Ashkeed, Miriam!

March 17, 2008
St. Patrick's Day

Today was an interesting St. Patrick's Day! It was the first full day of CBT (community-based training), and it went really well. We're in small groups doing homestays at various sites for the next five days. We'll go back and forth between seminar and CBT sites for the next two months. There are four other PCTs (Peace Corps trainees) and one LCF in my group. We meet every day to do language and other types of training.

I spent the evening studying Tashelheet with my host family, who help me with pronunciation in exchange for transliterations of English words. With my little siblings, we count first in Tash, then in English. We act out verbs and there's a lot of giggling to replace the words we lack right now.

I looked through my language book and got excited about making flashcards for lots of new words. Basically, I'm happy to be back in school. And I've been given my old Arabic class name of Miriam once again.





March 20, 2008

Eid al-Mulud


One of the few Tash phrases I understand without translating in my head is "Come on!" On Eid al-Mulud (the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday was today), my host siblings were out of school, and I spent the day with the family. There was no "Tash school" (this is what they call what I do every day), and so I was at home as well.

As I followed my little sibs out to play ball: "Ashkeed, Miriam!"

As I followed them on a trek around the adwar (the Tash word for a village): "Ashkeed, Miriam!"

Of course, walking around the adwar is no easy task; we're in the High Atlas on the side of a gravelly mountain, and my two guides are small, adept climbers. Every once in a while, when the path was too narrow for my feet and I stopped to plan out my route, they'd turn around and give me another "Ashkeed, Miriam!"

Somehow, we all made it back to the house intact and in time for Tom & Jerry (gotta love that satellite TV ;)