Summer's End

Another loooooong time without a post. I added the extra o’s for emphasis. So it is time for a concise wrap-up of the summer.

It was hot. But, fortunately for me, I am a Youth Development volunteer, which means I get to work at summer camp. Summer camp happens at the beach. The beach also happened to be a good 25 degrees cooler than my site. English Immersion Camp is a project with Peace Corps and the Moroccan Ministry of Youth and Sport, with scholarships funded by the U.S. Embassy. In addition to the families who send their kids to the camp, each volunteer gets to send 5 scholarship students. They spend about 2 weeks at camp learning English and doing camp-y things. I got to spend 4 weeks at camp teaching English, leading journalism club and doing all the camp-y things that I grew to love after attending and working at camp myself for 7 summers of my youth.

We sang songs, we went to the beach, we played sports, we had talent shows and fashion shows, we celebrated Halloween in August. I had a wonderful time, and by the tears shed, it was clear the kids did too. Along the way, I learned a few things about myself. Apparently, when it comes to the “Banana Song,” I “go bananas” with the best of them. Or worst. Either way, my banana dance turns heads. Additionally, it appears I have completed my transition from JV athlete to sports superstar. My early years of embarrassment being the worst player on all-boys basketball and soccer teams have been overshadowed by the amount of praise and acclaim I get from teenage boys and middle-aged men alike when I play these sports now; praise which is seemingly disproportionate to the quality of my actual ball skills. On Halloween I also learned that if my other career options don’t work out, I could probably make a decent living as a fortune teller.

The campers were awesome. The kids learned a lot and made new friends and in a totally new context, for many of them. A couple of them taught me and some other volunteers how to “Tektonik” dance. Apparently it’s a dance craze that’s sweeping France and Morocco. There are also now a couple young Moroccan boys wandering the streets who know “Beans, beans, they’re good for the heart…” I can’t wait for next year to teach more impressionable youth fart jokes, compliments of the American people. Speaking of which, thank you to any Americans reading this blog for the pens, backpacks and Frisbees provided for the campers. They read “Compliments of the American People.” During the second session of camp I attended, we introduced an Olympic theme to camp. The campers were divided into countries and competed in various activities throughout camp. My team was Mongolia. My girls came in dead last by a hefty 50 points, but we had a fantastic time. And they wrote perhaps the best cheer ever written:
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the beautiful girls
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the serious girls
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the united girls
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the best
Mongolia! Mongolia!
Fantastic! Fantastic! We are!

After camp I traveled around a bit with my lovely friend Emily, who came to visit from London. Despite some adverse conditions, we had a great time. She arrived in Morocco and got straight down to it, ordering sheep’s head at a food stall in Marrakech. We saw a waterfall and monkeys. We came down to my site, where the heat was still something to reckon with. We rode camels on the beach. We broke fast on one of the first nights of Ramadan. We got eaten alive by mysterious bugs. All in all, a successful trip. It was a good chance to see things through someone else’s eyes. In two days I will have been in Morocco for 1 year. It is crazy how fast the time has flown by. Things are going to get going again after Ramadan and I have no doubt the next 15 months will fly by just as quickly.