me at the independence day party in June. wow. this seems like forever ago!
Monday, August 18, 2008
Getting ready for the HEAT
Dear Family/Friends!!!
PST (“pre-service training”… peace corps LOVES acronyms. seriously.) is almost over! I am almost in disbelief about how fast it has gone by. It seems just yesterday we were being introduced to our host families, now we have already said our goodbyes!Since the last time I wrote (which was a while ago, I have been out of communication with any technology for a while now) much has happened. We have had our final language exams, we have been to our site visits, we have seen and met other amazing peace corps volunteers as our trainers… and now we are ready *hopefully, to go to our sites and start to teach!
I am in Mantasoa right now, which is where the Peace Corps Training Center is at. I personally like to call it Camp Peace Corps… its basically like a cabin wonderland on lake Mantasoa (largest man-made lake in Madagascar) with canoes and bball court/volleyball court, games, bonfires, and good food. Its pretty great and it’s a nice time to just chill out with our friends here and get prepared for our swearing in on Friday.
Tomorrow morning we will head to Tana (Antananarivo) again for final paperwork with headquarters and then Wednesday we head back here to Mantasoa for two final days of activities with our traning staff which includes a talent show and a mini-olympics with events such as “separating rice” and “chicken killing” we will see how this goes!
Speaking of chickens, my AMAZING wonderful host family sent me with a going away gift of three male chickens! I am really excited to mate them with females I buy at my site and mate them and have eggs every morning and baby chickens too! My host-mom gave me instructions on how to mate them properly and on when to eat them and feed them. Its so funny that my “host-mom” who is like 5 years older than me seems so much older than me in terms of, for example, raising chickens and cooking food. I literally feel like a child here sometimes, not because of my age but because I am constantly experiencing new things that I have to be instructed to do because I have not done them before… but people think I am probably crazy because it is things they have done since they were kids.
Anyways, I suppose I should explain my site-visit since it was AMAZING and was a really cool experience. So here we go: It started out with me and my counterpart who is the equivilant of a principal at the school I will be teaching at. Not only does he not speak English (which was great because I got to speak Malagasy my entire site visit) but he speaks a different dialect of Malagasy which I was not taught. Great. But he was amazing and very nice. We rode for HOURS to get to the main town on the west coast. Then had to take a boat across the ocean/peninsula to get to a smaller beach-town called Katsepy. After that a GRUELING taxi-brusse ride (which is like a van where they stuff people inside… literally stuff. Just when u think no more bodies will fit, five more people get on) for three hours to my site. I left Antananarivo at 4:00pm on Wednesday and didn’t get to my site until almost 10:00pm on Thursday night. It was intense. I was a bit cranky by the end of the trip to say the least… but it was cool!! There was a point in the first leg of the taxi brusse ride where I could actually feel the weather change. It was really really really really HOT at my site. Which apparently I need to get used to but I am really pumped about it because it is pretty chilly at night here on the plateau.
Anyways my site is like being in a completely different country. The people dress differently, and look different, the language is a little different, the food is a little different (other than the rice, yes they eat it on the west-side all the time too) and the weather/landscape is different. In general it is more of what my expectations of Madagascar to look like are… I am so happy with my placement.
This Friday is the swearing in ceremony and after that we are carted off with our installers (who are people to help us get settled in at our sites) to completely move to our sites. I cannot wait until Saturday to leave for my site again, but I will defiantly miss the staff and volunteers here. They are all really amazing and I feel very blessed to have worked with this group of people and am excited to continue to work with them for the next two years.
Thank you to everyone who has sent me letters. It is really really amazing to get mail here since I am pretty out of touch with any other form of technology other than e-mail from time to time.
I hope everyone is doing well! I will post my new address next week when I get it...
Peace Out!
-Lauren
Shout out to Buck- amazing work with HISA. I am so happy and literally cannot wait to go visit next June! You are amazing!
Sia, hope the coup is treating u well in Mauritania J
Emily Kridler…. Glad to hear you are getting ur own place! WAY BETTER!!
Danielle Erwin… Where have u been girl? I have been trying to get ahold of u via text? Xoxox miss you and love u so much girl!
Joseph. Glad u are e-mailing mom and dad. Love u too
PST (“pre-service training”… peace corps LOVES acronyms. seriously.) is almost over! I am almost in disbelief about how fast it has gone by. It seems just yesterday we were being introduced to our host families, now we have already said our goodbyes!Since the last time I wrote (which was a while ago, I have been out of communication with any technology for a while now) much has happened. We have had our final language exams, we have been to our site visits, we have seen and met other amazing peace corps volunteers as our trainers… and now we are ready *hopefully, to go to our sites and start to teach!
I am in Mantasoa right now, which is where the Peace Corps Training Center is at. I personally like to call it Camp Peace Corps… its basically like a cabin wonderland on lake Mantasoa (largest man-made lake in Madagascar) with canoes and bball court/volleyball court, games, bonfires, and good food. Its pretty great and it’s a nice time to just chill out with our friends here and get prepared for our swearing in on Friday.
Tomorrow morning we will head to Tana (Antananarivo) again for final paperwork with headquarters and then Wednesday we head back here to Mantasoa for two final days of activities with our traning staff which includes a talent show and a mini-olympics with events such as “separating rice” and “chicken killing” we will see how this goes!
Speaking of chickens, my AMAZING wonderful host family sent me with a going away gift of three male chickens! I am really excited to mate them with females I buy at my site and mate them and have eggs every morning and baby chickens too! My host-mom gave me instructions on how to mate them properly and on when to eat them and feed them. Its so funny that my “host-mom” who is like 5 years older than me seems so much older than me in terms of, for example, raising chickens and cooking food. I literally feel like a child here sometimes, not because of my age but because I am constantly experiencing new things that I have to be instructed to do because I have not done them before… but people think I am probably crazy because it is things they have done since they were kids.
Anyways, I suppose I should explain my site-visit since it was AMAZING and was a really cool experience. So here we go: It started out with me and my counterpart who is the equivilant of a principal at the school I will be teaching at. Not only does he not speak English (which was great because I got to speak Malagasy my entire site visit) but he speaks a different dialect of Malagasy which I was not taught. Great. But he was amazing and very nice. We rode for HOURS to get to the main town on the west coast. Then had to take a boat across the ocean/peninsula to get to a smaller beach-town called Katsepy. After that a GRUELING taxi-brusse ride (which is like a van where they stuff people inside… literally stuff. Just when u think no more bodies will fit, five more people get on) for three hours to my site. I left Antananarivo at 4:00pm on Wednesday and didn’t get to my site until almost 10:00pm on Thursday night. It was intense. I was a bit cranky by the end of the trip to say the least… but it was cool!! There was a point in the first leg of the taxi brusse ride where I could actually feel the weather change. It was really really really really HOT at my site. Which apparently I need to get used to but I am really pumped about it because it is pretty chilly at night here on the plateau.
Anyways my site is like being in a completely different country. The people dress differently, and look different, the language is a little different, the food is a little different (other than the rice, yes they eat it on the west-side all the time too) and the weather/landscape is different. In general it is more of what my expectations of Madagascar to look like are… I am so happy with my placement.
This Friday is the swearing in ceremony and after that we are carted off with our installers (who are people to help us get settled in at our sites) to completely move to our sites. I cannot wait until Saturday to leave for my site again, but I will defiantly miss the staff and volunteers here. They are all really amazing and I feel very blessed to have worked with this group of people and am excited to continue to work with them for the next two years.
Thank you to everyone who has sent me letters. It is really really amazing to get mail here since I am pretty out of touch with any other form of technology other than e-mail from time to time.
I hope everyone is doing well! I will post my new address next week when I get it...
Peace Out!
-Lauren
Shout out to Buck- amazing work with HISA. I am so happy and literally cannot wait to go visit next June! You are amazing!
Sia, hope the coup is treating u well in Mauritania J
Emily Kridler…. Glad to hear you are getting ur own place! WAY BETTER!!
Danielle Erwin… Where have u been girl? I have been trying to get ahold of u via text? Xoxox miss you and love u so much girl!
Joseph. Glad u are e-mailing mom and dad. Love u too
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