Back in M'co...

Firstly, apologies for not getting my spring break reflections up promptly. It seems much of my teeny-tiny readership decided that they would attempt to read these/catch up on my activites via the blog this week and sadly I was a slacking blogger. Hope you enjoy the bits and pieces of my journey and the pictures. I still have a variety of random occurences that I'll share with you all in person whenever I see you next, inshallah.

So, I'm back in good ole' Ifrane, Morocco. And like it often happens the week after spring break was not...how shall I say it...altogether enjoyable. We were psyched to get back to Morocco after the cold, slushy, frigid weather of Paris, we clearly jinxed ourselves by thinking that we were coming back to good ole' Africa. In fact, that was the wrong assumption.

On Monday, it started raining. Valparaiso style. The cold raid mixed with a biting wind, sometimes bringing a little bit of razor-sharp hail and certainly bringing with it the killjoy mood that just didn't help our tired traveling-weary bodies re-adjust to being back in class or having to focus. Bad news bears. But if we thought that was bad, we again were very very wrong. As yesterday, it began to snow.

Yes, snow. It's almost April. In AFRICA. March 29 in AFRICA and we have 5-6 inches of slushy gross snow, gray skies to replace the permanently blue ones, and a sluggish tired feel among everyone here on campus. I brought back out my blue boots (thanks mom), long underwear (again thanks mom), ridiculous hat with ear covers and my scarf and trudged back and forth to class the past couple of days.

Add into that the normal homework load and a lovely essay midterm in my history class and let's just say I'm really glad to be done with the class week! However, clearly God had a plan as we at first thought that it was inconvienent to have a 3 day weekend right after spring break but now we are all very ready to get away from the cold mountain region of Ifrane for warmed weather...such as the exotic vacation place of Morococo, Marakesh down in the south in the desert. :-) We leave tomorrow. Should be a good time.

So that's the plan. After that, I will be really traveled out and will be sticking around Ifrane for awhile, especially next week as we experience Holy Week and Easter in Morocco land. Should be interesting.

In the meantime, this evening, some of the girls and I went to Ladies Henna night and all have henna designs up and down our hands and arms (I'll put pictures up soon) and took the opportunity to go all out and paint our fingernails and toenails and watch The Mummy in honor of our return from Egypt. :-)

Well, that's pretty much all the news from me at the moment! I'm down to about 6.5 weeks left here and feeling good...like I'm both making the most of my experience but also will be ready to come home. Pretty good place to be. Although unfortunately, I've hit the lovely point in the semester where academics seems more like a chore, so hopefully I'll return from my weekend trek inspired to write 3 papers in the next couple weeks, then do a couple of final papers, an Arabic presentation, and three finals and fly back to the US...craziness!

Love and Peace to you all!