For my first two months in-site, I will be living with a host family. My immediate family consists of my host parents and a 2 year old host brother. However the family certainly does not stop there. My house is right next door to a sort of compund of houses of various relatives. My host mother's parents live in one house below with 1 more daughter and two more sons. Additionally there are 3 married sons who each have their own attached house. In addition to my 2 year old there are 3 other children under the age of three and one who is about 7. When more than one of them gets together, chaos ensues. It is quite a scene to behold.
My host family is very nice. They speak mostly Arabic in the home, which is unusual around here, but wonderful for me. Everyone is very eager that I start speaking Tashelheet, the Berber dialect spoken in the region, so I will definitely have to start that soon, but would like to continue working on the Moroccan Arabic for the time being. The Arabic will help me when I leave town and when talking to officials, most of whom do not come from the region. Most importantly, the mudir (director) of my Dar Chebab is from Casablanca and operates entirely in Arabic. But for community integration, Tashelheet is definitely the way to go.
In total, there are 5 family units on the compound. For better or worse, this means that we will be slaughtering 5 sheep for the Eid L'Kbir, the holiday that takes place two months after Ramadan. I will probably have a lot more to say about that in about a week.
If anyone has the best sugar cookie recipe ever, please let me know. I am planning on making oodles of christmas cookies.
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