We have an apartment!

A toilet, a shower, hot water, a washing machine, and windows. A month ago, I'm not sure I would have expected to be so incredibly grateful for things that we consider in the states to be bare necessities. But after four weeks with host families, the last two of which none of us had access to a shower except the hammam- or public bathhouse- we are very grateful for some familiar facilities and our own space. As of Monday, we have moved into our new apartment, about a week or two before we had expected to. The apartment opened up and we looked at it, loved it and, for various reasons, decided we were ready to have our own space. It has been great so far. I'm finally unpacked and am no longer living out of my suitcase (after a month of being away from home...) We're learning to do our own shopping and using the wonderful vocabulary and phrases we've learned in Arabic class.
Speaking of Arabic class, we have about a week or a week and a half left in Salaam 1 (the first level class). We have finally learned how to conjugate verbs, which would have been very helpful to have while we were in host families, but the teachers kept telling us, "No, you can wait. You don't need verbs yet." I'm not quite sure what they had in mind for us to use in place of verbs in a sentence; we have learned through various forms that verbs are very important, pretty much essential to the structure of a sentence! At this point, we are not yet sure where language study will go after we complete Salaam 1.
It's really good for us as a team to all be finally living in one place. It helps our communication about different things a lot! We are still working on finding volunteer opportunities and have meetings set up with some of our contact people to help us get started. We have formed a lot of good relationships, both with Moroccans and other expatriates here. One struggle with that may become trying to figure out which relationships to invest in more heavily, because as we were told by a fellow expat, Moroccans have high expectations for relationships.

Things to keep in mind for us:
-language learning- clarity of mind and brains like sponges is what we need right now!
-relationships with Moroccans
-team unity as we now live together, which will help communication, but will pose other challenges.
-wisdom and open doors for volunteering.

We're thankful for:
-our apartment!
-the unity we have experienced so far.
-the relationships we have established
-the opportunities we have had to learn more about our options for volunteer work.


Thanks for your thoughts,

Jamila for the team