Currently Appreciating

January has taken off at lightening speed. Projects are picking up and picking speed. I'm NOT complaining. However, I find it hard to put more than a few sentences together. As Lynn said, "Excuse my English. It's a little swiya." So this will do until my next post.

Currently Appreciating:

*Leather backed earrings. Crocheted necklaces. Potential boutique meetings set in motion.

*My scrapbook. My family took the time to make a scrapbook for me. Each person filled out a page or a couple pages. Best gift ever. I don't think I turned the second page before my eyes welled up.

*Olives and olive oil as a thank-you gesture for English tutoring.

*Getting lost in Taroudant but coming away with a better understanding of that maze.

*All that happy birthday lovin'.

*Lynn coming to my site to facilitate a Costing and Pricing workshop. Ali coming to my site to watch and learn. None of it happening the way we planned. Doing a training of the trainers instead.

*How wonderfully snug my house feels with the addition of two amazing souls.

*Being good little Moroccan girls and staying in our own brownie triangles.


*Getting sleepy around 10 or 11 but staying awake until 1:20 talking about new marketing strategies for my products.

*Pita pizzas!

*Random snack time in the fields. Correction, not the fields... the former fields, the empty parking lots waiting to be developed.

*Running into a group of my favorite little lady playmates. They innocently asked if we were leaving for America. "Yup! And on Sunday I'll be back. Don't you want to come with me?" They all said no.

*Running into a couple of them when I arrived on Sunday and them asking me how America was.

*Circuit training success! I drew up pictures of familiar moves, placed them on chairs arranged in a circle. Each ladies rotated one chair to another, completing 2 min of repetitive movement. In this way, Lynn and I could give individual attention as needed. Not too long after, the ladies started correcting each other. Perfect!

*Pretending to be somewhere in southern California while sitting at a cafe in Agadir.

*OOOOing and Ahhhhing so excitedly that neighbors asked if we'd like a picture. "You two seem to be enjoying yourselves so much!" hahaaa. Spend a year in a village on Peace Corps budget.... then they'd start to understand our excitement.


*"You can speak darija but you can't read?"

*Taroudant ladies all meeting up this past Sunday. Stuffing our faces with pizza, pasta salad, mandarins and cake. With all that food, it might not have been so obvious that we gathered to square away nuts and bolts for a Women's Wellness Conference. hahaa. An extremely productive meeting.

*Yessen and Silama (both 5 year-old children) chasing a herd of sheep down the road.

*Donkey cart passing with an enormous pile of branches and leaves. About 15 or so children running alongside of it, grabbing onto branches in excitement.

*Moments like these that I want glued to my memory but will never catch on camera.

*Sewing with Tanie. We went to the nedi neswi in my souq town. The sewing machines were foot peddled ones. She held the strings and spun the wheel. I held the cloth and rocked my feet. 1...2...3...go!

*Matt fixing my computer so that I can watch season two of the Wire.

*Tiznit women and their beautiful lazars.


*Friendship earrings! Only the best of friends have these.

*Realizing that a month in site means I have enough to treat myself to a Tiznit ring.

*Making headway on the Childcare Project. About a year ago, they asked me "Where's the money?" completely out of the blue. Now- not only have they redesigned the project and filled out the budget- they're considering taking out a loan to cover some expenses. We're walking through budget accounting this week and forecasting anticipated costs and revenue. They need to make an informed business decision. Who would ever know I'd walk them through such a big decision.

*VSN words of appreciation.

*I'm not where I was a year ago. I'm not yet where I will be a year from now.