CBT Prep

My home stay family is headed by a mason and the mother is the President of the Cooperative we'll be working with. They have 2 children, one 11 years old and one 8 years old. Can't wait to meet them!

We finished classes early today to allow time for some shopping before heading out tomorrow. Some groups have more travel than others. My group's site is only 30 minutes from here. Some groups also had to shop for food, as their sites don't have souks (daily market for produce) or hanuts (grocery shop). Our group's site has a population of approx. 10,000, so we'll have access to shops, cybercafe, etc. and will be able to shop daily for our breakfast and lunch. We'll all have our dinners with our host families. I did do a little shopping for Monday, since we'll need to have something for our breakfast to eat in our rooms (during Ramadan the host families get up at 4:30, eat something and go back to sleep). Here's the $ tally:
Laughing Cow cheese (doesn't require refrigeration): 22Dh
Ground coffee (for portable coffee press w/Nalgene bottle): 32Dh (splurge!!)
Crackers: 19 Dh
M&M's: 6Dh
Coke Light: 2.3 Dh

I also had fun trying to shop for index cards and brads to make flash cards (remember memorizing stuff w/flash cards?? That's me w/Darija vocabulary), and managed to get card stock, a hole punch and was even brought behind the counter in one shop to help him look for either ring clasps or brads. It was all to no avail-I'll have to come up w/creative alternative to keep the cards together. It was fun getting out in the afternoon to the shops and daily souk to attempt to shop. People are incredibly patient and helpful. It's also interesting to see that on Saturday afternoon, those out in the shops are all about getting things done and getting home, vs in the evening everyone's out strolling around and socializing. Very different feeling. Both are fun to observe and wish I could take photos of all of it, but I have plenty of time to do that down the road.