I'm finally swearing in as an official Peace Corps volunteer tomorrow! and then i'm off to my final site, which I have been informed is very cold right now. There has been new snowfall as of last night in the mountains sorrounding Ouarzazate so I can just imagine how much worse it it at my site since its much colder there.
Oh yeah, the title to this post refers to the ratty shoes that I have been wearing and the new ones that I just bought today :) I happen to be throwing out old shoes (fun steps!) just at the time that I'm starting in new stage here in Morocco...corny, I know, but so fitting. The new shoes are also super new because they are sandals and I frankly cannot remeber ever having bought sandals before....so see, new stage. haha
ok I won't bore you with this stuff any more, so I'll explain the photos below:
I realize that I never wrote about the mock wedding that we had in Ouarzazate, so I'll tell you about it now...a month later :) We had to borrow clothes from our homestay families so that we could attend this mock wedding. The purpose was to prepare us for the weddings that we may be attending in the future. We drank mint tea with pounds of sugar in it, had plenty of dates and candy, and then proceeded to dance the night away. (by the way this my languge group...we lived in the same village for training)
This is my language group at our training homestay village. We noticed that a storm was slowly approaching our village from the other side of the mountains so we climbed up to the roof and waited until we were finally pelted with the largest rain drops ever. We just went there last week for the last time ever. 
I thought that this image would be interesting because it's something that seems very commonplace to me, but maybe back in the states this is very new. On the days that I didn't have class during my homestay, my host mom would always show me how to make the bread that we eat everyday. This is an image of the wood fired stove and oven. They only use this stove to make couscous and the oven is only used for making the bread. They have regular gas stoves and ovens for the rest of the food. This bread is awesome...made out of wheat that they grow and harvest in their fields :)
I got henna again! We threw a large party to thank our host families during training since training has finally ended. I'll definitely miss my host family, but now its time to move on to my permanent village. do you like the design they made?
This is the beautiful village that I am leaving :(but i'll be sure to go back at some point...maybe for the august harvest of all things yummy :)
