click on the link to see a video of my house in Lesotho!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrvCLq2pks4

I had my “HIV Education through Literacy” workshop a few weeks ago! I’ve been pretty bad about keeping up with my blog, so I’ll try to recap the past few weeks!

The workshop went so well! Peace Corps staff and volunteers partnered up with the ministry to facilitate a workshop to train teachers to use roughly 70 children’s books that have an HIV, sexual health, self-esteem, decision-making, and gender equality focus. All 36 teachers from each of the 12 schools showed up, which is a huge deal for a workshop. The workshop ran from Thursday evening until Sunday morning with very few extra breaks, which is very different from typical workshops. We taught teachers how to read the books aloud to their students, teach reading comprehension, write a letter to a character in the books, role-play and debate using the books, how to connect many of the books to curriculum in each subject, and games and activities that students and teachers can use with the books. Because they were receiving a ton of books, we also taught them how to use and care for the books. And because the whole workshop was dedicated to teaching HIV and all other things surrounding life skills (simply skills needed to get through life – decision making, goal setting, sexual health…), we talked a lot about HIV. We had peer HIV education through a game of Jeopardy where teachers chose a dollar (or rand) amount from a category and answered a question as a group. If they did not know the answer then as a whole group we discussed the answer. It was a great way to teach about HIV without lecturing. We also had youth facilitators and Kick-4-Life, who I have used before at workshops. They teach about HIV through games that teachers can use in their schools.

Each teacher walked away with ideas for their regular classrooms, lesson plans that they created, educational games, and great new resources. I walked away feeling such a sense of accomplishment and relief after planning and thinking about this workshop since December. The workshop went better than I could have possibly imagined thanks to the help of Peace Corps staff, other volunteers, the Ministry of Education, and our many facilitators and other organizations that helped us to plan and carry out the workshop.

Now I am in the process of collecting and combining all of my scattered ideas and notes to create a manual so we can duplicate this workshop again. We made sure that after each session and day we sat down to evaluate the effectiveness of the sessions. There are a ton of changes that we are going to make to according to feedback we received and changes we made as we went.

I talked to a few of my friends this weekend that had friends and family come and visit decided I should tell you about a typical day for me in my village. This was more or less my day yesterday…

I began hitting snooze around 6:00 and eventually rolled out of bed at 6:30 to make sure I was dressed before one of the kids came over a little before 7. I lit some candles because the sun doesn’t peek over the mountains until 7:20. I planned ahead this week so I ate some yogurt and granola for breakfast while I changed and put on shoes. Right on time, Mpho, a 6th grade student came over to walk to school with him. He sat down and continued a puzzle that we have been working on for a few days while I brushed my teeth and got my things together. At 7:00 we left my house and walked for about 1 minute to the dirt road to wait for the taxi. It is winter now so we were bundled up, but it gets warm during the day so we are a little colder than we should be waiting for the bus. The bus finally arrives at 7:35 and we notice that there are 19 people in a 15-passenger bus, but the conductor tells us to get in quickly! I half sit next to a woman going to town and Mpho stands squeezed between the door and people sitting. These busses comfortably fit 3 people in each of the 3 rows and do not allow for standing room…still we fit 4 in each and have people standing.

We arrive at our stop, which is a shop/bar at 7:50 and begin our hour-long walk up and around a mountain. Although the sun rose where I live, there is a bigger mountain blocking it out where we are now walking. School starts at 8:30, so we are walking quickly and I quickly start sweating. It is way to early for this! Because we are walking so fast, we arrive at school only 8 minutes late! We arrive just in time for the morning prayer and then it’s off to class. I begin my day in standard (grade) 1 & 2, which has a total of 100 students in one classroom. The teacher wasn’t there yesterday so I asked another teacher to help me read a book to the class (his students were taking an exam!). I found a version of The Little Red Hen and began reading. I spoke painfully slow and had him translate for me. I asked the students what they thought the book would be about and got nothing back. I spoke slower and used some Sesotho. They all agreed that it was about a bird. I took it! I told them to pay attention to the pictures and to try and pick up some of the words I was saying. We pointed out the animals in the book and said their English and Sesotho names. The book was repetitive so they started saying the words with me. “Not I!” All of the kids in Lesotho are familiar with the process of picking wheat, taking it to the mill, eating it…so these kids knew exactly what was going on even know they only understood a few of the words I was saying. As I read I noticed the students slowly leaving their seats and crowding around me. By the end of the story kids were standing on the table in front of me and all around me to get a better look at the pictures. It was great!

After that I went with a teacher to class 7 to help teach about different types of bleeding in health. We had talked about teaching this lesson last week, but ran out of time. I am going to spend a few weeks working with him to teach CPR and a few other things that are in the health unit. For this class I had to speak slowly, but didn’t need to speak Sesotho. The understood most of what I was talking about! We went through the three types of bleeding and I showed them the veins in my arm to help them understand. When it came time for capillary bleeding, I had each student pair up and look at each other’s eyes. They could see the small veins that run through our bodies. They also looked at the bottom of each other’s tongues. I got a lot of laughs when I showed them the bottom of mine and then they quickly turned to see their friends! Through the whole lesson the teacher helped me clarify things and also wanted to see/show the veins in the eye and tongue.

The last lesson I taught before lunch was about puberty. This was an interesting one. We talked about the changes in boys and girls and why this happens. I explained as best as I could the menstrual cycle. This class was combined 5 & 6, so some students were pretty young and some were much older. This made for a slightly awkward conversation. We (3 other teachers and me) ended the lesson by talking about choices and what if’s. We talked a lot to the girls about saying no and how to say it. A lot of men truly believe in the “use it or lose it” idea and we talked a lot about that as well. The kids were given an opportunity to ask questions and I turned a lot over to the teachers helping with the lesson to make sure I didn’t say too much, which I’m pretty sure I couldn’t. This lesson was really important because just like in the US, it is difficult for kids to ask certain questions and it is uncomfortable for adults to talk to kids about certain topics. Team teaching this lesson really helped the teachers to feel more comfortable.

I tend to take over whole chunks of the day when I really get into teaching. The puberty lesson ran 15 minutes into lunch and right through another teacher’s time. I like that a few teachers might sit in on the lesson to either learn something or to help out.

After lunch the students practiced for an upcoming soccer game so I decided to leave a little early. I walked back to the dirt road, which really took an hour this time and waited for a taxi (mini-bus). I arrived at 1:30 and sat down under a tree and started to read the book I brought with me. Around 2:15 a bus came by and I stood up expecting it to stop. It was full and went right by me. I waited another 15 minutes and decided to walk. The walk takes about 45 minutes and I have to cross a small stream. I almost always get my feet wet doing this, but didn’t slip this time! I stopped and talked to some friend and neighbors on the way home and arrived around 4. Knowing the sun was going to set around 5-5:30 I went to get water. I dumped the remaining water from my 2 buckets into my filter and set off. My old tap, which was a downhill walk back to my house, broke so I had to go to the other one. I would guess that it is about the length of a football field from my house to the tap…maybe a little longer. When I got to the tap I noticed that there was a rock on top of it because it was broken. I moved the rock and water immediately started gushing out. It took about 5 minutes to fill my bucket and another 5 to perfectly balance the rock on top of the tap again. Then I walked back taking only 3 rests, which is pretty good for me.

When I got back 2 boys from the high school were waiting for me. I put down the water, caught my breath and started talking to them. They needed help with their homework. I held my breath hoping that I could help them and they told me it was warm and cold-water currents. I told them that I needed a minute to review and then explained it to them. They stayed for a few minutes and then left.

I like to cook when the sun is still out so I can really see what’s going on. I had some veggies from town that were starting to go bad so I made pasta sauce with carrots, onion, and tomato. It should last about 3 days, which is great! I spent the rest of the night reading and cleaning up from dinner. I try my hardest to say up until 8 and then pass out for the night.

Only 3 more weeks of school until winter break! Hope everyone is doing well!! I’ll be back to town again in a few weeks.

workshop pictures. copy and paste the whole link!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=3130211&id=9320551&l=e8fcc567ec.

The library books are here!!! Almost all of the boxes of books have made it to my schools!!! I found three boxes that were hiding under a table and sent them up today. The schools, teachers, students, and families are all so excited! I spent the week at schools helping to sort, organize, and shelve books. The teachers and students did all of the work deciding how they wanted to organize the books and how they wanted them to look on the shelves. I only gave a few suggestions along the way. At one of the schools, I discovered an extra storage room that was turned into a library in two hours! It was pretty exciting!!

When I arrived at the first school this week I was so excited to learn that they had already put the books on the shelves and put a padlock on the doors to keep the books safe. The teachers were excited to show me the books, but couldn’t find the key. We spent some time looking for the key ourselves and came up with nothing. Then I remembered that we had a great search party – the first graders! We brought them out, gave them instructions, and sent them to find the missing keys, which we suspected were in the grass somewhere. Before the key was found, one of the teachers went home and got the spare set of keys. It was a pretty amusing way to start the day.

After we opened the cupboards we decided we needed to organize the books. That is when I found the new library! It is a pretty small room, but we used some extra benches and tables and turned it into a beautiful library. That part of the school has the teachers resources and books for older students. Two classrooms have books that are appropriate, or close to, for the ages of the students in that classroom.

Since my visit, that school has been working hard to teach the students how to use the library properly!

I think I mentioned before that a few kids come to my house to borrow books. I love when they come over! They sit for as long as an hour just to explore the books and find ones they like. I let them borrow two at a time and tell them they can come back any time to trade them in for new ones. A few days ago four boys came together to look at books. As they were packing up the books and putting them under my table for me I remembered that I had another mouse in my house! The little mouse ate my butter and through a few bags of food I had out. My grandma sent me a mousetrap, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. So as the boys were leaving I told them about the mouse and showed them the hole it made in my floor to get in. Imagine that, a little mouse eating through the floor!! They all just looked at me like they had no clue what I was talking about and then left. About 3 hours later they came back holding things in their hands. As I looked closer, I realized that they brought mousetraps! They set them up in a few places in my house and then left again. They returned early the next day, eager to see what they caught. Sure enough, when they checked the trap there was a little mouse stuck right in it! They could tell how happy I was and decided to stay a while to look at more books!

I pasted a link to my facebook pictures. The last handful of pictures are of a teacher using a Thomas the Tank Engine book to teach her kids the ABC’s, a 6th grade teacher using a dinosaur book to teach about carnivores and herbivores, and a group of 7th grade kids huddled around an Eye Spy book!

During lunch at one of the schools I couldn’t figure out where all of the kids were. They are usually outside playing games or running around. When I looked in a few of the classrooms, I found a ton of kids sitting at their desks with friends looking through books!! And it isn’t just the kids, the teachers are just as excited!! They love looking at the books with pictures of animals. I love seeing a teacher just as excited to look through the books as students. The teacher who read the book about dinosaurs would stop and reread a sentence or look at the kids with a surprised face as he learned with them.

I hope all is well at home! It is starting to get pretty cold here as it warms up in Pittsburgh. My hut was 54 degrees the other night!

Facebook pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=3119755&id=9320551&l=5aa04787fb

(I don't know how to make this work. Copy and paste both lines together to get to the pictures)

Anywhere in the world we have good days and bad days. Today is another good day following a few weeks of things going really, really well! Right now I am listing to local music I got from a friend while pretending I know the words and trying to organize myself for the next few weeks. Here’s what has been going on the past few weeks!

I have written a little about a project I have been working on, but because it has changed so, so, so much since December, I have kept pretty quiet about it. Now, however, I feel like I am at a place with it that I can write about it! I am working with Peace Corps staff, the Ministry of Education and Training, and about 6 other organizations in Lesotho to plan and facilitate a workshop to train teachers in 12 primary schools how to teach about HIV/AIDS through literacy. People from these other organizations work in Lesotho to teach students skills necessary to succeed in life, as librarians and teachers, as publishers and authors, and as teacher trainers. I, along with a team of these professionals, have selected between 50-70 children’s books that all have messages and stories about HIV, sexual health, self-esteem, living healthy, gender equity, sexual abuse, and everything a child or young adult might need to know about HIV. They are amazing books meant to be either read by children or to children with the help of a teacher. The books were reviewed by a team of people from groups I mentioned to make sure they were appropriate for primary aged students and would be helpful in the schools. They are meant to supplement curriculum that is currently being created by a few educational organizations in Lesotho. The books have been ordered and some of them have finally arrived in Lesotho!!

After we reviewed and ordered the books we met as a group of 13 to create a workshop for the teachers. We spent an entire day planning for the workshop. We made sure to spend a lot of time discussing what the Basotho professionals have found work well and things to avoid based on their experiences working with similar projects in Lesotho. We also looked at what has already been done in Lesotho to borrow ideas and strategies from those projects. Once we were all on the same page with the project and where we wanted it to go, we brainstormed ideas about what we felt teachers needed to know to effectively use the books in their schools. We came up with ideas like how to read to students, how to read for context, how to care for and organize books, games and activities to do with books, how to teach about sensitive subjects, how to tie the books into the curriculum, how to write lesson plans using the books, and what exactly is HIV/AIDS?? From there we took those ideas and about 20 more and combined them into 6 categories to create sessions ranging from 60 minutes to 3 hours to share the information with the teachers. We have a few organizations coming in to teach about HIV and to teach fun games that teach about HIV.

We created a workshop that will begin in the evening May 6 and will finish May 9. I am really looking forward to spending the weekend with these teachers and helping them to make their own connections to these books. I’ll be sure to keep you updated!!

If we find that this workshop and project are successful we will create a manual that will allow Peace Corps volunteers to duplicate this project in their villages across the country. I should also mention that I focus on HIV a lot because 30% of the people in this country are living with HIV/AIDS. I met an HIV counselor in my village and she said that she has been finding that in more remote villages like mine, the percentage is closer to 50%.

I have also been very busy with the 60,000 library books that arrived in Lesotho!!! Of those books, over 5,000 are in my village!! My schools are working hard to unpack and organize their books. The students are so excited. It has taken a while to get all of the books to their respective school, but the Ministry of Education and Training, who is are partner in the project, have been working so hard to help these schools. Tomorrow we are meeting with each of the schools to check in and see what kind of progress they are making. From there we will visit the schools who let us know that they need a little help.

Other fun stories…

My life lately seems to revolve around books. I have read over 50 books since being in Lesotho! I have also started a really small library in my house and have a few kids who have been coming over to borrow books! Sometimes they stick around and we read together and other times they go home and read them there. A few times the kids have borrowed books at night and are at my house the next day to get more! The kids are getting more and more comfortable speaking to me and I can hear that their English is getting better by the day!

One of my closest friends in my village is the grandmother to a few kids who like to borrow books. Her son and I were great friends before he passed away in October. After her passed away, I kept visiting and probably go over 2 or 3 times a week. On my most recent visit she asked me if I knew how to play cards. I smiled and asked her to teach me a game. After she thought about it she slowly told me, because she was thinking, that she wanted to play A-K-4-7. I couldn’t figure out why those letters and numbers were familiar and then I remembered that an AK47 is a gun! I looked at her and asked if the kids in the village taught her the game and she smiled and said yes. It turns out that all you have to do is take turns drawing cards and the first that gets an Ace, King, 4 and 7 wins. I loved it! We had a lot of fun just sitting and playing cards. She loved it because she one nearly every time. She actually started feeling bad because I wasn’t winning!

So I prefer playing sports with kids under the age of 10 because I can try my hardest and am still not as good as them…especially in Africa! The other day a teacher asked me to join the teachers soccer team. I immediately started sweating and tried to think of a way to say no, but accidently said yes! It combined a lot of things that fall under the “not my favorite” category, but I said yes anyway! So we met at 1 that day to walk to the field that was 2-3 hours away. As it goes in Africa, the game that was supposed to start at 2 started closer to 3 and even know I told them that it would be best if I watched for a little, I started. The game was against the soldiers that have a base near our village. I played for the first 45 minutes of the game and didn’t do that bad of a job. More guys arrive later in the game and most of us subbed out after halftime. Even know I was sore for the following week, it was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in my village. My teachers were so excited to have me play with them that they even invited me back to play this Friday! I’m really looking forward to hanging out with them again and even to play. I’ve been trying to move around a little more each day so it doesn’t feel like I got hit by a truck for the next week again!

Well I got a little restless towards the end of writing this. I'll write again soon. Hope all is well!

Updates:

Maria is going to be a teacher next year!

So is Kristin!

And Caitlin is getting married!!!

It is 4PM on Monday and I walked into my house just as it started raining! Behind the mountain that I can see from my door, there is a small village. The government is building a road that snakes up the mountain and will eventually reach the village so public transportation can service them twice a day. They brought all of these huge machines and trucks to get the job done and about twice a week “explode” the mountain. I didn’t expect this the first time and was in a classroom observing a teacher when a bomb went off. I grabbed his arm and checked for damages. He, being fairly old, belly laughed because I was clearly not letting go of his arm for a few seconds. The point of telling you that long story is I got a hitchhike in one of the rock transporting trucks!! One of my principals and I put our fingers out, signaling that we wanted a free ride, and he stopped. I gave it a sideways look, rolled my eyes, and though “this is Africa.” Then I realized the door handle was over my head. When we opened the door I noticed that my seat was a good 6 feet above me! So I climbed in after Ntate Paul, the principal, and closed the door. I definitely smiled the whole ride home. Kids kept running to the road to see the truck, which drives up and down the road about 10 times a day, and I felt like a rock star! I know their gawking had nothing to do with me, but I waved as if I was Obama! In all of my excitement, I forgot how high up we were. When I went to get out, I backed down the first step and jumped. I hit the ground pretty hard a second or two later. Ntate Paul just looked down at me not really knowing if that was an accident. I took some IB Profen for the headache, but am still pretty psyched about it.

In other news…We had our camp a few week ago. It was part 2 of the Healthy Living Camp my friends Meg, Nicole, and I organized for 20 high school students. The camp was great! It was awesome to see the students again and catch up on the past few months. Some of the highlights of the camp were…Kick-4-Life, they teach about HIV through games, came and played games with the kids from 6AM-10. The guy who facilitated the session was amazing. He had way more energy than I had as the sun was coming up and the kids loved it. We had a guest speaker who is HIV positive come and speak about her life. She started by playing a game with the kids to help them understand how it might feel to learn your status. Then she talked to them about her life, how she found out that she was positive, and how she stays healthy. She also talked about her family, friends, job, things she does for fun, all of which the students thought wasn’t possible if someone had HIV. It was probably the best session of the day. We had our friend Alison come the first night to do a cooking demo. I loved it. I felt like I was watching the food network! She taught the kids how to cook a healthy or fortified version of the staple foods they eat. Everything she did was within a typical families budget and in some cases even cost less. Even the boys, who do not cook in Lesotho, asked questions! During lunch the receptionist told me that I had a guest. I gave it the usual “What could this possibly be” and walked to the lobby of the hotel we were at. It ended up being the parents of one of the campers who were in town; they live and work in South Africa while their children live in their home village. They gave me hugs and the mother told me that she had a picture of me with her son in her house! We had extra breakfast so they joined us for breakfast before leaving for South Africa. Our next camp is in August! We’re all looking forward to it!

So this next story is more of a high five for me than anything. I had this very specific idea of Peace Corps before arriving in Lesotho and a lot of it is exactly the same as I thought, but much of it is different. One thing that is different is that I thought I would be doing a lot of work with my hands. Digging and building things. Not exactly my style, but I thought I would give it a try. I finally, probably for the first time in Lesotho, picked up a shovel! I noticed that the water tap at one of my schools was not draining properly and, as a result, created a small swampy wetland all around it. One boy went to wash a peach and came back with wet shoes and ankles! So I went and checked it out, thought about what my dad would do and grabbed a shovel from the teacher’s room. After about 10 minutes of stomping on the shovel, pulling it back to make a loud suction noise, and throwing mud, I had a drainage pit! The kids were pretty confused for a few minutes, but when the water all started running away from the tap, they new exactly what was going on. I put in a good 3 hour nap after that hard work and was pretty pleased with myself.

My friend Meg celebrated her birthday about 2 weeks ago. Last year she scheduled school visits in my village during her birthday, so she did the same thing this year. A few other people were in the area helping with a Life Skills workshop (teaching about HIV, goal setting, decision-making, self-esteem…) at the high school in my village. I decided the best gift I could get Meg would be 2 chickens to slaughter for the big day. I went around with my Ausie (host sister) and asked people to buy a chicken from them. It took us a while to find chickens fat enough, but we finally had 2 neighbors agree to sell us chickens. I told them that I would pay for them and pick them up in a few days. So the big day comes and we go to neighbor 1 to collect the chicken. He’s an older man who lives with his two primary age sons. He smiled when I walked through his gate with a few other white people. He told his sons to go get the chicken and we waited. We smiled as we hear these two boys running through a cornfield and chickens attempting to fly and run at the same time. The boys come out and tell us that it isn’t around today. So we told them to bring it to my house when it came home. You should know that this was all in Sesotho and we speak it, but not well enough for this conversation. So we go to house 2. I told a guy about my age why we were there and a woman goes to get the man I talked to earlier in the week. She stood at the edge of their property yelling for him and he comes out of the primary school with a huge smile on his face. We rediscuss that I wasn’t to buy a chicken and he takes off after one. He and his son had it cornered, but when they went for it, it ran the other way. After about 5-10 minutes of chasing, he comes over and holds the chicken out for me to take. Now I had thought most of this through, but not the transportation to my house. So he teaches me how to hold the chicken without getting pecked or clawed and we start the several minute journey to my house. When we arrive the two boys from house 1 were standing in my yard waiting with another chicken. So when I said I thought it through, I really meant I knew I wanted to put salt and pepper on it and roast it. So we all stood there with chickens making noises without a clue. I told someone to get rope from my house and my knife, but then we didn’t know how to tie them in a nice way that let them know that they weren’t going anywhere. So the youngest of the boys steps up and ties them up. He has to be about 6. He tied them and laid them on the ground for us. Fast-forward about 3 hours while we wait for everyone to arrive. It’s definitely getting dark and we have one headlamp and one flashlight for a pretty dark night. We had 2 experienced chicken slaughterers in the group who taught Meg and another friend how to cut the head off. Meg went at it and got the head off of chicken #1 in about 40 seconds. Without really knowing what to do next we used the rope that already had its legs tied and hung it from my clothesline. I’m sure my Ntate (host father) was not pleased. For chicken #2 I insisted that we untie it to see if a chicken can really run with its head cut off. Our friend went at it, cut it off, and then we all stepped back. The instant he let go of the chicken, it flew straight at Nicole, went off to the left and continued running about 40 feet into my families corn field, all while our friend had the chicken’s head in his hand!! It was crazy. The next hour was spent plucking, gutting, and cooking the chickens, which cost about $4 each!

Finally, I have been working on a project to order children’s books with and HIV message or lesson in them for primary schools in Lesotho. The books are being ordered and dates have been set. So the project is this… I am working with Peace Corps and the Ministry of Education to order about 75 HIV/Life Skill themed children’s books and teacher resources for 20 primary schools in the district that I live in. To make the books useful and the project sustainable, we are developing a workshop to teach 2 teachers from each school how to use these books in their schools. We are going to create lesson plans, try some games and activities in the books, and talk about how to have difficult discussions about sex, death, HIV, and everything else with students. From there, we are going to try to visit the schools to help the teachers to use the books well in their schools. I am also going to create a manual for other volunteers to use if they want to do this workshop in their villages. Hopefully other volunteers will be able to order books and recreate this workshop all over the country!

Well by the time I post this the African Library Project books will be in Lesotho! I will be heading down to organize the books by school and make sure my 3 libraries are well organized before the Easter break! My next blog will have lots of updates about that!

Hope everyone is doing well!

Hellooo! I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but haven’t had a chance!

My friends and I took a trip to Semongkong in Lesotho and had a great time. We got in a little late on Friday night and played pool, ate a good dinner and relaxed. We got up Friday morning to learn how to abseil on a 100 foot cliff. Abseiling is repelling down something on a rope. So we went down this cliff three times and learned different ways to get down each time. It should have been pretty scary lowering yourself down a 100 foot drop on a rope, but it wasn’t too bad. One of my favorite parts of that morning was when my friend Kelly went down. She started a little late and was still trying to learn some of the things we were taught earlier in the morning. When she neared the bottom, we told her that she had to lie flat on her back. Without thinking about it she spread out her arms and lied as flat as she could. We all started laughing as the guy helping us tried to untie her ropes as she lay on the ground like a starfish.

After that, we went on a donkey pub crawl! We each got a donkey to ride around on as we went to about 5 different bars. It was a ton of fun. My donkey was named Maria! The people living in the village have seen people do these bar tours before, but they still shook their heads as a group of Americans rode by on their donkeys. Some of the donkeys had their own plans and would go left instead of right and were pretty stubborn. It made for a lot of laughs.

Sunday morning we got up early to abseil the worlds longest single drop (or something like that). It was 204 meters AND made the Guinness Book of World Records! It was probably one of the most amazing and scary things I’ve ever done. There were 9 people in our group and I went around 7. It took us on average 15 minutes to get down, so we had a lot of waiting time at the top. I started sweating even more when it was my turn. I got all strapped in by one of the guys organizing the abseil and then he hooked me to my rope. I was amazed by how heavy the rope was! It took a lot of effort to back myself to the ledge. I had to pull the rope through the little metal thing attached to me. The next thing I know I’m over the edge and made the mistake of looking down. Something about the look on my face made the guys start laughing. After about 5 feet of “walking” down the wall, the wall disappeared! I was just floating 200 meters above rocks. I did something to my rope and started slowly spinning, which forced me to look down and all around me. I’m pretty pleased with myself for not achieving the world’s highest projectile vomit. I got instantly light headed as I dangled in the air and looked to my right at a huge waterfall and then just openness. It was beautiful. Once I got my act together, I started to lower myself down. I got a little more comfortable as I got closer to the bottom. It was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

Once we got to the bottom we had to wait for everyone else. It was really cool to see my other friends repel down the fall. After the last person got to the bottom we had to walk back. This was definitely more nerve wrecking than going down the fall. We had to keep our helmets on and walk along a path made by goats. Because we were so close to the falls, the path was soaked and slippery. Just to our left was a decent drop, which would not have felt good. We continued along the terrifying path for about 20 minutes and then had a 45 minute hike in front of us. Half way up my arm and legs started burning. I had brushed against some crazy plant and got itchy, burning hives on exposed skin. It went away after about 10 minutes, but it was intense!

Then we skip ahead a little…So on our way home we get on a pretty big bus…probably seats about 75? Then we crammed as many people as we could in the isle. They stood for the whole 5 hour drive up and down mountains on a dirt road. I should mention that my friends and I were stuck in the isle on the way up. It’s awful. We stood chest to back with the person in front of us on a rollercoaster ride for 5 hours!! On the way home, we got lucky and got seats. I was pretty excited about my window seat. We waited for the bus to leave for a good 1-2 hours. Right before we left, some men loaded 10 sheep on the top of the bus with people’s luggage. They tied their legs together and got them on the roof. One must have been right above my window because every time it went to the bathroom it ran right down my window and onto my right shoulder. The bus was so full that there was nothing I could do about it. Right when I started to really get miserable, it started raining, which meant the pee mixed with rain water and just flooded the right side of my body! Definitely an experience I won’t forget!

Hope everyone is doing well!! I’ll post again soon!

I wrote about this a few weeks ago and here are some of the pictures!!

Hello everyone! I haven't written in a very long time!!!

The pictures are of me doing my laundry. I waited too long to do it and it took a few hours! Some kids reading books from a small library in my house. Some houses in my village.

I put some pictures on facebook...there are many duplicates and they are in no order, but you should check them out! (If the link is in 2 lines, copy and paste all of it into the www part up top!)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2965394&id=9320551&l=5c32b9cfe6

Things here are going really well. School started a few weeks ago and I've been so busy! I spent a few weeks in my village working with the schools and relaxing. I think I just finished my 40th book in Lesotho! My friend Nicole came up and we taught kids in a local preschool and 1st grade how to brush their teeth. A good friend of mine from home sent me toothbrushes and toothpaste for little kids. They loved learning how to brush and promised to brush twice a day! I'll post pictures of that later this week!!

I also met with each of my schools and gave them a box of 80 books, half in Sesotho and half in English. They are going to try using these books before the rest of their library arrives in March! The teachers are so excited to have books to use!! And the kids are excited, too! The teachers have been trying to use the books as often as possible and are teaching their students how to treat the books. It is a great way to prepare them for about 1000 more books to arrive in a month!!

I have been working with the African Library Team here in Lesotho, which is made up of about 6 volunteers. We are working with the Ministry of Education in Botha-Bothe, my district, to develop 25 new libraries in schools that Peace Corps Volunteers do not work. Things are going really well with that! When the books arrive, we will visit each school and provide the teachers and students with a workshop to help them develop their library. We talk about the rules, organization, how to read to the students, and everything else that makes a library successful. I really enjoy working with this project!

I have a meeting with Peace Corps tomorrow to review about 100 children's books that have an HIV focus. I am working with peace corps to buy these books for schools across the country using PEPFAR money. PEPFAR is the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. I may have that wrong...but it's the right idea! I am really excited about this project. Teachers feel uncomfortable teaching about HIV, so I will be creating a workshop for the schools that have applied for the books to teach the teachers how to discuss HIV in their classrooms. Lesotho has the 3rd highest prevalence of HIV in the world.

Finally, my friends Meg, Nicole, and I have the 2nd of three Healthy Living Camps for our 20 high school students. We have tons of activities, guest speakers, and games planned for them. The kids had such a great time last time and we are hoping to make this camp even better. We have Kick-4-Life coming. They teach kids about HIV through fun games and activities. They are an amazing organization. Lesotho Planned Parenthood Association - will be preforming skits for the kids and helping the kids develop their own skits to take back to their schools. Four great dentists and doctors from the local hospital are coming to discuss oral hygiene, mental health, goal setting, career planning, drug abuse, and a few other things. Another PCV, Alison, is coming to cook dinner with the kids one night. She is a nutrition expert and will be teaching the kids how to make healthy papa (the staple food here. It is ground then boiled maize meal... similar to mashed potatoes i guess!). She is also going to teach them how to make healthy veggies. We will be making a stir fry! Everything she cooks with will be items the kids can get in their village. The final part of the camp will be our other partner, Thabo, will be teaching the students how to do workshops in their village. He attended a One Love conference and learned great activities to promote one sexual partner. He will also be teaching them gender equality and HIV activities for the students to take back to their schools.

Well I'm off to another meeting! Hope things are going well at home and everyone had a nice holiday! I have full weekends from now until October so I will try to keep you updated!

Hello! I spent the week at an African Library Summit. We had librarians from Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, and Botswana attend. The other countries do not work with Peace Corps volunteers; instead they work with the Ministry of Education or NGO’s in the area. It was amazing to hear about how they get the schools excited and help them to organize their libraries. In Lesotho, we are working towards getting the Ministry of Education more involved to make the libraries less of a Peace Corps project. To do this, we are going to work with the Ministry to develop 26 libraries in the Botha-Bothe district (similar to a state). The books will be arriving in March and we will have one or two small workshops to teach the teachers how to organize their libraries and how to use them in their classrooms. Once the books arrive, some Peace Corps volunteers and Ministry workers will visit the schools and train the teachers so they know how to use the books as teaching aids, discuss how to use the library properly, and how to take care of the library. I have helped with several workshops and feel like the teachers really enjoy them.

When the books arrive for the 26 libraries in the pilot program in Botha-Bothe, books for 33 other libraries in the country will arrive. Books for three of my schools will be in that shipment! My teachers and students are so excited to have libraries in their schools. In January I will be bringing about 100 books to each school so the teachers can start using books in their classroom. I think that slowly introducing them to the books will help the 1,000 books that will soon be arriving feel less intimidating.

In other newwwwss….

The new volunteers arrived safely yesterday! Their training started today and I will be going on Tuesday to work with the resource teachers to discuss their job and responsibilities for the next two years!

I’m off to the grocery store and to the pool at a hotel down the road!! I’ll be in town for a while so write me an e-mail and I will probably get right back to you!!!

Lumela! So last time I wrote on here, I told you that my friend had passed away. He passed away about a month ago and his funeral was this past weekend. This is the second funeral I’ve attended in Lesotho and am still trying to figure out exactly how they work. I’ll start with Friday.

The principal of Sefako Primary School, my closest school, lives in two places. Her husband’s house is my “families” house. No one lives there for most of the year, but it was pretty full this weekend. ‘M’e Mapamolo, the principal, told me that the corps, as the deceased are referred to here, would be arriving around 10AM. Most of the kids from the primary school sat outside of my house to wait as I read a book inside. A little past 10 I heard sirens and thought nothing of it…then I realized that I haven’t heard sirens in one year and ran outside. The Hurst had arrived and was letting everyone know that it was time to go to Ntate Matobacco’s house to welcome him home. I walked with the students to his house and found a male teacher to stand with (male because there are such different roles for men and women here). I told him that I had no clue what to do and asked him not to leave my side. We stood there and watched the older men in the community take the casket out of the Hurst and set it on a table. Then a man walked past me leading a goat by the horns to the casket. Matobacco passed away in a hospital, so a goat was killed to welcome him home. After that, the casket was carried into the house and a prayer was said. People started leaving and my teacher friend told me that it was time to wash our hands. We wash our hands so we don’t bring death back into our homes.

At that point, many of the students had left and I started the exhausting process of making friends with some of the friends and family that had travelled from all over the country to attend the funeral. I can get by in Sesotho, but it is really hard for me to understand some people speak. They speak very fast and run their words together, which is probably very similar to my English. When I am listening to them talk, it probably looks like I have a horrible headache. It takes every ounce of concentration to understand! As we were talking, the process of killing and taking apart 2 goats and a massive cow began. I have seen this before and have even helped, but for some reason this time really got to me. Without going into too much detail, I think it was because they used very dull knives. I started feeling like I was going to hit the floor hard, so I sat down and tried to wait out the cold sweats and dizzy feeling. Once I decided I could walk, I went home and relaxed for an hour. I came back with my Leatherman, which has a really sharp knife. Bringing the knife was one of the best moves I have made in the past year. Men were coming up to me telling me how great it was…and that was before I showed them the other 20 something tools hidden inside! They were amazed.

After getting a little light headed over the cow, I decided that I needed to be a little more adventurous. I decided that I would try some of the parts that I am not used to eating. I learned to take every piece of meat off of a chicken, so why not a cow?? Well. Later in the night a bowl full of the cow’s boiled head and feet came over to where I was sitting with a few of the men. They all got so excited for me to try, but I couldn’t do it. The head started out bigger than a soccer ball and ended up much smaller than my head after they boiled it. I sat there and watch the men eat the skin, cheeks, eyes, brain, and then the bones. There were only teeth and a few other strong bones left after they were finished.

Men and women spent the whole day divided. A few of the men worked on taking apart the cow, while the women cut and peeled and cooked everything. A lot of the men drank a homemade beer most of the day. I was amazed at how well everyone worked together. Because we live so far away, new people were constantly arriving. As soon as they got to the house, they would put down their bags and start working. I’ve never seen a community come together like that. Every person, especially the girls and women, knew exactly what they needed to do. As a guest and a man, I wasn’t expected to do much, so I made my rounds and talked to as many people as possible. It was a great way to get to know more people in the community.

Around 8 a lot of people left to take naps and freshen up. The funeral goes from Friday morning until Saturday evening. Close friends and family spend the whole night Friday singing and speaking about the deceased. I made it until about midnight until I decided to head home. Matobacco was my closest neighbor, so I could hear the singing all night. It made me feel like I was still there even if I was in a semi-coma in my bed.

The second day of the funeral was more formal and a lot more people came. Everyone wore their best outfits, which ranged from sweat pants mixed with lab coats to suits. In Lesotho, Saturdays are reserved for funerals and many people attend two or three funerals each month. The funeral was similar to a funeral in the states. The service was held outside under a tent and I was asked to sit in the only chair in the whole area. Everyone else sat on a backless bench or in the grass. The whole service lasted about 4 hours while friends, family, and colleagues spoke. That was followed by all of his students, friends, and family walking about 10 minutes to the cemetery to bury him. The priest said a few words and then he was lowered into the grave that was dug by some of the men earlier in the day. I’m not exactly sure how it worked, but male relatives threw a few shovels of dirt on the casket in a very specific order. There were a few verbal arguments about the order and I noticed a few people cut in line to throw dirt while others were arguing. After about 10-15 family members, all male, shoveled dirt into the grave, the rest of the men in the community were allowed to shovel dirt. Grown men and his 4-6 grade students literally pulled shovels out of each others hands after each person got their two scoops. It one of the saddest, most interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time. Once he was buried, everyone walked back to his house and ate an amazing meal.

Other interesting things that happened during the funeral…

At one point during the cow butchering, all of the insides were taken out, which were HUGE. I was amazed at how big all of the insides were! I knew that everything, and I mean everything, was eaten, so I wasn’t surprised to see the women carefully cleaning out the stomach and intestines. But then. The men started washing their hand and cleaning their rain boots with the cow poop and the contents of the stomach! At first I thought I was missing something and they were playing a joke, but more people started doing it. Eventually, I think my Leatherman was “cleaned” in cow poop. They were all psyched about it.

I had tried eating the insides of a few animals and decided that it wasn’t for me. I was talking to a few people after dark on Friday night and someone walked by with a plate of food and asked me to take some. I was positive I was eating cow meat. It looked like a good piece, too. It was the heart. All I could do was smile and choke it down. Then I had to eat the other two bites…

So the boiled cow head ended up being a goat or sheep. I’m not sure if I just misunderstood the Sesotho or if they were joking with me. The real cow head made an appearance on Wednesday. I left school after lunch with two of the teachers to help soften the cowhide. When I got there a few men had already started scraping the rancid meat and fat from the hide. They used sticks with razors placed in the end to scrape off all of the nasty stuff. It smelled awful and more flies than you could possibly imagine covered the hide. Just when I thought I was comfortable with the situation, an old man came out with the real boiled cow head and other parts. THEN!! They dumped it right on the skin that had sitting out in the sun since Saturday. They smiled at me and I thought that maybe they wouldn’t eat it…I was wrong. Not only did they eat it, they put a pile of salt on the hide and rubbed each piece of meat on the hide and the salt…I didn’t eat it and they got a huge kick out of that.

In other news…

I cut my hand on a tin can the other day. Really not a big deal, but it was long and deep and started to bleed. For some reason I started to freak out. I started sweating and thought I was going to die. My “mom” was around that day and I ran in and showed her. I just stood there like it didn’t need an explanation and hoped that she would fix it. Like any mother, she looked at me and told me to go put a bandage on it. She looked at me like I was crazy and started laughing. It stopped bleeding in about 5 minutes and is almost healed now. Later that day I told her that I thought I was dying and she laughed even harder…I was a little embarrassed. If my family didn’t think I was a little crazy before, they definitely do now.

On Monday I visited a school and spent the entire day in the 6th grade classroom. I started by just hanging out with a teacher while the students were working on some math problems. We had been talking about different ways to manage his classroom that didn’t involve a stick, which is very popular in Lesotho. As we were talking, I tried to figure out how he was solving long division problems and realized that he wasn’t teaching it correctly. He’s an amazing teacher and is very open to suggestions, so I knew he wouldn’t be upset by me correcting him. I ended up teaching about long division for 2 hours, while modeling good classroom management. I taught it in a few different ways for the students to really understand and for him to learn a few new teaching methods. I checked the students work to see who understood, grouped a few students together and had them peer teach, and had students solve the problems on the chalkboard while explaining their work. It was nice to show him ways to teach that specific class. At the end of the lesson I asked one of his students for the stick that he used to discipline his students and threw it out the window. Without my prompting, he promised his students not to bring the stick back in the classroom for the remaining 3 weeks of the school year! All of his students smiled and a few of them clapped! Their enthusiasm proved that I wasn’t lying about the students not liking corporal punishment.

After that, he asked me if I could teach about HIV/AIDS for a little. We have talked about HIV before and he knew that I was comfortable talking about HIV, which many people are not. We discussed HIV, what it is, how it is transmitted, how students can protect themselves, and other diseases that are transmitted sexually. They were surprised to learn that Lesotho has the 3rd highest rate of HIV in the world. The kids were very knowledgeable, but believed in a lot of myths. When we were finished, I asked the students to write any questions that they were too embarrassed to ask in front of the class and I would answer them after lunch. The questions they had were great! Some of the students were not exactly sure how babies came into this world and why a woman’s stomach grew so much in 9 months, while others asked questions that made it clear that they were sexually active. It was a great mix of questions. Sex and puberty are not thoroughly covered in school and is not talked about at home, so I think it is really important to talk about it in school. I was so proud of the teacher I worked with for openly talking with the students and for being such a good role model for them. After the students left for the day, the teacher told me how excited he was. He told me that each student would go home and talk about what they learned. He had put a lot of thought into how far the information would go and was excited about it. All in all, it was a good day!

In one of the other schools, I am working with the grades 1-3 teachers to differentiate instruction. Some of the teachers are doing an amazing job and are not sure where to go next. Today we started giving students problems that varied in difficulty. I felt like the teacher wanted to give different problems to different groups of students, but wasn’t sure how. She is very excited to continue with this when school begins again in January. The teachers at this school also want help teaching kids how to read. I’m very excited about this!!

Sorry for writing a book! I spent a few minutes here and there typing this, so I hope it makes sense and isn’t too scattered! I won’t be at my schools again until the new school year starts in January. I will be attending a African Library Conference next week, which I’m pretty excited about. After that I will be in Maseru helping to train the new volunteers that are arriving soon!

Also, my mom will be shipping 2,000 books to Lesotho in the beginning of December. If you are interested in donating any books or helping with the cost of the shipping, which is $1,000, please e-mail her!! There is more info about the book drive on the right side of the blog. Thanks a lot!!

Shari Dissen - Dissen1@comcast.net

Hello everyone! We finally had our Healthy Living Camp!! I’m not sure how much I wrote about it, so I’ll tell you about the camp.

My friends Meg, Nicole, and I sent out applications to 10 High Schools in Botha-Bothe. 6 students from each of the schools filled out our applications and we chose one boy and one girl from each school. This past weekend was the first of three Healthy Living Camps for these students. We had the camp at Likileng Lodge, which is right outside of town. The lodge was amazing and had a great conference room that we spent a lot of time in. It also had a great field outside that we played games in. The lodge has a beautiful pool, but the filter wasn’t working so we couldn’t swim.

The kids came on Friday and were a little nervous about coming to a place they have never been before with people they have never met. Some came early and had a chance to explore the area or relax in their room. We were so excited to find out that the kids were all getting to know each other in one of the camper’s rooms! As more kids came, they were invited to come into the room as well.

Throughout the rest of the camp we got to know the kids by playing games and answering some of their many questions. We had discussions about HIV/AIDS, gender equality, and goal setting. The kids created and preformed dramas about gender equality, stigma regarding HIV, multiple sexual partners, and testing for HIV. We were so impressed with the quality of the skits. The ideas they came up with were incredible.

On Saturday afternoon a friend of ours facilitated an HIV transmission discussion. We started the session by showing how HIV is spread using the students and colored pipe cleaners to represent people having multiple partners and unsafe sex. The students were surprised to see exactly how one person can affect so many other people. Once we were finished with that Thabo, our amazing facilitator, asked the students to list activities that are considered high risk, low risk, and no risk. The students were able to discuss why some activities are more risky than others and were really surprised to learn that some activities are more risky than others. Once we finished with that, we broke the students into a boy group and girl group to see if they had any questions about that last session. Without going into too much detail, I was so proud of the boys for their questions. Sex is not talked about very often here and there are so many myths that boys learn about as they get older. I spent about an hour trying to answer some of the questions and talking about the importance of each of them protecting themselves. The conversation really helped me to connect with the boys.

Some other fun activities include showing TV shows that focused on HIV, Jurassic Park, and one episode of Planet Earth! The kids were so excited to watch all of the shows. They were all so new to them. We’re looking forward to showing more Planet Earth and another movie next time…maybe Men in Black??

I spent the week before camp with 9 other volunteers and a whole team of Basotho to plan and prepare for the new education group to arrive in Lesotho. We planned all of their sessions and talked about some of our favorite activities during our training. It was an exhausting week going from planning training to our camp, but it was worth it!

To go back a little further….I spent 2 days visiting 4 schools in Lesotho to help them prepare for their library books to arrive or to help them organize the libraries they have. We helped organize books and showed the teachers how to maintain their libraries. The workshop usually lasts about 2-3 hours and we talk about using the books as resources and model reading aloud to their students, how to read aloud to children, how to take care of books, checking out books, library rules, and how to use the HIV section that we set up as a resource. The teachers were all really excited, which made me even more excited to receive the books that my mom has been collecting! Thanks again to everyone who has been helping her!!!

I will be going back to my village on Wednesday for my friend’s funeral. I’ll be back down in about 10 days for a Library workshop…African Library Project is hosting librarians and project coordinators from a few different countries to discuss things that are working and things that aren’t. I’m really looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll get some ideas to make the libraries that I’ll be creating at my schools better.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Hey everyone! I put pictures on facebook. This link will let you look at the album. There are almost 150 pictures! The internet isn't very good, so I wasn't able to take out all of the doubles and they are not in any order.

Hope everyone is doing well!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2965394&id=9320551&l=5c32b9cfe6

Hey Everyone!!! I sent out this e-mail and thought I would paste it into my blog as well. The e-mail explains it, but I'm working with African Library Projects and am looking for a little help!

*Thank you so much for everyone who as already e-mailed me or contacted my mom. You are all amazing!

Annndddd I asked my mom to put some pictures up of two maps my friends and I painted in a high school in the south of the country. The pictures should be up in a day or two! I will try to write more in the next few days!!

Hello! I wanted to send an update as I approach the 1 year mark in my

Peace Corps Service! It feels like I left Penn State just a few weeks

ago. It is officially the rainy season in Lesotho, which means warm

weather and no more snow! I've been working for the past year as a

resource teacher for 4 primary schools in a very rural village in

Lesotho. I work with about 32 teachers to help them teach their

students in new and exciting ways. We also focus on their classroom

management, material development, and different teaching methods. The

students are taught mostly in English and all of their exams are

written in English. I have been helping the students as they learn to

read, write and speak English. Our biggest problem is there are no

books in my village!! I have applied to African Library Projects, a

non-profit based in New Orleans, to try and create a library in each

of the schools I work with.

I was very recently asked to join the African Library Project team,

which will be traveling around the country giving workshops on how to

set up and run the libraries that volunteers are working with schools

in their villages to develop. Through African Library Project

Lesotho, Peace Corps volunteers received 55,000 books for 54 new

libraries in this past year. We hope to exceed this accomplishment

next year. I currently have three library donation drives started at

home with the help of my mom, a family friend, and a group that

African Libraries has selected to help.

Most of the education volunteers in my group have also applied for

books through the program, however not everyone has a donor to work

with in the States yet; we still need to find 15 donors before

November! As a donor you would be collecting approximately 1,000

books and $500 for the cost(s) of shipping the books. If any of you

have some extra time and are interested in helping one of my friends

with their libraries, please email chris@africanlibraryproject.org

asap; she will give you more information and pair you up with a

volunteers school or community that you can help :) Here is the link

to the webpage if you want to learn more: www.africanlibraryproject.org

There are some really fun and creative ways to undergo this project

and we all would appreciate it so much-especially the children of

Lesotho, who in most cases have never even held a picture book before.

There is no pressure at all, and if you want to help, but are weary

of taking on so much responsibility you could give something as small

as a book or a dollar to my personal libraries (contact my Mom, Shari,

if you are interested 412-480-2191 or dissen1@comcast.net)!

I hope everything is going well! If you want to check out more about

my experience here or see some pictures, visit my blog! And please

feel free to e-mail this to anyone you thing might be interested in

helping!!

Thanks a lot!

Mike

Hellooo! Big news! I learned how to flip my tongue over! I know, I know. It took me a long time to figure it out, but with lots of practice, I can do it. I’m pretty excited about it.

In other news…I have been talking to a Nigerian dentist that works at the hospital in Botha-Bothe. I asked him to come and visit one of my schools to teach about the importance of brushing. He came yesterday with a psychologist, another dentist, and a guy who spoke about mental health. They had those big teeth you see in dentist’s offices and a huge toothbrush and showed the kids how to brush. They also had a set of fake teeth that showed what theirs would look like if they didn’t brush. I didn’t know the other doctors were coming, but they talked about drug abuse, ways to keep mentally and physically healthy, and gave some career guidance. When they were finished talking to the kids, the dentists looked at each kids teeth and recommended that a few of them come to town for him to fix their teeth. He even offered to do it free of charge! It’s kind of expensive to get them to town and back, so I’m looking into ways to get the kids down to see him. I’m pretty excited about it. I went to visit him today and he told me that he would love to visit the other schools I work with, but he would have to find some time to do it. I also visited the local HIV testing center and asked if they would like to visit the schools to teach about sexual health. They said they would love to and we are looking into having them come in January and February! Big day!

Well I am on my way to a workshop with some teachers from town. Hope everyone is well!

Hey everyone! I got my computer fixed! There is a guy who fixes Mac’s in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He fixed it up for $25! I’m going to try my hardest to write a little at my house and upload it on my blog when I’m in town.

Like any job, things happen that make you feel amazing and like you love your job…on the other hand there are days where you want to eat an entire chocolate cake and sleep for a few days. I ate a whole chocolate cake last Saturday. With the help of a few other volunteers, I planned a workshop aimed to help the male teachers in my schools understand how to work with women and treat them better. A few other volunteers came up to help run the workshop and to see how they worked. I gave invitations to each of the five schools and talked with each teacher. A local shop owner cooked about $50 worth of food, which was amazing and a ton of food. We had everything planned, trained a facilitator, and began to wait at 8:45 for the teachers to arrive and the workshop to begin at 9. By 10:00 no teachers had arrived. 11:00 rolled around and Lerato came with the food, but still no teachers. We decided that they weren’t coming and asked 25 high school students to come instead so the local youth group could perform the skits they had come up with and so we could do something with the food. The workshop ended up going really well and the kids learned a ton and really enjoyed it. I actually think it went better with the high school students and not the teachers.

I spent the first two hours of waiting going back and forth between being mad, embarrassed, and defeated. I really didn’t know what to think. I thought I would be really upset with the teachers and would show that when I visited the schools. Instead, I used the opportunity to talk to some of my neighbors and teachers to figure out how to fix the problem that ultimately goes back to my work at the schools. The Monday after the workshop, for example, I showed up still angry only to find 2 teachers at school. I purposely came late because I knew teachers often arrived to school late. I thought about it for a little and realized that attendance is something that I can work on that might have an impact on the school. I talked to a few teachers, principals, and neighbors about the problem and they all told me to have a meeting with the principals. I have on scheduled for Thursday and hopefully we can talk together about encouraging the teachers to work harder.

In other news…the next few months are pretty full for me. I’ll be working with other volunteers to prepare for an amazing camp for high school kids, more workshops (hopefully teachers will come), a fajita night at my friend John’s house, meetings for a few committee’s I’m on, and a welcome party for some of the new volunteers in country.

Soooo things are going pretty well here. I’ll be back in town Saturday and will try to write more! Hope everyone is doing well at home! Miss yaaaaa

Oh! The pictures…The one with the trailers – my friend and Nicole and I ate there in Ficksburg, which is right across the border in SA. We got a huge plate of food for $2! We were a little nervous to eat there, but it ended up being amazing. Some of them are of Lesotho in the spring. It’s starting to look beautiful again! The peach trees all turned purple and the willow trees look so green against the brown hills. And one of them is of kids playing with Lego’s at Nicole’s house. Her aunt sent her Lego’s and she lets the kids play with them when they come over. I had just as much fun with them as the kids did!

Ok so some of these pictures might be on there a few times...the internet is crazy. *The kids/farmers have been burning the grass and mountains in my village for a few weeks. I have no idea why, but it seems sad to me. You can kind of see the fire line in the picture. The other ones are of the snow day we had! I spent all day inside reading and drinking hot chocolate. It was amazinnggg!

Hey everyone! I typed a long blog a few days ago and it didn’t save to my USB!! OOhhh noooo. So here’s an attempt to recap the last month!

I decided to try to stay in my village for a month to get to know everyone better and to save some money. I ended up coming down a few days early, but was still there for a pretty long time!

As it turns out, I’m the worst blogger ever…I might give this a try another time! Hope the pictures work.

Sorry for being the worlds worst blogger! It’s been over a month and I have a ton of stories. I’ll try to go in order and keep things short…

I went with four of my friends to South Africa, Mozambique, and Swaziland. It was incredible! We started our trip by renting a car in South Africa. We heard mixed reviews about the roads and driving in Africa. We decided to take our chances and drive ourselves. I took the second shift driving, which started right before the Mozambique border. It took us forever to get across the maze of customs and visas. When they asked me to write down the engine number, I started sweating and had a guy come and find the number for me. After two hours of that, we drove through the country into the night. Around 1 am I nailed one of the hundreds of potholes on the road and bent the rim of one of our tires. As we were changing the tire, our friend Kristin froze and told us that there was a lion across the dirt road. We all stared at the “lion” with the help of the world’s smallest flashlight. We all stood there and waited for a car to drive by so we could really see it. It ended up being a large dog that had no interest in what we were doing. A few hours later, we safely arrived at our backpackers in Tofo, Mozambique!

Surprisingly, we woke up at 8 the next day and were ready to go to the beach. My friend John and I wanted to explore the area, so we decided to take a quick trip to pick up water and some snacks. We told the girls that we would be back in a few minutes. During our attempt to get water, we met a few guys that lived in the area. They ended up taking us to their homes where we had fresh coconut and met a ton of other people. After that, they took us to a local soccer game, which was amazing. Some guys played barefoot, while others played with cleats. Half of the field was covered in hills and sand, and the other side had patches of grass. It looked impossible to play on. After all of that, John and I returned back to our backpackers with no food and water.

We spent the rest of the week playing soccer with kids on the beach, exploring the area, hanging out with people at our backpackers, and relaxing. Towards the end of the week, we discovered the fish market. We ended up buying a not so fresh fish and 2kg of prawns. Our backpackers cooked it for us and it was pretty good. We tried it again the next day with a group of people we met from Zimbabwe and bought a much more fresh fish. I loved buying fish that were just caught that day…or week. We ate them on top of a sand dune overlooking the ocean. It was incredible!

At the end of the week the girls traveled onto Cape Town and had an amazing time. John and I decided to head back to Lesotho. Swaziland was right on the way, so we decided to spend a night in Swaziland. The country was beautiful, but we decided to move on the next day and tried to get to Pretoria, South Africa in time to get tickets to the Confederation Cup game later that night. We ended up getting in town too late, so we watched it on TV with a bunch of guys we met at our ex-mafia mansion turned backpackers we stayed in.

All in all, our vacation was amazing. We met people from all over the world and got to escape the cold weather in Lesotho for a while. When we got back, we layered up to keep warm and even played in the snow one night!

Since then, I’ve been visiting other volunteers that live in slightly warmer areas than I do. I also had the chance to teach 2 workshops last week for college students working towards becoming teachers. My workshop focused on literacy and reading to students in the classroom. It went really well and I’ll be doing it again this week.

I’ll probably be in town for another week or two for a funeral, two more workshops, and to see a few more friends before I head north.

Well I think that’s all I have for now. I’ll try and post some more later this week. Hope everyone is doing well at home!

Pictures: us painting maps at my friends school (more details below). In the top picture, I was working on the map and my friends puppy came and slept on my leg! He's just a little white spot in the picture, but I love it!

Hello everyone!! I’m in town for the next two weeks planning a camp that will focus on HIV/AIDS education, career planning, goal setting, and sports/teambuilding games. I’m pretty excited about it. I’m also planning a Men as Partners workshop, which will help men and women work together and look at each other as equals, focusing on the men in Lesotho. Big week! I’m also working on some more literacy workshops and will be teaching at the Lesotho College of Education for a few weeks of July. I am a little overwhelmed, but I would rather be really busy than bored!

Library Updates!

I got an e-mail from Biblionef, an organization based in Cape Town, saying that they sent four boxes of children’s books written in Sesotho!!! They are going to be a great start to all four libraries. I can’t wait to get them. All of the teachers and students are getting really excited, too. I am hoping they get here around the same time our winter break is over, which is August 1. The teachers have been working hard to learn how to incorporate literature into their lessons. The kids get so excited to have me or their teacher read to them. I forget that they do not have constant access to books and are not read at home. It would be great to see kids reading on their own by the end of my two years here.

I also got an e-mail from Darien Book Aid, based in Connecticut, and they are collecting books and will be shipping them as soon as possible!

My mom is going to be organizing a book drive through African Library Project in Pittsburgh when school starts again. This is from their website…The African Library Project partners with volunteers in African communities to create small libraries for African schools and villages. The African Library Project makes it easy for U.S. children to recycle their books in order to share the gift of reading with children in Africa. The donated books are collected in the U.S. through book drives organized by volunteer schools and non-profit organizations. The books are shipped directly to the communities who request them. Check out the African Library video…it’s really amazing and has some footage of Lesotho, as well!

http://www.mywebserve.com/webprojects/Test/ALPppt/

A few of my friends surprised me and sent me e-mails saying they collected some books and are sending them to my mom! So my mom will be working on collecting about 3,000 books, but I wanted to try to lighten the load and raise some of the $1,500 needed to ship the books to Africa. I’m hoping that by starting now, I will be able to collect the money in time to ship the boxes in September. I’ve been getting some amazing care packages and people have been asking what they could send to help the schools. If anyone is interested in helping with the cost of shipping instead of sending care packages or school supplies, that would be really helpful. Each box will cost from $20-$40 to send to Lesotho. My mom will be collecting the money along with the books and will be depositing the shipping funds into my fundraising bank account. If you are interested in helping with the cost of shipping, please e-mail me or send money to my home address. I really appreciate all of the help and support I have received in Lesotho.

In other news, several of my friends and I painted a world map at Tsakholo High School where Kelly, a volunteer in my group, teaches. The map looks amazing. Hopefully a few pictures of the map will be in this blog post. It depends how fast the Internet is today! We are hoping to paint maps at schools all over the country. We have scheduled to visit other volunteers when school starts up again in August to paint more maps. Exciting stuff!! The kids really love looking at the maps. The schools here are pretty bland, so a huge, colorful map really helps to brighten up the school. As we painted, the kids asked us where countries were and asked us where we lived on the map. Hopefully it will encourage them to learn more about the world and want to see more of it.

I hope everyone is doing well! E-mail me with some updates about your summers!!

Mike

1006 Deerbrook Lane

Oakdale, PA 15071

michaeldissen@gmail.com

Hey everyone!! I sent all of my pictures and video home to my mom and she put them online! The internet isn't fast enough for me to upload video, so she put it on utube for me. The links are on the left side of my blog. Check them out! There is a tour of my house and tons of pictures. Hope this helps you to picture where I'm living and what I'm doing here!!

Miss everyone!

Hello everyone! After living in Lesotho for 6 months, I thought it was time to explain what I do everyday. I just submitted 11 grants requesting over 4,000 books for 4 schools. Woaah! The next few paragraphs are copied from my grants and changed a little to expand on some of what I do!

I work as a resource teacher for the four most northern schools in the country, which include Ha Sefako Primary School, Liqobong Primary School, Monontsa Primary School, and Mifika-Lisiu Primary School. I have been working very closely with the teachers at each school to improve the way the students are being taught with a focus on literacy. To do this, my friend Meg and I designed a literacy workshop to provide teachers with creative ways to introduce reading, writing, and public speaking into the classroom. Each teacher walked away with several books written in both English and Sesotho, a complete list of Dolch words for their classrooms, educational games, and much more. The following two weeks were spent working with the teachers as they tried new teaching techniques and read to their students for the first time. It was incredible to see the teachers get excited to try very simple ideas when they taught. I walked into one class as a teacher was explaining that students had to put a finger between words so they weren’t 5 inches apart and words weren’t running together. A few teachers were really excited to play Bingo with their students. They were even more excited when I told them that they could change they game in any way they wanted.

During the six weeks between Easter and our winter break, I will be working with teachers from grades 1-3 to create a phonics program that another volunteer has been working on in her school. Students are learning that each letter has a name, sound, and can create a word with the help of other letters. The teachers think I’m crazy and that I’m having their students make nonsense sounds, but I showed them where I was headed and they like the idea. Since the workshop, they have started to trust me a lot more and believe me when I have new ideas.

Students in grade 3 and 4 replied to pen pals from Costa Mesa, California. I set up pen pals with a friend of mine that I interned with in State College. The kids here were so excited to learn about California and write back to their new friends. The letters they wrote were unbelievable. Their teachers spent days reading letters to their students and helping them write back. For the students, it was their first time having someone helping them read and helping them create a letter. In response to their remarkable writing, I am working with teachers in grades 4-7 to schedule a time for creative writing in their week.

The same students are also learning about community service and how to plan, implement, and analyze projects. They will be working in their villages in June and July and reporting back once school begins again in August. None of the teachers understand why the project is important or why I want to do it, but the agreed to let me teach about community service and give an assignment. I told them that I would grade it and everything as long as they watched me teach the lesson.

I’ve also been working with teachers teaching math, science, and health. Each school has a pretty well stocked math and science kit, so I’ve been encouraging teachers to use them. I’ve done a lot of explaining and modeling so the teachers understand how each object is used. I made sure all of the teachers understood how dangerous some of the chemicals in the science kits could be and asked them to use them for the first time when I was visiting their classroom. For some reason, the chemicals have been one of the more interesting items for the teachers and they have used them as zit cream, to unclog whiteout, and to demonstrate soluble and insoluble liquids. Nothing has blown up yet and everyone’s skin seems to be ok, so I guess things worked out!

As for health…I think it will be an ongoing battle over the next two years. I am trying to teach teachers about HIV/AIDS and try to talk about it often so they are more comfortable talking about it with their students. Teachers are slowly starting to ask questions and we are clearing up some of the many myths that they have heard over the years.

I haven’t been good about answering the many questions that I’ve received, so I’ll try to answer some of them here! This might end up being a jumble of ideas!

Students walk anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours to school. The youngest ones wait for older students to walk by their homes and they walk with them to school everyday. Grades 1-3 get out of school 2 hours earlier than the older students and they also wait until the older students get out of school to walk with them. I asked a teacher how students know when to go to school, and he told me that they use the sun. They also have radios, which announce the time pretty often. If they don’t use either of those methods, they wait for the high school students to walk by and then leave. All of the students are pretty loud when they walk to school, so I imagine they just wait for a group of kids in a uniform to walk past. The teacher also said that on cloudy days most kids are late for school. He said that the clouds made it harder for them to figure out the time, so they just leave when they are ready!

Students in all four of my schools wear uniforms. As far as I can tell, they each have one sweater and pair of pants. They wear them all week and wash them on Friday after school. I brought a sewing kit to school a few times to sew torn clothing, but it’s been too cold lately to hold a needle. A friend of mine donated an awesome sewing kit and the teachers are all amazed that I can sew. As soon as it warms up again, I am going to dedicate a week or two to fixing clothes. Now that the kids know me a little better, it isn’t as weird.

To heat my house, I have a heater that runs off of my gas tank. It has a little flame that is always lit and I’m not exactly sure how to work it. I thought I had it figured out and was sitting smugly waiting for it to heat up and then a big ball of fire exploded out of it…nothing too big, similar to waiting just a second too long to light the grill. Then I noticed that the bottom of it was on fire. I’m still not sure if it is supposed to be on fire or if I messed up. I blew it out and haven’t tried to light it since. Plenty of layers are keeping me pretty warm at night! I’m typing on Phil’s computer and I’m in shorts and a t-shirt. I don’t mind the cold…well I do, but it’s almost 65 degrees today and was a few degrees below 50 in my house a few nights ago.

A few questions have come through about the teachers. Most of my schools have about 8 teachers. Usually about half of them are actually paid and others are volunteers. I’m not entirely sure how that works. They have a syllabus that they follow that has been supplied by the Ministry of Education (reminds me of Harry Potter!). They do follow the syllabus, but are not always sure how to teach some things, so they skip them. Usually it is just a topic or two, but I noticed that art has been skipped completely. One of my other self given jobs has been to figure out what is being skipped, why they aren’t teaching it, and working with them to present it to their students. On those days, I go home and sleep for a while! It’s exhausting.

I spent 2 hours of yesterday talking with standard 7 students in my farthest school about HIV/AIDS and sex. It was amazing how much they didn’t know and how much more they had wrong. We talked about HIV prevention, how to get it, and what it is. We also talked about other STD’s, sex, where to get condoms, how to say no to aggressive men, and tons of other stuff. I let some of the teachers sit in on our discussion for the first half hour. They were really interested and would occasionally ask each other questions and ask me to explain more. One example is boys and girls “practicing” with each other. This is done with children of the same sex. Most people I have talked to, including most of the teachers and students, thought that HIV and other STD’s could only be transmitted through male/female sex. Boys also practice with farm animals. We talked about that a little, too, but I had a hard time convincing them that it was dirty.

When I felt like I said all that I wanted, I asked the teachers to leave and gave the kids time to ask questions. It took about 10 seconds of awkward silence for students to start mumbling questions. After that, it was nonstop questions for the next 90 minutes! I left glowing. The kids stayed in their classrooms talking about everything we had discussed. I put a box in the room for students to write any question they had and I would answer it next time I visited the school. I am also going to take any student wanting to test for HIV/AIDS to the local clinic in the next few weeks! I’m pretty excited 

After that, I left with the principal of the school for the hour walk to the dirt road to catch a taxi. Along the way, we visited the local chief and a few other homes. A few men asked me to come back next week to help slaughter a pig. I might go...Our last visit was to a friend’s house. He invited us into his home and told us that he would be back. A few minutes later, he returned with a bowl of meet and told us that he killed a pig earlier in the day. I didn’t want to be rude, so I took a piece of meat and put it in my mouth. I was sure it was meat. It had the right texture, shape, smell, everything. A few seconds later, I realized that I was chewing on the liver. Then I realized that I was out of water. I gagged for a second and then forced it down. He smiled and was pretty pleased, I think offering me the liver was a huge compliment. I waited for my friend to eat more and then felt like I should take another piece. Again, I was sure it was meat. I double checked. As I began to chew, I realized it was the heart. I stopped eating the meat after that! When I was finished, he showed me the rest of the pig. It was about 4:00 and he had killed the pig early in the morning. By the time I left, he had only taken out the insides and the rest of the pig was lying on the ground covered in flies. Blah.

Well I am off to Maseru to meet with several people in the Peace Corps office. I'll be able to check my e-mail tomorrow morning. Miss everyone!

Durban story! So we discovered the night life pretty quickly and had a great time meeting new people and visiting new bars. When we asked people where to go, they assumed we wanted to go to upper class, white bars. We didn't mind checking out a few, but the locals were a ton of fun to hangout with. We asked a taxi driver to take us to a fun bar. It was late in the night and we weren't too choosy, we just wanted to have a good time. We all had nice beach clothes on, but as Peace Corps volunteers, we weren't dressed too well. When we got to the bar, we stood in line for about 10 minutes and started talking to the bouncer. After a minute or two, he looked at my shoes, which were sandals, and told us we couldn't come in. He said that I wasn't dressed well and that slops weren't allowed in this bar. It was toward the end of the night, so I told him what I thought and we left. As it turns out, we couldn't get into several bars because of my "slops." It is a pretty funny story now, but I was not happy at the time.

I’m back from Durban! 9 of my friends and I spent the last week in Durban, South Africa. We had an amazing time exploring that part of the country!!! So we started last Thursday and took a 6 hour bus ride to Durban. 5 of us traveled together to make traveling easer. We had intended on getting to Durban early to get to our hostel, check things out, and get a bite to eat. Instead, we got there just as the sun was setting and ended up in one of the three “don’t go there” areas on the map. We wanted to go to a small town called Umzumbe for the first night and then head back up to Durban for the rest of our vacation. We missed the last bus to Umzumbe and our amazing bus driver drove us around for a while until we found 2 taxis to take us to a different hostel. Things ended up working out, so it wasn’t too bad.

The next day, the five of us went to the beach, which was amazing. I felt like I was back in America. There was a board walk with a ton of little shops and places to eat, a small amusement park, and a great beach. We figured out the hard way that the beach was about an hour walk from where we were staying, but it gave us a chance to meet some people and figure out where things were.

It was either rainy or cold for two or three days, so we went to “the biggest mall in the southern hemisphere.” It was big, but I’m not sure if it was the biggest. I ate about 4 meals at the mall, including chicken pot pie and sushi. They were both amazing! They also had beer on tap! Having cold beer on tap was definitely a change from living in Lesotho.

The mall was pretty big, so I ended up buying a long sleeved t-shirt, a hookah, and an Obama t-shirt. The people in my village always tell me not to fear the black man and ask me if I like black people. They are also convinced that only white people live in America. I figure the t-shirt will spark some conversation!

To all of my first graders, now second graders! I have not seen a lion yet, but I have seen baboons, ostriches, and impalas. It was really cool! I wasn’t able to take a picture, but I will have my camera ready next time!!

So now I’m back in Lesotho and am getting ready to go back to my village. I’m staying in the camp town until Saturday or Sunday to get some work done. I have 6 weeks of school until winter break. My goals from now until then are to get all of the paperwork for my upcoming projects done. Some of the projects include…creating libraries in 3 schools (my mom will be in charge of that on the American side), adding 3 classrooms onto one of the schools that I work with (I’m going to need some help with that, but will post more in a month or two), and I want to have a camp in October for high school students to learn about HIV/AIDS, career counseling, and to play a ton of games for kids. I’m pretty excited about all of these and hope they end up working out.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking what kind of things I need and what kind of help the schools need. I’ll start with the schools.

I’ve been working with preschools that are next to each of the primary schools that I work with. Unlike the primary schools, the preschools are not given much, or any, financial help or school supplies. I would love to bring in Lego’s, art supplies (a lot), and educational games. I’m working with them on creating educational games out of things that can be found in many homes here. I’m hoping to have a workshop for each school between now and June, but we’ll see!

For the primary schools, I am working on creating 3 libraries. I have to fill out the paperwork and might not have it done until schools are out, but I definitely want to import roughly 3,000 books. My mom is going to be in charge of collecting the books and shipping them to New Orleans through the African Libraries Project. The whole thing will cost around $1,800, which we will also be raising. If you are interested in helping financially or donating any books, e-mail me! I’m really looking for books for K-3. The kids aren’t strong readers and are working on basic reading skills, so easy readers, leveled readers, and books with a lot of repetition would be great. Picture books and simple educational books would be great, too. So e-mail me if you want to talk more about this!! I could always use more books, but 1,000 per school is the minimum and it costs roughly $600 per school.

Another project that I’m working on is to add onto one of my schools. I still have a ton of work to do for this one, but the total cost should be around $4,000. We’ll talk more about this in a few months!!!

A few people have been asking what kind of things I need, so I made a list!! I would love things to make an easy dinner, pasta in a bag or soup in a bag. The just add water kind of stuff! I’ve gotten a few packages of chicken, which are great and easy. M&M’s and Hershey kisses would be amazing, too!! I tend to wake up a little late for school and have been running out the door with a cereal bar in my hand. I haven’t been able to find them here, so they would be helpful. All of the packages that I’ve received so far are great. Really anything that you think I would like would be perfect.

Well that was a jumble of information! I hope everyone is doing well. I will be able to check my e-mail on and off for the next 6 weeks and then should have more regular access over winter break! I might write more about Durban tomorrow or Sunday before I go back to my village!

Hi! I'm taking a short vacation at the beach in Durban, South Africa. We are staying at a lodge called the Hippo Hide.

Here is the link to the lodge:

www.hippohide.co.za/English/aboutus.asp.

If you would like to call me while I'm here, my South Africa Number is:

011.278.34831098.

You should be able to reach me at this number through Wednesday and remember the time difference is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

I'll try to update my blog again when I return to Lesotho.

Until then Happy Easter!

These pictures are of a hike that I took to see cave paintings and the family that I hung out with all day. The other pictures are of some of the students I work with. The pictures appear as a ton of jumbled up letters before I hit submit, so I don't know what order they are in. Sorry!!!!!!

These pictures are of a preschool that I have been working with. They really don't have any supplies, so I am trying to get some art supplies to them. In the one picture, they are eating out of one bowl with their hands. Another picture is people seperating the wheat from the chaf. They used the wind to seperate them. It was pretty cool!

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I have typed a decent blog. I haven’t been in town lately and have not had much time to get online. Sorry if I haven’t replied to any e-mails for a while!! I’ve been in my village for 3 weeks and have really been enjoying it. My laptop isn’t working so well, so some of this is handwritten and I typed it when I had a chance.

3-9-09

I’ll start with a story…I just finished brushing my teeth and still laugh because I stand on my “front porch” and spit to the right of my house. It is really convenient, really! After I rinsed my toothbrush, I flicked the water off like a priest in church. It made me laugh for a few minutes because I felt like I was blessing the grass. As I’m typing this, it’s about 2 weeks later and I still laugh every time I brush!

As I wrote this part of the blog, I was sitting in my long underwear, hoodie, and thick wool socks writing by candle light. The temperature keeps getting very cold and then getting hot again the next day. I can’t keep up! It is starting to get darker much earlier than when I first arrived in Lesotho. I start lighting candles around 5:30 so I can see while I make dinner and read before I go to bed. I am starting to enjoy living in a hut with a grass roof, lighting candles to see, and even walking to school sometimes. Little things, like blessing my grass, make me laugh. My hut is a mess, but most of the rooms that I have lived in have had clothes, papers, books, and everything else scattered around. The only difference is that my dirty and clean clothes, dirty dishes, all of my food, and everything else I have are scattered throughout one tiny room. I decided that I had to clean up a little bit the other day and found a spider that I swore was a scorpion for a few minutes. I chased it around, keeping a pretty good distance between us, and decided that it was just one of those spiders that is better off squished about 100 feet from my house.

**

This past week has been incredible! I went to town on Thursday (March 5) after school to prepare for the literacy workshop that I think I talked about in another blog post. I made some really cool handouts so the teachers had something to help them remember all of the information we covered. My friends and I also celebrated Meg’s 23rd birthday! It was a great time and great to see some of the people I haven’t seen in a while. We had an 80’s themed party…if pictures surface, Tom Cruise was not there in his Risky Business outfit  On Sunday, Meg came back to Ha Sefako with Phil and me to visit some of the college students she works with and to do the workshop with me.

The workshop went really well! 11/12 teachers showed up and we only started about 30 minutes late, which are both AMAZING! Because of the terrible roads and the inconsistent transportation, teachers usually start arriving late. I think they knew that I meant business when I told then that we were starting promptly at 10. The workshop ended around 1, which was longer that I had expected, but could have lasted much, much longer. We talked about reading aloud to students, students reading and learning to read, speaking out loud, and writing. We taught them some games to help the students learn because most of the time, they are just asked to copy words from the board. We taught them sight word bingo, which is bingo with very common and simple words in each box. When the first teacher got bingo, we gave her candy and the teachers went crazy! They love candy and playing little games like this. I’m hoping they play bingo with their kids! The teachers seemed excited about the workshop and even checked books out of the one library in the area.

The workshop was on a Friday, so I told teachers that I expected to see them trying some of the ideas the following week in their classes. I made sure to spend a significant amount of time in each of the teachers classes to observe and help where I could. I was really excited to see that teachers were trying to incorporate some of the new ideas into their teaching. One teacher even asked me to observe her “Right now!” I went in to find that she was reading with her students and having them read. She experimented with some new ideas and was very proud of herself. Her students spent about 40 minutes reading 3 small sentences, but it was definitely a start. Once she finished, she looked up at me and said, “See Thabang, my students can read.” I just smiled.

Earlier this week, I woke up with a headache and stomach ache, so I decided to go to the school next to my house instead of my farthest, which is 20 minute bus ride and 1 hour hike up a mountain. On my way to the school, I stopped at the preschool to introduce myself and give them some books. I had such a great time there! The teacher spoke almost no English, so I tried my best to talk to her in Sesotho. I ended up getting pretty far, but I know it was very broken Sesotho. There were about 23 kids and they all just stood in the room looking at me with huge eyes. The teacher asked them to sing and dance for me, which I loved! Once they realized that I was enjoying it, the kids started singing louder and getting into the dancing. On my way out, I realized that it was lunch time, so I waited around to see what their eating situation was. Each of the students brought a small container of either papa (ground up corn meal that makes a very stiff mashed potato looking thing), a small amount of meat, potatoes, or some other type of vegetable. The teacher took 4 medium sized containers and put a ton of papa and a mixture of other stuff inside. Then 6 kids crowded around each bowl and dug in with their hands. The kids were between 2-6 and had more boogers and funky stuff going on than I’ll write about, but none of them washed their hands. So to see them dig in, lick their hands clean, and go for more was a lot. I took pictures…hopefully they will load! I thought the worst was over, but when they finished, it was time to get a drink and clean up. The teacher had a basin full of water. The kids each washed their hands, face, even their hair in some cases, and then took scoops of water with their hands to drink! I might buy spoons and cups next time I’m in town!!

Today, March 20, is my free day. I decided to visit the preschool and the primary school closest to my house in the morning. I brought a book that a volunteer had translated into Sesotho and asked the teacher to read it to her class. She didn’t really want to, but I showed her what to do and the kids loved it! I’m going to try to stop by once or twice a week. After I left, I decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and sat outside and finished my 13th book. I ran out of books in my village (will get more next weekend in town) so I’m reading the whole Chronicles of Narnia. I feel like I’m 12, but it’s a good read. I had my shirt off and was getting some sun when I realized that this was just like the beach and that I had 2 avocados in my hut. I threw on my Hilton Head shirt (then took it off), made guacamole, turned on my iPod and pretended I was at the beach. It was sooo nice! Much needed getaway!

Well I hope everyone is doing well. I’m in town today and will be until around April 8 (I think) when I go to South Africa! So give me a call! I’ll post my South African phone number closer to when I leave.

I should be able to check e-mail pretty often in the next few weeks and can get texts, too!

Hey everyone! I'm in town for the weekend! Give me a call...I would love to hear from you!

I'll try to write a better post tomorrow, but for now...

I'm in town working on the Literacy Workshop that I will be having next Friday. I wrote down a list of things that I could help with in the schools, and most of the areas that could use help would be fixed if the students spoke or understood English better. I have a handout started, but I am hoping to find some information on line for people trying to improve literacy in developing countries. I found some great resources in a local library, but the ideas will be hard to implement without some of the supplies needed.

So I'm pretty excited for the workshop. If things go the way I hope, we can have kids learning to read in the next few weeks!!

My mouse. I put rocks over the holes and haven't found any mouse poop in about a week!! Sometimes I hear them under my floor, but I can handle that!

I am down to my last 2 or 3 pairs of underwear, so I decided to do laundry yesterday. It was a beautiful day, so I thought my clothes would dry on the line in no time. I spent an hour washing my clothes by hand...I'm still not sure if they are clean! The water that I use is rain water, so there is some mosquito larvae, dead bees, and other funk in the water. My clothes aren't too dirty, but I'm hoping I got the sweat out of them!! Anyway, I thought the day would stay nice and my clothes would dry...an hour later it started to storm! I brought all of my clothes inside and layed them over anything I could find in my house. When I got up this morning, my clothes were still pretty wet. I'm hoping they will be dry and not mildewy on Sunday!

Well that's all I have for now! Hope to hear from some of you soon!!!

P.S. I haven't been able to get on facebook. I'm reading the messages through g-mail, but can't respond or look at them on facebook! I'll try again tomorrow!!

The pictures I added are of my house and town. When I say I come to town, I leave my small village and come to the place in the picture. I'll try to take more pictures, but didn't want people to notice the camera!!

Hey everyone! I’m sitting in a double story rondoval, a grass roofed hut, typing to everyone. I have to keep my computer connected to the power because my battery won’t charge! I’m not really sure what’s going on. Anyway, about 8 volunteers are here with around 20 high school students for Diversity Camp. This weekend, the students learned about people who are different than most people living in their village. We had gay and lesbian speakers, a person who is HIV positive, a Taiwanese woman, and people to test and teach about HIV/AIDS. The kids seemed really engaged and interested in what was going on. I think it would be great to do something very similar in my village!

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog, so I’ll catch everyone up on the past few weeks! Last Wednesday one of my schools hosted Cultural Day. The day was a chance for people to sing and dance to traditional music and get together as a community. Women sold some of the arts and crafts they made, which was a great way to bring some money into the community. Some of the profits benefited the orphans in the community! It was really cool to see some of the traditional dancing. I’m going to try to put pictures up and even video on youtube! We also got to see girls coming back from initiation school. I’m not sure how much I can really talk about it…it’s very secretive, but the school is where they learn how to be a man or woman. When the girls came back, they wore beaded masks and were topless. They had painted their chests white and were parading through villages to show the men that they had become women. Some of the girls will go back to school, but many will not.

On Friday, my schools had a welcome party for me! All of the teachers came and we had a great time! It was a really nice thing for the teachers to do. We ate, danced, and had a great time!

Well I have to go! I'll be back in town in 2 weeks!!

Hey everyone! Sorry for the quick and choppy update! I haven't been able to charge my laptop and it is expensive to be online long enough to type a decent blog! So I'm in town for a camp for some high school students. I will have service until sunday.

Things are going pretty well. It turns out, I have 2 mice. I took out my carpet and discovered that there was a ton of dirt/dust under it. No wonder my allergies are terrible! I also found 2 small holes that the mice get in. I filled them with dirt and put a rock on top. I can hear them trying to get in at night, but they haven't been able to! Yay!

Well I have to run! I am going to try to post a real blog entry and maybe a video of my house in 2 weeks!

Miss everyone!

First! Thanks for the birthday messages! I got a ton on facebook, some e-mails, and some here. It made my day!

Dad - will you update my address on the side?

Kelly - things are great! I am having a wonderful time. I have not seen a lion, but I will keep an eye out! if you e-mail me at michaeldissen@gmail.com i will be able to write you more often!

I just spent the past two hours washing my t-shirts and underwear. I am exhausted. Last time I hand washed my clothes, which was about 3 weeks ago, I realized that I should probably wear things for a few days before throwing them in the basket. I am not so proud of this, but I when I got dressed Sunday morning…well let’s just say I’m still wearing the entire outfit and it is Wednesday. Bathing is also a hassle because it takes about half of one of my 2 water buckets to bate. I also get water everywhere and don’t usually get all of the soap off. So I’m down to bathing once a week. Right now it is summer, so I am really pushing it with my not bathing or changing, but once it starts to get cold, things will be great!

Earlier this week, a teacher at one of my schools (I am a resource for 4 schools) asked me to help him teach science. He was not sure how to teach without the necessary materials. After a little searching, I found the school’s math and science kits. The kits, which are really just a metal cabinet, there are all kinds of great materials to help teach math and science. When I found it, I felt like a kid on Christmas, or Hanukkah Sally! With the help of another teacher, I unwrapped everything in the cabinet. Everything was in a box and wrapped in brown paper. I got so excited to unwrap everything and explain to the teacher how to use it. He was so excited to learn how to use most of the objects that I ran to get other teachers to spread the joy!! Most of the teachers were completely overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do when I handed them a teaching clock, a bag of unifix cubes, or some other random teaching aid. I had just finished observing each of the teachers, so I knew what they were teaching, especially in math and science. Each teacher left the room knowing how to use or teach with at least 2 objects and all promised to teach with them before I came back the following Tuesday. I am so excited to see how it went! The teachers have been drawing abacuses on the board and the kids just didn’t understand what an abacus was. I really think they will start to get it with the help of all of the new supplies!

Also. I have a mouse. It is now official that I have a small, golf ball sized, brown mouse living in my grass roofed hut. He kept me up all night Monday, rummaging through anything that made noise. Every time I shined my light on him, he would disappear! Last night I found the little thing. We had a staring contest and I haven’t seen him since. I’m not embarrassed to say that I told the mouse that if he peed or pooped on my counter or anything else in my house, I would get a mousetrap. I think he knew I meant business! The spiders…they are another story. No matter how many times I tell them to stay out of my bed, I wake up with one staring at me.

Last piece of business. I know sooo many people want to come and visit me, so you should probably make some travel arrangements now! I would LOVE anyone to come visit! I can’t find the school schedule right now, but I have a rough idea. You can come any time, but there are definitely more convenient times to come and also times that might be more fun. Our school year runs from January to roughly November. Our winter break is June and July. So November and December would be a great time to come and June or July would be amazing. If you want to come as soon as July, my friends and I are planning a trip to Swaziland and Mozambique around the last 2 weeks of July. It would be AMAZING if you flew into Mozambique, hit the beach for a little, and then drove back to Lesotho with me and stayed for a week or so!! If you wanted to come when we were in school, it wouldn’t be as exciting, but we could work things out!! Plan now and let me know! I would be sooooo excited!

As always, hope everyone is well at home! E-mail me some updates!! I don’t think I’ll be back in town until the 21st. We’ll see though.

It rained a lot this week, which dropped the temperature to about 58 degrees. My hut has a grass roof, so it didn’t keep the cold out very well. The only plus side is that the cabinet that holds all of my food – dried, canned, and fresh – acted as a refrigerator. For the first time ever, I didn’t gag and force down warm yogurt! I am still getting used to warm cheese, eggs, yogurt, and everything else that really should be refrigerated.

ADDRESS UPDATE! I am going to start using my friends PO box because it is closer to my village and takes much less time to receive a package or letter. Anything that has been sent to my old address will automatically be forwarded to me! So that is fine! Either one will work!!

Mike Dissen

Ed Office

P.O. Box 230

Botha, Bothe 400

LESOTHO, Southern Africa

Also, I am in town today! I HAVE SERVICE!! So if anyone is interested in calling, my phone should work until about 2AM, your time. I will not have service after that though! Hope to hear from you soon.

ANNNNDD HIIII to everyone at Gray’s Woods! Miss you all!

Ok. so there are pictures below. In a very random order, they are...first grade sudents practing writing "dog," "cat," and "cow" on the floor in chalk. I was so excited to see the teacher create ways to teach without pencils and paper! Others are of my farthest school. It is about 2 hours away, up a mountain. The kids are standing in line getting lunch. That day was papa (ground up corn that makes a kind of dough?) and beans. Uhhhh other pictures are of when Phil and I hiked the mountain behind our house. The goats go up there every day to eat grass. I'm not sure why they don't eat grass about 2,000 Feet below??? I took a serious nap after that hike! Oh! The group picture is when we swore in as volunteers! We are with the director of Peace Corps Lesotho!

I just got done taking a much needed bucket bath and figured I should update everyone on my first week in my new house! I have only been here for one week and already have a few good stories. My week began when Phil and I left the comforts of the training center, which has running water and good food, to come to our new homes. After asking which of the many taxi’s (really they are big 15 passenger vans) would take us to our village, we got on a bus and left after about 10 minutes of waiting. We were very excited because the taxi’s wait until they are full to leave. We only had to wait for one more passenger! About an hour into the ride, I counted about 18 people in the van. I thought this was a good number, considering the fan holds about 15 people. As we rounded the bend, I noticed a group of 4 people standing on the side of the road. I figured we would pass them and another taxi would pick them up. Nope! We pulled over and they crammed into the van. Later in the trip we picked up even more people. I think we had about 23 people in the van at one point. At our last stop, the guy who collects our money and lets people in and out of the taxi got out and closed the door. I thought we were going to leave without him when he climbed on the back of the car, smacked the window and we took off! He stood on the back for a good half hour before Phil and I got off the bus!

I think I wrote a little about our trip to South Africa. We ended up making it back safely and even caught a taxi to take us back! After taking roughly 17,618 steps (I tried out my pedometer) I came back and went right to bed. I don’t think we will be making many trips to South Africa. We were very excited because they have a Super Spar, which is supposed to be the “super” version of their amazing grocery store. Phil and I didn’t think it was so super. We weren’t able to get many things that we couldn’t find in Lesotho. I think we will stick to the 2.5 hour bus ride and visit our friends while grocery shopping.

On Wednesday, Phil and I decided to hike the mountain behind my house. It was beautiful! It took us about 2 hours to get to the top and he said we were at about 8,000ft (he has a GPS). I slept a little later than I should have, so when Phil got to my house I was still unconscious. I was about to leave the house in shorts and a t-shirt when he encouraged me to dress for cold weather. I am so happy I went with his advice because when we got to the top, it must have been 55-60 degrees. I had long sleeves and a jacket on and I was still freezing! I was exhausted after our hike and accidentally slept for about 3 hours after. Many of the boys here (heard boys) take their animals to the mountain to graze every day. They climb the mountain in sandals or rain boots like it is nothing! I’m still exhausted and it has been a few days!

2 other volunteers, Nicole and Melody, came to visit us for the weekend. I figured I should probably finish cleaning and moving in before they came so I spent some time Friday getting my house organized. I had a huge bag of garbage that I needed to deal with. In Lesotho, they burn garbage, which is not so great for the environment, but it is what it is. So I took my garbage, a box of matches, and my paraffin out back to figure out what to do. I thought a little paraffin might speed up the process! I dumped a cup or so on top of the bag, lit it, and tossed it into the barrel that was in the garbage pit. I was pretty proud of myself for getting it in the barrel. A few seconds later the flame got huge and I noticed that the flaming barrel was leaning against a hill of dried grass. Seconds later the wall of grass behind the barrel went up in flames. All I could do was stand there and mumble some choice words…which turned to saying the same words much louder. I looked around and realized that I was completely alone in Lesotho for the first time EVER! Forgetting everything I learned in my 22 years of life, I picked up a piece of cardboard and started fanning the fire. I quickly realized that I was just making it much worse, I went back to talking to myself. Eventually I got a bucket of water and dumped it allover myself first and then on the fire. I left the situation wet, sweating, and with considerably less arm hair on my right arm. So next time I need to dispose of my garbage, I think I will just leave it unburned in the garbage barrel.

Care Package Ideas:

• Pictures! I have a few that are decorating my closet doors.

• Cross word puzzles. My friends and I here have been making them and sending them to each other. The clues can be anything! If you make me one, I’ll send one back!

• Protein bars, crackers and cereal bars. Really anything to eat on the run. I will not be cooking any meat while I am in Lesotho, so I will be eating a lot of beans, lentils, peanut butter, and tuna.

• Candy! Chocolate sends well…anything really!

• Tuna/Chicken packets. Another volunteer told me that they come in pouches, which are lighter than cans.

• Books – I’m on my 5th book already! I’m open to anything!

• Dried fruits and nuts. It will be hard to find fruits during some seasons and nuts can be expensive here.

• Pretzels – can’t find them anywhere! Anything to snack on!

• Lighter. I am flying through matches to light my stove and lamp.

• Duct tape – can’t find any good tape in Lesotho.

• Drink mix. Those crystal light water bottle mixes and Gatorade. It is really easy to get dehydrated and I haven’t been able to find Gatorade mix here.

• Mix CD’s. My Ipod is my best friend at night and when I am cleaning! A mix full of new songs or just good ones would be awesome!

• Hand sanitizer

These are all just ideas of some of the things I need. I really don’t need a lot of anything, just a little mix! Even just one thing or a letter would be great! I would love to get some updates so I know what is going on at home. Not having cell phone service is killing me! If you do decide to send something, put little things in a small container. I could always use an extra container to put things in!

Oh, so mail takes a minimum of 3 weeks to get here. It really takes a long time. I also live very far away from where it will be delivered, so it might take a while for me to get the package/letter.

+++++

This past week went really well, too. I met with the principals from all 4 of the schools I will be working with. I came in with a typed agenda for each of them and a survey for each of their teachers. They were blown away! I also met with 15 of the 32 teachers I will be a resource for. They were very excited to meet with me and seem like an amazing group of teachers.

My principals asked me to wait until next week to visit their schools, so on Thursday I decided to walk to the local clinic. I left around 10:20 and got there around 12:30. It was about 10,000 steps (I wore my pedometer!). When I got there I started talking with a woman and told her about my job in the village and everything. After hearing how long it took me to get there, she belly laughed and told me that all of the nurses and doctors were out of town! She told me to try back in 2 weeks. I slept for about 12 hours that night!

Oh, so my phone does not work even a little in my village. And texts that I have not read delete themselves after 3 days. So I will write on my blog when I will be in a village that has service. I HAVE SERVICE TODAYYY!!!! I will have it until about 6AM Sunday (Pittsburgh time). 011-266-591-66881 (I think that is right!)

Hope everyone is doing well! I got some cards in the mail yesterday and it made my week! Thanks

My friend and neighbor Phil and I took a day trip to the next town over, which happens to be in South Africa. We planned on crossing the border to shop at a huge grocery store to get some cleaning supplies (with heavy bleach), food, and other stuff to get my house ready. We left this morning at 7, hoping to be in Qwa Qwa by 8, if not earlier. Usually there is a bus that takes people to the border, so we figured we would walk until the bus passed us. We walked for about 2.5 hours when the bus finally got to us. We assumed we were close, so we just kept walking. While we walked, we passed 2 of the schools where I’ll teach. The first was about 1-hour away and the next was at least 1-hour further! We saw the village that we think the school is in, but couldn't see the school because of how high the village was. I don't know how I am going to feel about rock climbing at 8AM!

I hope everyone is doing well at home! I will be visiting a larger town next weekend to get some food and will try to write a more interesting post then!

A little history lesson on QwaQwa from Wikipedia:

QwaQwa was a Bantustan, or homeland, in the eastern part of South Africa. It encompassed a very small region of 655 square kilometers (253 sq mi) in the east of the former South African province of Orange Free State, bordering Lesotho. Its capital was Phuthaditjhaba. It was the designated homeland of more than 180,000 Sesotho-speaking Basotho people.

QwaQwa means whiter than white, from the Sesotho language, referring to the many sandstone hills of the Drakensberg mountains in which the area is situated. In Afrikaans it was known as Witsieshoek, after the name of a farm.

Two clans lived in the region, the Bakoena and the Batlokoa. In 1969, according to Franc M.A. Van Diest at, they were united and the area was named KwaKwa. In the same year, Van Diest said, the name was changed to QwaQwa to avoid an ethnic identification.

On 1 November 1974 QwaQwa was granted "self government". On 27 April 1994 it was reunited with South Africa, together with the nine other homelands. The Chief Minister of QwaQwa throughout its period of self government was Kenneth Mopeli. It is now part of the Free State province.

Mike

Happy New Year! I posted a few pictures below, but couldn't type anything to tell you what was going on! The pictures are all of my new house and village. I have the most amazing view from my front door! All around me are huge mountains. The first picture, which just looks like a mistake, is a picture of one small section of one of my shelves. If you look closely, you will see around 15 spiders near the top. That is just a sample of the mass murder that went on in my hut a week ago. I have never seen more spiders in one room!! The rest of the pictures are of my house, my toilet (on the left), and some of my village. My village is soooo cold at night, so today I bought a huge blanket, a down comforter and duvet cover for only $50! I bought a ton of stuff to help make my hut feel like my home for the next two years. I am hoping to paint it in the next few months. I'm thinking yellow? I need something bright because I only have one window!

I know it was a short post, but not much is going on. I will be swearing in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer on Thursday! I can't wait! ALSO! I passed the language test. I scored Intermediate Medium! The highest score in our group was Intermediate High! I was really nervous. If we didn't pass, we would receive private tutoring for one month after everyone else left for their villages. It felt so nice to pass and be done with that phase of Peace Corps! Once I get settled into my hut, I plan on getting a tutor to help me learn more. I would love to speak the language pretty well after spending 2 years here!

Hope everyone is doing well! Miss you much! I'm waiting for some updates in the next few days! Michaeldissen@gmail.com incase you forgot!!!

Tonight will be my second night staying in my new village! Each time I walk out the door, I am amazed at how beautiful it is here. Huge mountains surround my village. When I walk out my door, a Lesotho mountain range is on my left and to the right is South Africa! There is a river* about 10 minutes from myhouse that separates the two countries. I will be working with teachers in 4 schools and will have to walk along the river for about 1-2 hours to get to three of the schools. My house is amazing! I was worried that I wouldn't like it or feelcomfortable in it, but really enjoy it! I spent the entire day cleaning, unpacking, and rearranging the furniture. My friend Phil also lives in this village and he helped me to rearrange my furniture and kill spiders. I lost count, but I am pretty sure there were over 100 spiders in my house. I think I got most of them, but we'll see tomorrow. Last night I jumped up several times because I heard things moving around my hut. I am pretty sure I have a rat living in or around my house. I heard something really big last night and found alittle bit of rat poop in the bottom of my dresser. I also might have bed bugs. I was definitely bit, but I'm not sure when. They take afew days to show up, so I am going to attack my hut with 2 cans of bug spray before I leave tomorrow morning! My family is also incredible. Now that I am living here, I am a part of the family. So I have new parents and siblings. I think it might take me a while to feel comfortable calling other people my family. I am not completely sure what the situation is next door, but I know that I have 2 sisters, 2 brothers, and 3 other children. The ones that I am directly related to are my age, and the children are my nieces and nephews, I guess? My mother and one of my brothers just passed away, but I am not sure how recently. My water pump is about a 5-minute walk from my house. I have a 5 gallon (I think) bucket that I fill up and use sparingly. I went to fill it up today so I wouldn't have to walk to the pump at 5AM tomorrow and was encouraged to take the wheelbarrow so it wouldn't be as hard. Pushing that big piece of metal up a hill took everything out of me! I was exhausted by the time I got to the pump. The wheel on it points in every direction, so I zigzagged all the way up the hill. Once I got water, I figured it would be an easy walk down. I made it 5 feet before I hit a rock and flipped my bucket on the ground. There must have been 10 people standing around watching the show. I was so embarrassed that I started sweating. So I walked my bucket back to the pump, filled it up and went to try again. By this time a few more people came outside to see what was going on. I managed to avoid the rock that I hit the first time, made it an extra 15 feet and lost it again. Without even looking up, I took my remaining gallon of water and went home. I sent my brother to get the wheelbarrow! Great way to introduce myself to the village! Tomorrow Phil and I will be going to the town in our district to meetup with 3 other volunteers. We will be going back to the Peace CorpsTraining Center on Tuesday and thought we should break it into two days. We are about 2 hours from the town and are the second to last village in northern Lesotho! I thought that was pretty cool. I will be working in the two farthest north villages! My schools are all right on the border. Well I am going to cross my fingers that the bed bugs aren't in the bed that I will be sleeping in tonight. I sleep with a flashlight incase anything creepy decides to jump on my face. Hope everyone has a great new year! Wish I was there to celebrate with you!! Oh, I do not have cell phone service in my village. I am planning to buy a South African cell phone, which will be much less expensive to call! I will keep you up to date! I will be in Maseru, where I do have service, until January 10 and hope to get some calls or texts!

*The Orange River (Afrikaans/Dutch: Oranjerivier), Gariep River, Groote River or Senqu River is the longest river in South Africa. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. The river forms part of the international borders between South Africa and Namibia and between South Africa and Lesotho, as well as several provincial borders within South Africa. Although the river does not pass through any major cities, it plays an important role in the South African economy by providing water for irrigation, as well as hydroelectric power.

Hey everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!  I'm in JFK airport and am bored out of my mind.  We've been hanging around here for almost 4 hours and our flight leaves at 5.  I will be in the air for 17 hours and then will stay over in Johannesburg, South Africa.  We need to be out of the hotel at 4AM to make our flight...blah.  I'll be in Lesotho at 7Am on Friday...it will be about 12:30 Am our time.  

The 19 people in my group seem pretty cool.  I think we're going to have a great time!  I think I'll have internet access in South Africa, so I'll be back on then!!

Miss everyone!!!!

My flight left Pittsburgh at 9:35 this morning and got me to Phili around 10:45.  The plane was soooo small, but it was a nice flight.  I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel now trying to relax and get past the idea that I will probably have more luggage than anyone else.  I am still not sure how I managed to pack 100.5 lbs of stuff into those bags!  People thought I was out of my mind when I was in the airport trying to waddle around with all of my stuff.

At 2:00 today, I will get to meet all of the other volunteers and will go through an orientation.  Thennnnnnnnn, Alli and Amee are picking me up and we're going to dinner!  I'll try to get on here again before I leave, but I might not be able to for a few days.  My address and everything are in a previous post, pleeeeeease write me!  I'd love to hear from you!!

Talk to everyone soon!  

On my way to dinner with my friends Kristin and Justin, we took a pit stop at La Bella Bean to turn off the alarm that accidently went off after closing.  I thought it was so cool that Kristin and I just happened to be a few streets away from the coffee shop when Ashley called to ask me to swing by and take care of the alarm.  As soon as I walked in, the lights went on and some of my friends from work, my family, and neighbors yelled "SURPRISE!"  As it turns out, everyone knew about it and planned a great party.  I couldn't have asked for a better way to celebrate one of my last nights in Pittsburgh than a party at the Bean! 

I'm the worlds worst blogger...but you get the idea!!!

My family celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday so I wouldn't miss it as much for two years.  As it turns out, we celebrated Easter and Christmas, too!  My family decorated our house for each of the holidays!!  It was so great to have everyone over and the food was amazing.  My family got me some really great gifts to help me out when I'm in Lesotho.  I can't wait to pack my bags and try out some of the awesome stuff I got. 

I have a little over 1 week left!  I can't believe how quickly the days are going!!!

I booked my flight yesterday!  I will be leaving Pittsburgh at 9:30 for Philadelphia on November 11.  I will be leaving one day later than I thought, which is perfect.  I know I am going to need that extra day to get myself ready.  I will be in Philadelphia for two days, then it will be time for my almost 18 hour flight.  I am going to have to turn the isles of the airplane into a track...I don't know how I am going to sit still for that long.

I'm still getting used to this whole blog thing...I'm not really into it, but it will be a nice way to keep in touch while I am gone. 

Close to 50 of my friends from Penn State and home came to celebrate my last month home.  It was so nice to see some of my friends who live out of state and others that I haven't had the chance to see for a while.  My Penn State friends all came to my house Friday night to eat, catch up, and have a few drinks.  On Saturday, tons of people came over to eat dinner before a school bus picked us up and took us to Mt. Washington for a picture and then the South Side to Bar Room.  I had such a fun night and am so happy that so many of my friends were able to make it.  

Michael Dissen, PCT

c/o Peace Corps/Lesotho

PO Box 554

Maseru, 100 LESOTHO

While in pre-service training, I will receive all mail through the Peace Corps Lesotho post office box address. Once I have completed training in January of 2009, I might have my own mailbox. Even if I get my own mailbox, I can always get mail from the address above!!

Also, my e-mail address is Michaeldissen@gmail.com.  I'm not sure how often I will be able to check this, but I will try to reply to e-mail as often as possible!