One week down....

I really can't believe it's Friday and I've been here nearly a week. We left the orphanage a bit early today because some of the volunteers are going on a trip to the Sahara Desert for the weekend and their tour guide was picking them up at 4 this afternoon. It's an eleven hour drive and then two hours on camel, they'll sleep in the desert and then turn around and drive back. I was out at "eleven hour drive...."

The orphanage was a bevy of activity today. There were six babies being visited by there soon to be mommies and daddies and a grandma too! There is a lady from Barcelona that has been there pushing her little boy in a stroller everyday this week. She speaks pretty good English and she told me today that she has been living in Rabat for four months and her husband comes on Friday and stays through Monday. She said she comes everyday and strolls with him and sits on a blanket in the quad and plays with him. NOTE: I started calling the area between the buildings "the quad" because it reminds me of the quad at HHS, it's starting to gain some momentum, the other vols are calling it the quad now too! Anyway, Miss Barcelona said that the adoption process is long but not as long as other countries. She still does not have a definitive date when they will take their little guy home.

Another women was there with her mom. Her little boy is only three weeks old and this is her second visit to see him. She didn't speak English so I got my info second hand from Sandrine. I didn't get "the story" from all of the visitors but their faces said a lot.... they are very happy to have these babies. I don't think little girls can be adopted by people outside of the country. I guess couples will need to go to China for a girl and Morocco if they want a boy.

There is a woman named Adaji that comes to the home base and cooks meals for us. It is traditional Moroccan cuisine. I took some pictures of our dinner tonight. I don't have any idea what the dishes are called, the only two things I could identify were the tomatoes and cucumbers.

Bread is considered sacred and we are not to throw any of it away. We clean our plates but we take any bread we didn't finish and lay it on the ledge of the window. I inadvertently tossed some crust away a few days ago and decided to just let it go as opposed to digging it out of the trash. Later in the evening it was on the window ledge so someone rescued it. I love bread as much as the next person but if I was going to make a food sacred I would probably go with chocolate.