PEACE CORPS OFFICE IN RABAT Here's yours truly in front of the Peace Corps headquarters in Rabat,where I recently attended a VAC(Volunteer Advisory Council) meeting. The grounds are quite lovely, as you can see. Grass is something we don't see out in the rural areas.

As mentioned before, I am the rep for the group of SBD (Small Business Development) that came Sept. 2007. There are first year and second year volunteers, and four sectors, so we have eight on the council. We meet quarterly to discuss concerns of PCVs and PC staff. There are lots of issues on both sides, and we are to be advocates of the PCVs yet intermediaries. The meetings can get quite interesting! Sometimes fun, sometimes not so fun, just like organizations at home. We even get to review the by-laws; guess I prefer studying Darija to studying by-laws!

A couple of questions re: Morocco came up during a presentation I did while in Billings, and here are the answers I did not have on the top of my head there. The average life span here of men is 69 (US 75) and women 73 (US 81) Infant mortality (at birth) here is 40 per 1,000 (US 6.5).