Mountains & Monkeys

Today was our first break day (or self-directed training day as they like to call it). A group of 11 of us took off at 7AM this morning to hike the mid-atlas mountain ranges above Azrou.
We were led by Lee, a current PC volunteer here in Azrou. We hiked probably 17 km and rested atop the cliffs overlooking a beautiful valley and the desert mountains behind. We ate avocado, bread and soft cheese, and Lee boiled sweet mint tea in a little teapot over an impromptu fire. On our climb back down, we spotted several Barbery Apes that the cedar forests of Azrou are well known for. They were kinda cute. Monkeys!

As we were resting, a group of ladies with massive firewood bundles passed by and we offered them water. They invited us to come to tea at their home, (translated by Lee) and we agreed.. although Lee wasn't coming with us. Sometimes we just sat there and smiled and giggled, trying out the little Arabic phrases we had learned, gesturing, thowing in French and English here and there. at one point they turned on loud arabic music and we had a girly dance party. Then tea and croissants and stone baked bread came. Our first tea party!

I've been wanting to post photos, but getting photos from my laptop or camera has been quite the challenge. I don't have any cd's to burn anything on, I don't have a memory stick (and someone just said these old computers don't even recognize them), i just tried to download my camera and overloaded the memory and froze it. They have floppy disks but we don't have those on our computers. Bother. Someday I'll get this all figured out.

I've slept on the roof for the past two evenings, soaking in the cool mountain breeze. Another trainee, Corey, the Christian dude sleeps up there too on another "couch" in the tent/roof area .. we talked through our days and he told me the story of Rumplestiltskin last night to put me to sleep. It has been a nice way to debrief my days.

I need to head back now.. we've got a full day of Arabic language and technical training tomorrow.