Sunday, September 7, 2008

On to Pre-Service Training

Finally we're off to Morocco tomorrow. I've been in Philadelphia since Friday for what is called "Staging". That is the equivalent of learning the Peace Corps rules and regs and meeting the other volunteers who will be going thru training in Morocco as well. They've put us through a number of group exercises in formats that (I'm assuming) we'll be using ourselves in our future assignments, ie; acting out, drawing, being creative vs using written word, to communicate messages.
There are almost 60 volunteers at this Staging-split between Small Business Development and Youth Development. (The Morocco Environment and Health volunteers go thru training together with a March start). The Small Business Development group members will then have either Business Advisor or NGO (non-government organization) Development focus. I'll be in the Business Advisor group. One third of that group will be learning the Berber dialect of Tamazighet, the rest learning standard Moroccan Arabic (Darija). I don't know yet which I'll be assigned.
Tomorrow: JFK to Casablanca to Rabat and Pre-Service Training. At last.

3 comments:

B said...

Lynn. you are going to be so awesome!

Anonymous said...

ala s'lama Lynn. M'rehba bik fel Maghreb (we say the 1st sentence when someone arrives from a trip and the 2nd one says: welcome to Morocco)
I hope you enjoyed your flight to Casablanca. Can't wait to read more on your blog. Sorry I called you late on the 7th to wish you a good trip, forgot that you were already 3 hours ahead of us.
I hope you already had some good "harira" and "chebakiya"
xoxo samira

Anonymous said...

Business Advisor sounds perfect for you. Did the Peace Corp segment ever run on the evening news?

Good luck learning the language. That's sure to keep your brain young!

XO
Nancy