(Attempting to) Make Money During COVID - Investing, Surveying, Educating

If you're like the majority of us, you might be on renewed/newly shakey ground financially, thanks to the unexpected layoffs, cutbacks and the new expenses that are around each corner.

In an attempt to make a similar salary as I was pre-covid, I have gone down many a financial rabbit hole - which has included reading lots of folks get rich schemes. After 5 weeks of living at the computer it has landed me at two new places that I now trust enough to encourage. I figured I would offer my two cents (pun intended) about each, in case you are looking for a new, unfortunately slow way, to make a little extra cash. I am also including my teaching referral, in case you want to get up at odd hours of the night. I LOVE my job with VIPKID and would do it for free (I would just start at, I don't know, 6 am instead of 2 or 3) so if you have questions about any of this just reach out (leanna.pohevitz at gmail)


STASH - Investing
https://get.stashinvest.com/leanna_k9zsg07

Stash is based on some interesting principles: mainly, start small and make it a regular habit to invest. For opening an account with the above link and putting in $5.00 you get $20 to invest. You then get $20 more for each friend who signs up (or at promotional times, even more!). That cash is yours to withdraw after 90 days. So far, the best part of it has been that weekdays at 4:00pm they have a thing called "stashstockparty" where they give away free partial stock shares to everyone who signs in to that "party" within 10 minutes. Same deal, in 90 days that money is yours to withdraw. They offer a lot of features and a lot of incentives (ex. if you direct deposit each month, you get a $50 bonus in your account). The coolest to me is the stockback option - every purchase you make with your debit card through their account, you get free "stock back" - if you buy something at Amazon, you get a partial Amazon stock, if you buy something at a local mom and pop, you get a small share in an approved stock they sell. I also appreciate a round-up feature, if you make purchases with their debit card, you can turn on the round-up feature. The difference between whatever you spend and the nearest dollar is rounded up and goes to your investment account for you to then decide how to invest in the future. The idea is, it won't be missed but a quarter here and a dime there add up to real money to make money on in the future.

What has it meant for me so far?

I have only deposited $15.00 ever - $5.00 to the debit account, and $10 to the investment account and I have paid $1.00 for the first month (it is a monthly fee - I chose to pay it monthly so that if I hated it I could delete it and not pay anymore) but as of this minute I have $42.40 in my accounts - Still $5.00 in my debit account and now $37.40 in the investment. Bottom line is that I wish I knew about this sooner so I could have been collecting free stock shares all along.

If you end up doing this, if you want to let me know, I will text you at 3:55pm ish every day to try to remind you get the free stock.


INBOXDOLLARS - Surveys
https://www.inboxdollars.com/r/1733548386?ref_src=link

This website has several different ways to earn money that rake in like a dime at a time... surveys, searches, games, scratch offs and a daily question. I have to say, I have never earned more than $1 for a survey or more than ten cents on a scratch off...

That being said, I currently have $41.22 and started my account on March 20th. The surveys are BORING. And roughly the first 10 questions are ALWAYS the same ish. But it is actually free money so if you are a multitasker or have nothing to do or need a little extra cash, I'd say go for it. My hope is to keep up earning about $40 a month extra this way. Let's see how long it works. 



VIPKID - Teaching English Online
https://www.vipkid.com/mkt/landing/personal?referralToken=71d995f266936269c1d09f9cb46f3223&refereeId=29009959


I cannot stress enough how much I love this job. I have gotten a raise since I started, without asking so I now make a base salary of $21.00 an hour with up to $14 extra an hour for if they are short notice and if the students are new and sign up for lessons. I have a pros and cons doc about it if you want them - basically the summary: CONS: how incredibly unnecessarily challenging the hiring process is and the fact that they don't take taxes out so you have to figure that out yourself and pay quarterly or risk paying a penalty at tax time if you make too much. PROS: Classes are one-on-one so you develop awesome relationships with these kids and you fully choose your own schedule (within the time restrictions of VERY different time zones) - so if you want to work 80 hours one week and then zero hours for the next five months, that's okay. No penalty.

If you DO end up wanting this job - please know, the hiring process is unnecessarily painful but I am very willing to do everything in my power to help you get it (please note, they have reqs I can't help you get around, including a bachelor's degree, American accented fluent English and internet/computer). If you want it and meet the minimum, you will get the job, you just have to be patient. 

Those in mud houses should not pour water.

The reason it is impossible to discuss the “Peace Corps” experience is because every single experience is different. Vastly different. Even when those volunteers are serving in the same country. Take Morocco for example.

I serve in a pretty large city. It is located on the southern coast, influenced by centuries of occupation by different forces, and the immigration of people from the south and south east. Most people speak two or three or four or five languages with equal poetic fluency. I have access to French-owned grocery stores which have things like tampons (not found elsewhere in Morocco – they take your virginity for future reference) and peanut butter. 

My girlfriend served in a different yet stunningly beautiful environment, surrounded by mountains atop an oasis. She had access to a destination many from Europe travel to on holiday and was surrounded by people extremely proud of their Tamazight culture.

I’ve had the luxury of traveling to quite a lot of other sites. Each one has been breathtaking. Each one has been a place I could see living for two years – yet each one has completely different challenges and opportunities.

In the days leading up to our mid-service training I took a different long trek. I ended up 52 km from the start of Timbuktu. The houses are equal parts mud and concrete, you fight sand flies and camel spiders, and to get here I had to change buses 4 times despite being told it was the most direct I could get.

It is stunning. With scenery out of a Jurassic Park set in the desert, an unforgiving sun, and generosity immediately extended to me by association. I’m happy here.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing what a fellow volunteer does for part of his service – meeting the band he has worked with and hearing them play around on brand new equipment. After much work they have a grant to create a music studio to teach folks how to keep the music of this location alive.

I got to sit, in a tank top dress, sipping Moroccan mint tea expertly prepared by a close friend, listening to absolutely incredible live music performed by four talented musicians, under an enchanting banquet of stars, until dinnertime. For dinner? You ask. A glorious meat and vegetable tajine made with care by the same friend.

We slept under the stars.

I woke with the sun, put sunscreen on my face and lay studying darija (Moroccan Arabic), going over verbs that I have forgotten since our intensive language training. I stayed that way until the boys came back over to practice – this time, with renewed excitement as they broke out the new speakers. Huge smiles crept across their faces as they ran head first into meshing perfectly.

They are unreal. I can’t wait to help promote them in anyway – I know their music will be appreciated by my friends worldwide.

In the meantime, check out their soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/search?q=daraa%20tribes

When you are rightly awed – remember this is what they sound like recorded with a regular garage band microphone. They just opened the new equipment up this morning. It’s about to blow your world from half way across it.

After that I was lucky enough to accompany two volunteers to the house of their friend, an elderly blind man who speaks excellent English – which he learned by communicating with folks via a special e-mail program which reads him what is typed. After a long wonderful conversation he asked us to teach him some proverbs.

He could remember part of one having to do with glass and stones. Ahh, yes “Those in glass houses should not throw stones.”

A fellow volunteer chimed in “but those in cement…”

Of course it was followed by laughter.

The man replied, with a truth I can't forget...“Ahh yes and perhaps those in mud houses should not pour water.”


#WaterSavesLives

Our Beauty Is Not Scale Deep [A Test in Bragging Through My Insecurities]

Everyone loses or gains weight during Peace Corps.

Your diet changes from what you have known your entire life to something very different.
Often you are eating meals generously provided by others that you have no control over.

There are less chemicals (or different ones).
There are more/less meal times.
You are invited to more/less celebrations.

You are teaching more/less aerobics than you ever have.

You have more/less opportunities to do all the working out your body is used to.

Everyone gains or loses.

Some people more or less than others.

Some people’s bodies change drastically.

I’m going to MST (Mid-Service Training) in a couple of weeks.

I’m going home in June.

I’m nervous about a lot of things seeing a whole bunch of people who haven’t seen me in months and months or years. The number one thing I’m nervous about, based on the limited conversations I have had with my home world, is what people will say in regards to my current physical appearance.

My weight should not concern you.

At all.

Ever.

Don’t tell me I am more beautiful now.

Don’t tell me I look healthier.

Don’t tell me I look stronger.

Don’t tell me my body is better.

I have been beautiful, healthy and strong with a great body my whole life. None of that has to do with my weight.

My beauty is not scale deep.
My health is not contingent on the highly critical public eye curve meter.

I could have kicked your ass two years ago.
My heart has been beating since birth, that’s a pretty great body.

I, like every other female human I know from my American life, have seriously struggled with body image.

I’ve counted calories.

I’ve cried in front of mirrors.
I’ve worked out till I puked.

I’ve run until a website told me I burned as many calories as I took in that day.

I’ve been sick.

That was years ago.

Since then I tell myself every day: my beauty is not scale deep.

It has nothing to do with what you think about me.

I don’t want to go back to a PC function or America and have you try to convince me it does.

My weight has fluctuated based on any number of things. Namely, stressful jobs deserve 2 am pizza, in my opinion.

Yes, I weigh less now than I did a year ago. No, I have NO idea how much.

I have worked out almost every day of Peace Corps. Because I have time and space and will. Not because I want to lose weight. Not because I want to look like I have no ribs. Not because I want you to approve of my body.

I eat considerably healthier here, because I have no choice but to cook for myself most days. Because fruits and vegetables are the cheapest things. Because processed foods are expensive.

So yes, I weigh less now than I did a year ago.

I’m here, begging you.

Please.

I have enough neuroses for both of us. For all of us.

I’m beautiful, healthy, strong, and proud of finally loving my body, no matter what form it comes in.

I don’t want comparative compliments.

Feel free to compliment. But please don’t say I am "better than I was" because the scale reads a smaller number.

I’m not better than I was - in the way you think.

I’m better than I was in eleventh grade.

I’m better than the sick girl who couldn’t find confidence anywhere.

I’m going to stay this way and to do that I need your support.

I need you to acknowledge that right now I am happy and healthy but not relate it to my current or previous waist size.

I also need you to not talk about your weight in front of me.

You're beautiful.

When you say you aren't. When you say "I'm fat." 

I think, look at this stunningly beautiful woman. She thinks she's fat. If she thinks she's fat, she must think I am a blimp. She thinks she's ugly. She must think I am hideous. 

This cyclic mess damages both of us.

Look, you're beautiful. I'm beautiful. You'll be beautiful no matter how much you weigh or how old you get or how many pimples show up or how much hair grows or how much you shrink or how defined your muscles get. So will I.

A final word.

Curves are f*cking awesome. Hips mean you are able to have a child. YOU CAN CREATE LIFE INSIDE OF YOU (if you so choose).

STOP DOUBTING THE BEAUTY OF THAT!!!!!

Anyway,

I'm beautiful.

You're beautiful.

Don't forget that.

p.s. If you are struggling with eating disorders, please reach out for help. Getting help is not about being weak, it’s about knowing how heavy your load is and how much easier it would be to carry with help. Quit Facebook, turn off the TV, put down the magazine, and call someone.

The Other Street Sells Plastic

I’ve moved into a new apartment!!!

While this is typically exciting news in my case it is the most exciting news possible at this point in time.

I’ve had a rough go of my first year housing situation. Stress, noise, theft, a person being murdered just outside my apartment building (someone took a brick to his head), harassment, all rounded out with (this is literal) two cups of pee thrown at me through my 4th floor window from the roof of another building while I was tutoring.

Everything was more or less manageable except for being followed.

Being followed is terrifying.

Being followed throws your heart into your throat. 

Being followed in a place where telling people you are being followed gets you no allies is the kind of things that makes you lose your mind. 

It was really bad. 

I ended up with a whole pile of creeps who knew exactly where I lived and waited outside my house for me to come out - at which point they would level things as charming as “F-ck you c-nt.” 

My neighbors were silent on the matter- but put up a security camera facing just their door. Just feel the community spirit.

After a particularly harrowing day I got on a bus to Rabat. I didn’t have permission to leave here or go there. I just did it. I figured it was better than punching someone and I was at the brink.

In Rabat I started the process for a formal request for more money to switch which community I lived in.

I got approval - for not quite enough but for enough that if I supplement with a bit of my other things stipend I can do it just fine. 

I moved immediately into a house that a friend’s husband found me. 

How's that for the privilege of movement.

I was scared. I said so. I was taken care of. 

I moved to a place that is: safer, more well lit, with warm water, with more physical space, with less noise, with less neighbors, with more people watching out for me, closer to a mosque, and closer to all things I might need like a post office, bank and various stores. 

It’s like the privilege of movement home. 

It’s knowing that if there was an emergency America would get me home as quick as possible.

It’s knowing that I leave here in a year. 

It’s knowing that I could do Peace Corps again if I decided to and have the same privilege in whichever country I got sent to. 

It’s knowing that if I needed to leave here my bank account would allow me to.

It’s incredibly overwhelming to have the privilege of movement. 

I am thankful for it and surely won’t ever forget about it. I also fully intend to get right back into the inclusionary zoning political debate upon returning to the US. 

As for the process of movement I am guided by the system here under the same restrictions, both legal and societal that all single women moving in my town would face. 

My new landlord insisted on having a male present at the meeting where we wrote the contract. He went so far as to say he would prefer my new sitemate to me as the person doing the negotiations despite the fact that the contract was for me not him, and that he admits to not yet having a strong grasp of either of the local languages. 

My landlord also followed up asking if I had had relations with the men who followed me looking to blame my assumed promiscuity on why those assholes felt entitled to scaring the shit out of me.

Upon filling out the paperwork everything had to get stamped all the requisite times at all the appropriate places. 

I have to refile residency paperwork.

I have to refile all my Peace Corps paperwork.

I had to get another volunteer to come here and 'okay' this house.

I had to pay a bunch of money to move my internet, my electricity, my water etc. 

Beyond that making an empty apartment into a home has been a trip.

My big settling in gift to myself was a couple hundred dirhams worth of plants (have I mentioned I have incredible sunlight and a gorgeous private roof?).

Many things still need to be done. My shelves are sitting on the floor waiting for electric tools that might be a couple weeks off. My schedule has to get back to regular.

My current struggle is looking for a bath mat. My bath is REALLY slippery, as is my whole bathroom. 

I don't know the words and have tried just about every explanation I can think of.

The most recent response I received from a store owner after a really long discussion of what I wanted and why was a sarcastic, 'the other street sells plastic" not actually referring to any other streets.

For some reason when I heard it I chuckled and thought, "Yeah, the grass is always greener."

For once though, I surely do have the greenest plants. Now I just have to keep them alive. 

Anxiety 'straight from the heart.'

"The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshipper or lover. The daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”                                        - Robert Pirsig

When the list of things you have to do is really short but full of seemingly unaccomplishable tasks and you are like me, you make it extremely long with accomplishable tasks. 

Delete 600 emails

Practice Spanish for 10 minutes

Practice Portuguese for 10 minutes

Write a blog post

Workout for 30 minutes. 

etc.

You do this to avoid sitting down and doing the real overwhelming year-long projects. You do this to avoid the anxiety of timelines and long-term goal planning.

In the process, you give yourself serious anxiety because you are consistently not making progress on the big projects. 

It’s senior year of college thesis time all over again.

A cup of coffee focuses you, but it makes your heart race. 

A glass of water settles you, but now you have to get up and pee in the freezing cold outdoor bathroom.

A song is centering, but they hit high notes that make you realize just how stressed you are. 

Making the big project into small goals is nice - but then someone else asks you when the big project will be done. 

Another person adds another great idea, which adds another month. 

“You are going to have to run these units in focus groups in a Peace Corps volunteer's classes.” 

You plan to fill a void. 

Then you realize just how large the void you are trying to fill is.

You plan pretests and post tests. 

Then you realize you have to write every pretest and every post test.

You realize somewhere along the lines that no matter how ambitious you are, writing a Content Based English Health Curriculum is a huge project. 

You like huge projects, but not alongside working every evening in the youth center, working to make the sexual health committees work accessible and valuable, working to make the community blog a place people realize they can share in. Not alongside trying to muster a meaningful "See you later," for the person you love. Not alongside trying to cope with just how far away "later" will actually be. Not alongside trying to hold yourself accountable to all the other things you said “Yes" to.

I don’t like it alongside long journeys north for something Peace Corps asked me to do only to be denied permission to do what I want to do. 

(I also don’t like it alongside e-mails that say my diversity related experiences are not valuable to the new staj - I chalk it up to Peace Corps consistently unaware writing style slip-ups but jeez, “you aren’t gay/atheist/in a meaningful relationship enough” to have anything valuable to say to the new staj seems like a pretty shitty thing to imply, but who the hell am I to know.) 

Some of you have been asking. This is what I have been doing. I have been working on a Content Based English Health Curriculum. I have been compiling the work of other volunteers and writing lots and lots of lesson plans, so that hypothetically, down the line, students being taught English by a PCV will also be taught how to protect against STDs, how to keep their bodies and minds healthy, how to respect each other and themselves, empathy and all the other objectives of Peace Corps Youth Development Work. 

PCVs will enter site with a lesson plan and a workbook and can hit the ground running. They will have a guidance my group and groups before mine have not. They will have a way to turn to other volunteers and ask best practices for particular units. They will have a base of knowledge about how to broach sensitive topics without putting themselves or their reputations at risk. They will have lesson plans without the anxiety of researching grammar they don't understand yet.

In order for this to happen though. I have to continue to make time for the big goals.

It's hard, but I am working on it. 

And this right here, is what an upswing looks like. I have copious amounts of meaningful work - so much so that I find it hard to make room to try to meet my me-goals. 

So much so that my anxiety is through the metaphorical roof. 

So much so that I’m finally out of what was a dark mid-service crisis where I contemplated ending my service [more on that in a different post, when I am less anxious ;) ]

So much so that I’m happy and proud and fulfilled and crazy busy.

So much so that I am extremely grateful to be here. Now if only I could get all my fingers to stop twitching.

At least I can still make a straight line with the computer: Write a blog post.

MISdirection: Their lives have no value.

MISdirection.
or on how we teach children that Their lives have no value...

We are all teachers: Today was the start of environment week. Sun, sky, mountain, beach, tree, to plant, to grow.

Their eyes get wide as they repeat; They mimic the sounds you are making.   

They get confident; They realize they can conjugate these verbs on their own.

They realize you have taught them a tool, and they know how to use it.

We plant ideas; Treat the earth well. Protect it.

They grow; They know how to respect the world and each other.

They incorporate them: They do a coloring exercise.

We give them an example; Draw ‘an environment. ’

They see what we have made: a picture of a beach.

We give them the tools to replicate our work; They each get a couple different colored pencils.

They organize on their own; They sit in a circle to share ALL the colored pencils

They think outside the box.

They share their ideas, their colors.

In the end, they show us what they have made: 15 students. 15 beaches.

It is what we taught them; Each angled in the same way, each with one palm tree. Each with a bright yellow sun. Each with a cloud dead center.

Children instantly teach us everything we could ever need to know about social systems.

About wars.

About centuries of feud.

They teach us it is extremely hard to do something different than the examples we were given.  

Today I saw the number of children who have died as of June 2013. 6,561.
I taught my children up to “10.”

I saw a picture of a seven year olds’ funeral. He was wrapped in a flag. He wasn’t even as tall as my chest.
I taught my children “chest” yesterday.

I saw a picture of a three year old being carried away from an explosion by her weeping father. She was covered in her own red blood.
I taught my children “red” on Friday.

I look at pictures of international human rights violations and I keep coming back to one thought…regardless of which sides you are on politically, a three year old should never be blown up. A seven year old should never be shot. A four year old should not be driven over by a tank. A two year old should not be gunned down in his father’s arms. A mother should never need to run with her child covered in blood to the hospital in less that child fell off the swing while it was all the way up in the air.

A parent should not bury their child.

No land is worth that. No power is worth that. No money is worth that. No government is worth that. No sovereignty is worth that.  

No child should be taken. When they are you should know and understand that their classmates will take the lesson from your book as their creed. It is alright to murder innocent civilians.

Violence begets violence because we as a people show children that violence ‘works.’ We condone it. We pay for it.

Their beach will not be too different than the one we drew. The one we shot and killed four children on.

Call me a pacifist, an apologist.

Call me guilty.

Call me whatever you want.

 
Killing innocent children is killing innocent children. I don’t care who is doing it. I don't care what their parents do or did. I don't care where they live, what language they speak, or what you think they might become. It is genocide, and it is wrong.

 You cannot convince me otherwise. You cannot.

 I stand with justice. I stand for a future where children know a full life, long before they know a violent end. Stand with me.

"Buenas noches hey chicken"

Every year on Thanksgiving my sister lets me into the kitchen with a very specific task an ape could complete. Cut this-like this, mix this already made mixture, crack eggs into that bowl. I complete said task, not always successfully, and then try to avoid touching everything else so as not to mess up the cooks magic – but mostly actually because I have no idea what I am doing.

It’s Ramadan – not, in my opinion, terribly different than Thanksgiving in one of its major manifestations, lot’s of food with family (and some stragglers). Just like the turkey, there are traditional specific meals that Moroccans eat at break fast – but because Muslims are fasting for a full month on the Islamic Calendar from sun up to sun down, there is variation in what gets eaten each day. 

Just like my last 4 or so years, I am fasting. Unlike all the other years, there is no one making me really filling meals that I just have to show up at, regularly for the whole month. Though Tarah, and I are getting our fair share of community meals, we are still cooking a bunch in my kitchen. And by we are cooking I mean Tarah is cooking.

Anyway, the way it works is at sun up, around 3:30ish am you take your last sip of water, or last bite of something. Then you fast all day, not even a spoon lick. Then around 7:30pm you break fast with the meal called ftour.  During this meal it is typical to have soup, some sweets, and a lot of liquids (water, milk, coffee, tea, juice etc.). You then digest for a while, depending on the family an hour to a few hours, and then you eat a larger dinner. Then you either sleep or stay up, again depending on family and mood (and whether you did in fact have the coffee at 8pm) until around 3am when you prepare the last meal before the fast.

Yesterday, Tarah decided she wanted to make apple pancake cake for the morning meal. She loves me, so she trusts me to be capable of basic things. She asked me to mix the pancake mix while she sliced the apples. (Might I add, this was after she cooked delicious homemade pizzas for the dinner – I got extremely lucky in life if I do say so myself). Anyway, I took out the cookbook -  a Peace Corps production  -and started to mix all the ingredients. While reading it, I was not surprised that just like the accidental spelling mistakes in our textbooks, this cookbook used capitalization liberally. It called for 2 T sugar and ¼ t of salt. I was doubling the recipe as per Tarah’s request, so I added 4 tablespoons of sugar and 2 of salt. Now for those of you who are functioning adults in society, you see that A. ¼ x 2 = ½ not 2 and B. a capital T in a cookbook is a tablespoon while a lower case t is a teaspoon. Anyway, while doing this I say out loud, “This looks like a lot of salt,” and Tarah says “I mean, it doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as you are following the receipe.”

A half hour or so later, out came the most disgusting cross between street pretzels that have sat in the wet salt thing for way way way too long, and a delicious apple cake.

Thankfully Tarah didn’t mock me too hard, and we made smoothies for breakfast, and fed some of the neighborhood bugs/cats.

I guess Allie never letting me touch anything for Thanksgiving was a great idea.



This Ramadan is also a bit different than the others, I have experienced because I have really consistent work throughout the days. Men’s swim practice early in the AM – English camp during the afternoon – children’s swim practice just before break fast and Women’s swim at night.

Unfortunately, but understandably, the hours for all of the above have been cut down drastically from what they were before Ramadan. For example, the women are only practicing 2 days a week for an hour each time, when it was 3 days at 3 hours each day.

Tonight we had both children, from 5 to 7pm and women from 9 to 10pm. These were our first Ramadan swim practices. I was convinced no one would show up to either.

I was almost right, because I usually work with the oldest children, so they are almost all fasting, and are still new at fasting so aren’t expected to swim a full practice just before break fast. My students barely showed up (and the coach I usually switch off with wasn’t there accordingly).  One of the other coaches reshuffled all the groups and gave Tarah and I each groups of our own. I had 15 pretty young children, and I started just watching them swim some very silly versions of freestyle (said with love, not mocking, I promise). We spent the whole practice doing silly drills which they had no idea were absolutely making them better swimmers. At the end of practice I had them swim again and was just so proud.  I debated dancing around but settled on a huge smile and high fiving them all and asking them to focus on what they learned when I work with them again on Friday.

The next group I had were a slightly older bunch of knuckleheads and their regular coach told me they were starting backstroke. For those of you who don’t know, starting to teach children backstroke when you aren’t in the water with them and when there is nothing over their heads that they can watch to make sure they are swimming straight is hysterical. The number of times I had to run the length of the pool to stop them from hitting their heads or flag them down to stop them from hitting into each other was very high. I explained as best I could though, how the trick is that both sides of your body have to work equally hard, if you kick stronger on one side you will swim at an angle. After many drills, and games, they were doing great. We finished with a few silly random things to work on strength (races, underwater contests, tredding water monkey-in-the-middle,, and dives to the bottom of the pool).

Walking home from there I was in a glow. I am completely in love with the Moroccan youth that I am blessed enough to be surrounded by.  I was gone for a couple weeks for In-Service Peace Corps Training and when I had no idea what my return would be like, I was completely welcomed with open arms. One of the little girls said in Arabic ‘lady teacher we missed you so much.’ The other coaches all asked how my training was, and about how Ramadan is treating me etc.

I also am probably in an excellent mood tonight because I receive about 1/50^th the harassment on the streets of my town during Ramadan that I normally do. People are on their best behavior because it is the holy month. What I do hear/see during Ramadan is also of a different nature. It becomes French or English phrases, that aren’t curses or sexual in any way but are just interesting. Today a man said, “Buenas noches hey chicken,” as if it were one correct phrase, in the language I speak. I laughed hysterically, and tried to contain my smile so it wouldn’t be on my face in the street.  

I don't condone any harassment ever, but I much prefer the kind that makes me laugh to the kind that makes me cringe or cry - so Ramadan man, I love this month.