La Plage

Today we took a bus way out of Rabat to one of the many public beaches dotting the moroccan atlantic coastline. It was pretty funny, because the bus we had to catch was kind of across town, ie: we had to walk through a fair amount of rabat in beach gear, we all looked pretty ridiculous, towels around us, i had my nose white with all the sunscreen lathered on, etc. By the time we made it all the way across the medina, we must've had a considerable crowd of onlookers (by the way, i've had to get used to being stared at. by EVERYBODY. all the time). I kind of made light of the situation by acting like a stupid american, going "ou est la piscine?" ( where is the swimming pool).
The actual beach was pretty damn nice, minus the sands of hellfire that have charred my feet brownish-black. There were mostly men down by the water, but several women too, although many of them stayed behind in the umbrellas. The exception were these little tarts (who couldn't have been legal) who wore bikinis and seemed enamored with our pale american bodies? Of course, a moroccan location could not be complete without the vendors. A few guys walked around with plates piled high with american doughnuts, selling them for a measly dirham - or around 11 cents. Other men sold random *frozen* goods, which had been turned to mush by the cardboard boxes they carried them in.
Afterwards, i went over to my new office/community center area and met with the people I'd be working with on monday. They're all incredibly passionate and really care about these kids, and their passion definitely makes the extremely committing work worthwhile. I'm going to be involved in a range of stuff, from fundraising, to teaching intermediate english, to doing large and small-scale projects, ranging from painting the walls of the community center, to organizing soccer tournaments and computer info sessions. Suffice to say, it's going to be busy.