PST TRAINING. Azrou Part 3. Lots of memories of the hostel/conference center where I began two years ago. The man who owns it saw me and immediately remembered me as the one who came to breakfast with a big (thermal) mug and drank a lot of coffee. (They provide small glasses from which tea and coffee is always drunk.) When I went to the kitchen I saw his wife and she commented on how I came in in the evenings for hot water (for my own herbal tea). So one cannot escape a reputation on habits unusual to them!

There were numerous other PCVs there for the training, and we stayed in an empty house behind the training center. It was a typical PCV/hiker type of setting...men and women together, take your pick of cot/bed. Younger people, later nights...even played some ping-pong! It was fun.

The new group will be good; a varied lot, as usual, from just out of college to a senior volunteer who has her doctorate and just finished another PC tour in 2006! I am eager to meet the person who will be replacing me here; she will come for a week-long visit the first of November, go back to finish training and swearing-in, then come here right after I leave. I was on a panel that talked about working with counterparts and in a totally different culture from which we are accustomed. Later in the evening a group of women came over to our house and we had a more informal sharing that seemed to be very beneficial for them.