In Rabat

Okay I've made it to Rabat and my home base just fine - actually i'm pretty impressed with my navigational skills when no-one seems to speak a word of English! There's a lot of nodding and gesturing wildly, but i get there in the end.

I love my home base - it's a beautiful big house, with about 25 fellow volunteers and 5 very patient staff. I share a room with 3 other women, and although there is a snoring issue it's nothing a pair of headphones and an iPod can't cope with. There's a huge range in the age of the volunteers, from 18 to mid sixties. One of the older women is one of my room mates, and she's a huge fount of information having volunteered all over the world. I occasionally feel like I'm living in Big Brother or something, except that everyone gets along - or seem to so far.

The food is fantastic - three big meals a day, plus tea and pastries every day at 5:00pm. I had resigned myself to getting comfortably large, but then one of the other volunteers took me to a nearby park where we can go for a walk, or jog, or whatever. I went for a jog yesterday, which seemed to create a lot of interest/amusement amongst the locals.

I had my first session teaching English today, which was quite an experience. I have 3 women and 1 men in my 'class', which i have for about 1 and a half hours every morning Mon - Thurs. It's actually quite challenging coming up with a lesson plan for this time - they are really interested in grammar in particular, which is really stretching my memory back to school days. Luckily i can follow the example of many other teachers and just google some exercises and lessons each night to work on the following day. I'm a little nervous about Fridays, which is when i'll be working at the orphanage, which has roughly 120 infants, 200 toddlers, and about 350 other kids up to the age of six. Maybe nervous is an understatement...

I haven't seen a lot yet; we had a tour of Rabat this arvo, which included a walk through the souk - will definitely be going back there once I feel like i've got a grip on bargaining in French. Or maybe I'll just take a notepad and write down offers. I will try and post some photo's on flickr asap.

Going to Fes this weekend, will give an update soon :)