit daily. Today she found these treats! We aren't really sure what they are....the one on the left tasted kind of like pizza and the one on the right was a little sandwich. Very interesting food here! :)

Well, I am on my blog AND able to load some photos because my hero "Missy Jensen" was online for about an hour and a half tonight helping me figure things out!! Thank you Missy!! Love you!!!

So, I can do it, the sad part is that now it is 11:40 pm my time and I have to go to teacher training in the am, so I must go to bed. That said, it is really loud outside my window right now. The Muslims just finished with prayer again and are ready to eat again......Ramadan....three more weeks and things will get back to "normal" they tell us! :)

Marcia and I really took it easy today.....well, we stayed around home all day anyway. We finished arranging the apt., did some laundry, hung it on the deck to dry (no dryer....which isn't a big deal now, but winter may be another story), walked on the beach.....

Great things that happened today: (it's the simple things that are making my day lately!!)
finding a penny in the bottom of my bags as I unpacked them (finding a penny anywhere is a good, even lucky thing....right??) :)
finding BOTH of my pair of sunglasses in my baggage AND after the quick move, de-bugging and all they were neither one broke!!!
having a really nice landlord and wife (she from Switzerland and he from Morocco)

Funny things that happened today:
Marcia was standing on a chair reaching to the top of her window to fix the blinds and having trouble with it. A man walks by down below and offers to help her. She says OK! and he says he'll be back in one hour...............THEN she says to me.....I THINK that was our landlord, but I'm not for sure!!!!! So, she proceeds to put her computer away (he might be a robber) and then put her long sleeved blouse on (he might be Moroccan.....heaven forbid he see her elbows!!). Then we pace.....what if it wasn't the landlord??? Who do you think it was????? Do we let just anyone in????
Well, it was the landlord and he was great! He couldn't fix it today. He needs a ladder.....he assessed the situation and said, "oh, this is bad....."....in French, of course! (Marcia knows a lot of French....thank goodness!) Tells us he will be back tomorrow...OK?? We smile and say...OK!

Well, off to bed..........more tomorrow!
Blessings to all of you. Much love,
Jill

Saturday - August 21 - AM

Hello everyone back home!

I'm missing you all this am. Things have been really changing and moving along quickly in the past week..................SO much to learn!!

Well, I am still without photos and I know that is what you want to see......What I have learned is: Don't buy an Apple computer the last week you are moving out of the country when you have had a PC up until now.....I'm still having trouble getting photos to move where I want them to go. I will ask someone for help eventually. I have just had too many housing "issues" to deal with first.

The good news is that we found a new place to live and are having our things moved over this afternoon. So, I will try to get set up and going soon and then learn what I am doing wrong with this whole photo thing. Sorry!!

Oh! Wow! I just thought I would try again and .....there is ONE of the zillion I have been trying to post.....this is a photo of me standing in the downstairs doorway to our new home! There is a bank below us and a German airplane pilot (?? :) ??) above us. (We have not met him yet!) We have a cafe/bakery across the street. Marcia went in yesterday and bought some bread for us. She said the place was swarming with bees (because of all the honey on the baked goods). I don't do real well with bees, so she may have to do our bread shopping! :) We also have a hunut just up the block for small groceries. AND.....we have a great view of the ocean from our living room, kitchen and my bedroom! I will TRY and post more photos soon!

We start regular teacher training on Monday, so we are trying to get the house situation all figured out and done this week. Then start on classroom stuff next week. The kids start on Sept. 1.

Today is a very special day here...........it is the KING'S BIRTHDAY!! So far I have noticed more flags hanging up, but not much more.

Oh, I forgot to mention something lovely..............we have a "temporary" mosque set up outside of our bedrooms on the street in our new place! So from 9 - 10 pm and 4 -5 am we will be hearing the chanting on a loud speaker!! yippee! not really.......it will only last three more weeks of Ramadan.

Ok........gotta go help with lunch.
Blessings and love to all of you!
Jill

Thursday - August 19th PM....

Hip, Hip Horrah!!!

We now have a darling little place to live in down-town DarBouzza! I'm SO excited! It is cute and clean and perfect for the two of us. We were having a third roommate, but she is planning to live elsewhere.

I'll send photos tomorrow! Thank you God!!
Blessings to all of you!
Jill

Thursday - August 19th

Sorry for the lack of blogs lately......... a few problems here in Casa!!

Two days ago Marcia and I took a few things and moved on campus in an apt. with a couple other gals. After much talking and looking at the spots on our bodies, the HR team decided we had been left with FLEAS from the cute little dog that lived there before us!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I thought, never encountering a problem with fleas in my whole 56 years meant that I maybe never would.....but I would be wrong!! If you have never had the problem.....they are NOT FUN!! I look like I have the chicken pox.....seriously! And they itch like CRAZY!!!!!!!!

SOOOOOOO............last night we were having our "end of the orientation" party at the home right across the street from our house. The HR guy decided we should quickly pack up our things and move it all out. Oh.....I almost forgot one small detail.........we also found out that the house we were in was being illegally rented...... :( So, we threw our belongings together (trying not to let any little "critters" jump on us) and moved them to a storage unit. They bombed the storage unit with some kind of bug spray this am......So...........Marcia and are living with Judy and Lynn for a little while longer with a few of our belongings and waiting for word of a new home!

Please pray that something wonderful comes along and that it is clean and lovely!! Ok, just clean would be terrific!

Other than the housing problems, things are going well. I saw my classroom and it is beautiful! I'll send photos soon. It's big, has a view of the ocean, has windows all along two opposite walls so the ocean breeze is terrific and it has a lot more supplies than I had expected!! Unfortunately they aren't finished cleaning so I can't get in there to do much yet.....hopefully soon!

We are finished with new teacher orientation and have a four day weekend. I'd love to be settling into our home or my classroom, but that will have to wait. We had talked about going into Casa for a nice brunch or dinner, but most places are not open now because of Ramadan.....Our school is located on top of a hill and the staff housing is a little higher up yet, so the view and breeze from the deck is awesome!! I'm sitting here feeling cool and relaxed!

The ladies in the new teacher group went over to one of the HR Staff employees homes yesterday for "tea" and we learned a lot: about the proper way to make the mint tea, serve it and enjoy it at someone else's home, about how women should respond to men in Casa, at the school, as high school students.....it was a lot of fun. A couple of tips....when you walk into someone else's house you would leave your shoes on until you get to the carpet (a rug with a small table in the middle) at the salon (sp?) area (where they have a freshia (sp?) (sofa) along the wall around three sides of the room. There you would take off your shoes and come in. You would greet each woman there with a kiss on each cheek and a hand shake (but looking off to the side, of course) to the men.

The four of us gals that are in this apt are all in our 50's and have a lot in common. We are just amazed at the TOTAL adjustments we are having to make.......language, meeting and living with new people, culture differences, clothing differences, the whole Ramadan thing going on, money, shopping differences, weather, animals, cars/driving............wow......did I mention we are all in our 50's????!!!!!! It's just a lot for us gals to adapt to! But, we are doing it together one step, one day at a time and with a LOT of prayer!!

Thank you all for your prayers and for logging on to see what is new in Casa!!
Sending my love,
Jill

Monday - August 16th

This is my room when I moved in.....I'll send you the updated look soon! Still working on it! :)

Things I LOVE about living here:
The staff I'm working with at school are wonderful!
I live one block from the OCEAN!
They sell wonderful hot, home-baked bread just around the corner!
Walking on the beach!
Seeing a BMW and a guy being pulled in a donkey cart on the same road!!
The Moroccan food is awesome! Lovely spices and great fruit!!
OUR DECK (on top of our house)....It is waaaaayyyyyy cool! We love having breakfast and dinner up there. There is usually a lovely breeze coming off the ocean! We can see the ocean and watch the waves rolling in and the sunsets are gorgeous!!!
Walking on the beach and hearing the waves "roll" the rocks back an forth at the edge of the water!! It's amazing!!
The beautiful flowers growing everywhere...........but especially along the houses and the walls in front of the houses!
The interesting architecture of the houses and city buildings.
Our own little shower in our own little yard for rinsing off after the beach!


Things that bother me a bit:
Some of the smells.
The liter.
My bug bites, my purple toe (may loose the toe nail on my left big toe....stubbed it pretty badly!)
The bruises on my leg from tripping on a rock (What can I say....it is hard to look around at the scenery and look down at the bumpy ground at the same time!!) :)
The CRAZY drivers! (However, I am considering buying a car. You know me....I really need my independence and being able to explore!) :)
The cockroaches we have killed in our home! (yuck!!)
The liter and smells. (Oh,did I mention that already?) :(

Sunday - August 15th

Greetings from Dar Bouzza!

Sorry, I'm still having some difficulty adding my photos....have patience...I'll get there yet. For now, if you have facebook.....you can view them there.

Yesterday was lots of fun. Marcia and I woke and did our morning walk on the sidewalk by the beach. We see all sorts of unusual things each morning! Yesterday we saw women sitting on hay and watching over their sheep just a couple blocks from our house. Then we saw chickens eating left over garbage around the trash can. There is lots of garbage around and some pretty bad smells in some places. The teachers that have been here a while tell us that is used to be a lot worse....that they are just now learning and beginning to pick up litter.

Then the High School Art Teacher, Tom, Marcia and I went to the art store in Casa. Wow....I was impressed with the quality and assortment that they had at the store. They both did their ordering for school. Then we tried to go to a frame shop, but it was closed (lots of places are closed because of Ramadan). Then we went to a big shopping area (kind of like our Sam's or Costco) and I bought a mattress!! Then we tied it on the roof of the car and drove home! My room is sloooowly looking a little better every day. Later this week I'm hoping to go to a nearby village/town ??? that sells all kinds of fabric. I want to get some fabric to make a comforter and curtains.

I can hear the chanting from the mos ks (sp?) starting as I am wrapping this up.....I'm glad I don't hear them very often. One of the other new teachers lives right across the street from one of them in the city! :( She will probably get used to it, but at first it is loud....and five times a day!

The food here has been wonderful! I will send a photo of the Friday night couscous meal....it was sooooo yummy! They use all kinds of delicious spices and herbs! The bread is also really wonderful! I just today developed a little stomach problem.....causing me to have to run to the bathroom quickly a few minutes after eating anything......so I started on some Cipro and should be fine in a day or two. (This happened at the beginning of my trip to Uganda last year also.)

Good night everyone!
Blessings,
Jill

Friday 13, 2010 in Casablanca

Six minutes until midnight here in Casablanca, Morocco! Actually, I live just outside of Casa in a small village called Dar Bouazza. I arrived safely on Tuesday of this week with two out of my three suitcases. The third one just arrived today!!

The trip was pretty uneventful which I was very thankful for. Jenny's brother, Josh and his new wife, Diana, fly this direction quite often and had me a little worried that I was flying through the Rome airport with only an hour layover. All went well!!

I have had three days of new-teacher in-service this week and three more days next week. It is going really well. I'm enjoying all the new staff. We have teachers from the UK, Canada and all over the US. The only really hard part of this week was the VERY hot temps and VERY high humidity and NO air conditioning!!! We had three days of 104-105 degree temps and lots of humidity to go with it. Today we had a break and had a lovely cool breeze come in off the ocean!!
It reminded me a lot of the old days on the farm......when we would lie in bed at night and it was SO hot! We would yell down to mom and dad and say we were too hot and they would yell up and say, "Oh, just lay reeeaaaaallllll still and you'll be fine." :) It always seemed to work!! :) Only we also don't have screens on the windows here, so ya......biting bugs! ;)

We went a store that first day and bought fans for the bedrooms. We went to the grocery store and rode the escalator down (no steps......just flat, moving band). We bought the groceries and then went up the escalator (same kind of flat moving band that has magnets on it and the cart's wheels to take it up to the next floor!!).

My home is two floors. PINK on the outside and a flat roof with deck furniture on the roof! We have a wonderful cool breeze there in the am while we eat breakfast and a terrific view of the ocean. The walk to the ocean is through a cute little street filled with houses with interesting architecture and walls covered with beautiful vines and flowers. The beach is only a block away. When we came there were still families "camping" along the beach. They come at the beginning of summer and stay till Ramadan starts (which was on Thursday of this week). So, the beach is pretty cluttered with garbage right now.

Ramadan started and has been very interesting. The Muslims can not eat, drink, smoke, chew gum and are not suppose to swallow their own spit from sun up to sun down!!! We are suppose to show respect and not do those things in front of them. One of the new teachers last year was chewing gum in her car and was yelled at by a man in the nearby car!! Then, at sun down they have food, party and drinking until all hours of the night! It hasn't really been too loud yet. The only real noise we are hearing tonight are all the stray dogs......very annoying!

The food has been WONDERFUL! The Muslim lady that cooks for the school has been making us dinner for the last three nights and she is a great cook! I will add some photos tomorrow when I find a little more time.

I'm off to bed and will write more soon.
Blessings to all of you!
Jill

FIVE days and counting!