Week 7: Last week with host family #2

This week was my last full week with my host family outside of Midelt. In a couple of days, I will be moving on to my third host family in Morocco. I am sad to be leaving this family that I have developed relationships with over the past almost four weeks, however it is time for me to move on and experience a new family, region, and way of life.

This last week was a great one. I was nervous since Sanders had left that I would feel alone and isolated however a lot of family was around, and it ended up being a blast. On Monday, one of the sons, Hamza, who lives in Meknes, came for a couple of days. He spoke a decent amount of English which was very helpful. The next day two of the daughters and their kids came so it was a full house!

Off in the distance from the house you can see a mountain/plateau. Hamza decided that we were going to walk to it and climb it. So, in the IFYE spirit I said yes. It was about an hour and a half walk to get to the base of the plateau. Along the way I fell again on my same knee that I fell on a couple of days ago on the roof. Let’s just say that my knee is not looking too pretty. I have described it as a ground beef knee to my friends. But after bleeding through the knee on my pants, the brother put dirt on my wounds, and we powered on. (Now whenever I am walking near something that I could possibly fall over, the family always points it out to me). I am not going to go into too much detail on the climb up the plateau because it was definitely not the safest thing to do but I am happy to report that everyone made it safely up and down. The top was very windy and we spelled out our names with rocks and took photos.

This week we also had what I would say the definition of cultural exchange. The family has an oven that they use to make bread in that I was looking at and thought ‘that would be perfect to make pizza in.’ So with the help of the brother we went to the store and got cheese to make the pizza. Making the crust was a little difficult because I was working with ingredients I was not used to, but overall, I would say I pulled it off. I made two cheese and two with olives, garlic, and onions. When I was talking about making the pizza the kids kept saying how I was making pizza American. I was confused because I thought that pizza is just pizza. As I soon learned, they also have pizza Amazigh. So, the next night the mom made pizza Amazigh for me to try. It is quite different from American pizza, it has dough on both sides, and no cheese or tomato sauce. Usually, the middle has meat and veggies, however they made them with eggs and veggies for me. We ate the pizza Amazigh on the roof and spent the rest of the night stargazing. When it isn’t cloudy the stars here are amazing since there is little light pollution.

This week I also taught the kids the card game spoons They loved it. We spend a lot of time playing spoons, Uno, at the family’s frigo as well as watching turtles and ducks at the nearby park.

While I am excited to go to my next host family, changing families comes with a lot of nerves and stress. It is like starting all over. You have to build new relationships with all of the family members. And you have to figure out all of the small daily life things like what time do they get up in the morning, where are the towels so I can take a shower, how do I do laundry, etc. It can be frustrating when doing such a small thing like trying to find the garbage can is so difficult. However, it is all apart of the experience and in a day or two you will be adjusted to your new normal again.