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