I'm living in a rural village for a week...?

So it’s not really been the best past few days—mostly because the weather is beyond awful. Monday was gorgeous but we must have jinxed it because since then it’s been raining and freeeezing. Probably 20 degrees less than what it’s been! And I simply do not have the appropriate apparel for this weather! I only have tennis shoes that are not water proof and no rain jacket or umbrella. Who knew I should have packed an umbrella! I surely didn’t. But, then again, I had no idea how much walking outside I would do on a daily basis. (I do love that aspect of living in the medina of a big city though. Everything is so dense, that although it’s lots of twists and turns, we can walk practically anywhere or take a taxi for a few dollars… it’s a new way of life I’ve never experienced in my normal routine.) Anyway… today was just an awful, depressing day because we had to do so much walking in the rain and I was soaked. AND we’re leaving for the village stay on Saturday and apparently it’s going to be even colder there... it MAY SNOW! Ugghhh I will be such a cranky bitch if it snows.
Ok, a few weeks ago, I was really excited for this trip, but it’s just too close, time wise, to our last trip. Plus I won’t have a toilet, we have to get our water from a well and I’ll not be able to communicate with the people I’m living with whatsoever. The Berbers have their own language entirely, and it’s not like I speak Arabic anyway. Except this time there’s no way these people with speak French or English. That should be a fascinating aspect of how all this is supposed to work. We have also been guaranteed that we will be sick and have some digestive/stomach/diarrhea issues no matter what. God, I can’t wait to have diarrhea in the middle of the night when I have to walk into the snow to use the bathroom… God knows what we’ll do for toilet paper! (Well that post should be soo delightful for you all to read!)
AND to top it all off, I have no physical cash to use to buy long sleeve shirts and socks for the trip so I have to borrow money from friends which isn’t that big of a deal because many people have offered to help me, I just hate having to ask and be a pest. I have also decided that borrowing money from my host family will probably be a bad idea even though they offered as well. Money can just be such a touchy subject in a different culture and I might not even get my new card until I move out of their house anyway. But hopefully I can borrow a small sum from a few different friends so they don’t all feel overwhelmed.
I wasn’t the only one who felt this way today either. We had Arabic “office hours” again today and in my group there were 4 of us and our teacher of course. (This story is going to hard to explain but…)My very funny, articulate, bright and somewhat cynical friend Elana, who I’ve come to really really like was trying to tell Fatiha (our teacher) why we were all so grumpy. She doesn’t speak English and none of us spoke French so the way we communicate without words always ends up involving a lot of laughing. At one point we were all just laughing so hard and then all of a sudden we were all kind of crying too! Elana was laughing so hard and was just like “oh my god I’m going to start crying” and she did! Then, my eyes swelled up—all the while we were laughing so so so hard. I couldn’t even tell if I was crying b/c I was laughing so hard or if I was really crying. It was this bizarre, somewhat surreal moment but it was nice because I knew I wasn’t alone in how I felt. It was the perfect way to express the emotion I was feeling. Laughing SO HARD and crying at the same time. It was actually the most amazing relief! Fatiha totally felt our pain and we only did a little Arabic and then she taught us how to “dance like the village people” (hahaha pun not intended but that’s funny!!) Apparently the Berbers/Moroccans who live in the rural areas have their own way of dancing—this includes keeping your arms straight at your sides and just dancing with your shoulders. It was really funny and it cheered me upJ
Anyway, all day we all kept talking about how lovely it would be to be in our own beds, eating our own food, watching our own movies… ugh I miss food. But tomorrow is Friday and we leave for the village on Saturday morning, but we have the entire afternoon tomorrow free so my plan is to do some skyping, buy some warm clothes, SHOWER (b/c I won’t do that for another week that’s for sure) and go have dinner with some friends before we are either vomiting or immediately pooping everything we eat.
Enjoy your week! Because while you all have warm beds and sunshine, I’ll be milking goats and having diarrhea in the woods…