ABC... as easy as CBT.

Yeah Right... the only think easy about CBT (Community Based Training) is the new friends you make, both in and out of the Peace Corps. Otherwise it is overwhelming at times being thrown into a village that knows nothing about you, speaks a different (and difficult) language and has a vastly different cultural and views of society and the world in general. For the most part everyone thinks we are French and "Bon Jour" come flying from everyones lips at the first site of us. Speaking of us, there are five in my training group plus me. It is a fun group and we have bonded pretty quickly which would make sense being that we are thousands of miles from our shores and any differences become little quirks this far from home.

Let me try to catch you all up on the last week in my new home... first I can't post where I am for reasons the Peace Corps doesn't really explain, but my quess is safety. But I am almost 6000 feet in the Middle Atlas Mountains and let me tell you it will get very cold here in a few weeks. The town center is under construction, so the place is dusty and dirty right now, but based on a "billboard" posted at the enterance to the town the end results will be very nice. We arrived late on Sunday the 19th and after a few minutes we were off with our host families. My family is very nice and they gave me a huge room, but it is very difficult to live in somebody elses home after living in my own for over 25 years and then throw in I can't communicate anything... and one feels like the village idiot after a few days. I won't get into details about the bathroom, but the "bit l-ma" is even worse than I thought it could be... which is hard to imagine. Language class and school in general is my shelter to regroup each day, anyone who knows me would be amazing to hear me equate school with a sancturary... but it is.

Sickness in one form or another has hit my small group, again not a topic I will delve into but who would ever thought that six people who were complete stranger two weeks ago, could be so comfortable discussing very personal body functions. So let me change the topic to some of the adventures we have had... the very first was our first day of school, after an hour or so we were sent out to the town to collect the names for four people using the limited darija. We all came back successful, but it gave us an idea exactly how little we knew and how the Peace Corps was going to put right out there.

The next adventure happend on our way to our Hub-Site... the six of us piled into a "Grand Taxi" and off we went. Well not quite, about 12k into our trip the taxi runs out of gas... we all the proceed to get out of the taxi and PUSH it up hill for about half a mile at an elevation of 5800 feet above sea level. As we push over the crest of the hill we jump in and then coast the next 14k into our hub city... it was like Mr Toads Wild Ride at Disney. Which leads me to describe a grand taxi ride in general out here... if you have ever seen the movie Road Warrior.... well that is what we have here without the post-nuclear vermin driving suped-up cars. Oh yeah the driver still wanted to charge us full fare... NOT!

The last thing I will write about tonight was our Saturday afternoon CBT lunch... we all went out and purchase a nice live chicken, took her home and proceeded to kill, pluck. wash, gut and prepare a nice chicken lunch. The chicken came home around noon and was on the table by 3... and it was Delicious!!! Photos to come.

Well in a few hundred words that was my first week in the CBT... a new week has started and I am sure many more adventures and stories... in-shallaha.