Nearly three weeks into my time in Morocco and it's gone very fast, barely a moment to take stock and realise where I am! Today has been a good day for me; technically, it was supposed to be the end of my induction course introducing life in Taroudannt and giving me the basics in Arabic, Moroccan dialect and teaching methods etc, but the period has been extended to allow me time to catch up for lessons missed last week. Unsurprisingly, after eating so many local delicacies, cakes, salads and couscous something got to my intestines and I was out cold for a couple of days! Still, back fighting fit now, and as I discovered this morning, I have been given till the end of the week to fit in missed lessons. Today for instance was spent with Karima, a member of the GMH team, discussing the role of women in Islamic society and what the Koran's position on the issue is. Needless to say, the two are at odds, so talking through the various discrepancies was good fun, even if to my Western ears some things were a slight shock.

Most of the rest of the day was spent eating cake, as everyone was celebrating Aid, the birthday of the prophet Mohammed. Cue every household in town opening its doors for family and friends to come and enjoy some hospitality, mostly consisting of mint tea, and yes, more cake. Resisting the host family's encouragement to eat "more, more" has proved fruitless so far, but I'm counting on more willpower after the festival, once all the biscuits are safely out of harm's way.

I was also told of my forthcoming teaching programme for the rest of my stay, which was big news. It looks like I'll be doing Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at the Al Wifaq school, teaching classes of twelve young Moroccan kids basic IT and how to make the most of the computer room set up through AfricaTrust. I'm looking forward to the teaching but it looks like it might be a little tiring- being around my hosts', Rachid and Houda's children can be enough action for me! Still, the class sizes should be manageable and judging by the amount of children in cybercafes all over the place, at least some are conversant with the basics, so it should be possible to do some quite cool games and exercises. More to follow on that one.

The rest of my week- Tuesdays and Fridays- will be spent in the orphanage, organising activities for the six disabled children housed there. The conditions they are kept in are very backward compared to England, and only recently did Morocco start doing anything to aid disabled children at all. Many families simply kept children locked away in rooms, believing shame had been brought on them by their birth. So a lot of work remains to be done, but luckily the last volunteers on the scheme left posters, pens, paints, blankets and a tape recorder behind through their donations, so I'll be able to make use of all that. However, it still looks a difficult task, as the children have very different problems but live together. It's up to the volunteers to take the initiative and organise individual games and painting sessions. I'll be bringing more on my progress on that one as well!

Well, if I'm not mistaken, dinner time is approaching so it's back to Rachid and Houda's house. It must be at least a couple of hours since I last had some cake...