As much as I like the Gaf, sometimes one needs to get out of one's site in order for one to retain one's sanity. Particularly when it has been raining inside one's house for nearly a week and one has no Internet and one occasionally loses electricity and thus has nothing to do in one's house, and then one can't stop talking about one's self in the third person....
Anyway, so last week, I got to hang with 23 other awesome volunteers at the Special Olympics in Tangiers. Here's a pic of all of us prepping before the event started (ignore my hat hair):
My job for the day: timing kids running. As some of you may remember, I actually used to run track back in seventh grade. So I was interested to see how these kids' times compared to mine. While some of them were about my speed, the vast majority of them were so, so much faster. It was kinda unbelievable. I don't really know what's considered a good time for running 50 meters, but several of them were around 8 seconds, which seems pretty good to me. Unfortunately, I didn't get a whole lot of pics of kids running, but here's a pic of kids showing off their athletic skillz at the awards ceremony:
So yeah, the Special Olympics was awesome, and it was just super cool to see that there are opportunities for kids with special needs in at least some parts of Morocco. (We've only got a few special needs kids in the Gaf, but there's no special programs or anything for them, and most of them don't really ever leave the house.) I'm already looking forward to possibly being able to go to the national games next year in Ifrane.
So I'm back in Algeria at the moment, but thankfully, not for too long. Next week, I'm off to In-Service Training (at the beach!). The week after that, my mom's coming to Morocco, which I'm pretty excited about. In the meantime, the Peace Corps is doing some crazy restructuring/re-organization thing, so we'll see what's going on with that. Internet's still not back, so who knows when the next update will be. Htta next time.....
Anyway, so last week, I got to hang with 23 other awesome volunteers at the Special Olympics in Tangiers. Here's a pic of all of us prepping before the event started (ignore my hat hair):
So yeah, the Special Olympics was awesome, and it was just super cool to see that there are opportunities for kids with special needs in at least some parts of Morocco. (We've only got a few special needs kids in the Gaf, but there's no special programs or anything for them, and most of them don't really ever leave the house.) I'm already looking forward to possibly being able to go to the national games next year in Ifrane.
So I'm back in Algeria at the moment, but thankfully, not for too long. Next week, I'm off to In-Service Training (at the beach!). The week after that, my mom's coming to Morocco, which I'm pretty excited about. In the meantime, the Peace Corps is doing some crazy restructuring/re-organization thing, so we'll see what's going on with that. Internet's still not back, so who knows when the next update will be. Htta next time.....
Wow Meech, I totally remember your 7th grade track experience. I'm way impressed that you managed to stick it out as long as I did.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the deal with the restructuring?
That's so cool that you're volunteering at the special olympics! Keep doing exciting things!
UPDATE YOUR BLOG! PS i think you're really cool, and i'm glad we're friends.
ReplyDelete