Peace Out

I really don’t remember what I was doing five years ago at this time, but in retrospect I should have gone to my five-year Peace Corps staj’s reunion. This past weekend was the 10-year and oh, man, it was so much fun.

“Staj” is the Peace Corps Morocco term for your cohort, all the people who land in Rabat with you. In our case, we landed on Sept. 11, 2007, so the 10-year reunion is more of a reunion of the end than the beginning.

We have an amazing group of Type A planners, and a handful of them sent out a survey of what people might like in a place, where they could get to, etc., and came up with Seven Springs, which is some kind of ski resort about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. Because this was Memorial Day weekend, we had hiking and not skiing but that might have been better. I certainly would have not been inclined to ski.

As it was, I was sick as a dog. The event started on Friday, and on Thursday night I came down with a brutal cold. My Friday was the worst day I’ve had in several years, so it was nice to finally find the place around 11:30 p.m. that evening and start the actual “rest” part of the R&R.

Really, when you stay in a place like this: https://www.vrbo.com/4754456ha, you cannot go wrong just hanging out at the house. It was fabulous. I could have camped out in the kitchen forever, but then I would have missed the gas-powered firepit, which was pretty phenomenal.

My room was the worst part of it; I somehow got the short end of the stick. On paper, it sounded fabulous: the office to myself. I thought there’d be a recliner, but the chair was really a futon-like thing that, for some reason, had each of the three pillow sections set in some sort of frame, so there were pieces of wood stabbing me the whole time. However, I was pretty dead to the world and didn’t move, so on one of those three nights I totally slept. The other room downsides were, although it had doors (the loft did not), they were clear glass so there was no privacy. This being Peace Corps, no one cared about that. It was more annoying that the bathroom off the office also led to the hall, meaning it was kind of the default one if you were on the first floor. No issue there, except people kept forgetting to unlock the door leading to my room when they were done, so I got locked out a lot. And, being that the room was off the kitchen and front door, it was kind of loud. However, I was so sick it really didn’t matter.

Overall, though, the place was just fabulous and it was great to touch base with people I hadn’t seen in 10 years. When I wandered in, everyone still awake was around the fire pit and people just screamed when I wandered in. It was so nice to see folks!

And, 10 years on, I swear we all look exactly the same. It was kind of scary, like a time freeze except some people brought kids. They’d had a five-year reunion and one person had brought a guy she’d just started seeing. On the 10-year, she brought him and the three kids they’d had. She still looked like the exact same Anna who’d sat next to me on the flight from Philly to Rabat, but everything else changed. So incredible!

The first day, I really was too down for the count to do anything; I took a nap in the movie room while the others went hiking and played around. I finally pulled myself off the comfy recliner and went into town to have some awesome potato leek soup and salmon from a restaurant in a neighboring city, then wound back to hang out and reminisce. Our Type A group then cooked up an amazing Moroccan feast, a truly legit Moroccan feast.

Most Americans haven’t experienced a legit Moroccan feast and have to settle for what they find in Moroccan restaurants and hope for the best. Since they’ve never had the real thing, they don’t know that in many cases, those are imitations. They’re good, but still short of the bar. Our meal in Saturday was not. We had it real. Some of it even came from Morocco directly, as one of our volunteers still works there. Oh, the joy of mint tea made with sugar as it should be – chipped off a cone with a hammer. I hadn’t seen schpekia in forever; we had real, hand-rubbed couscous and just all kinds of fixins.  With real Moroccan tea.

On Sunday, I was somewhat functional and enjoyed a hike (walk in the woods) through Laurel State Park and then several rounds of Bananagrams, followed by even more food. Oh, my there was so much food.

Heads. We also had a lot of heads. Apparently last reunion, they went to people’s Facebook pages (or something) and used profile photos to make giant heads on popsicle sticks, using them for photo ops. That was so cute, they did it again. We sort of forgot to take them on most of the day events, but we did hang them by the mantle. Kind of freaky, actually.

On Monday, we all went our separate ways again. A small group of people who had evening flights from Pittsburgh went into town there and did the incline, then we had yet more food before splitting at the airport.

The fifth reunion, I suppose, took place in 2013, when I was in Minot. That would explain why I couldn’t go – no money. However, now that I have a real job that’s reasonably secure, I really hope that I’m able to attend the 15^th.