Hi everyone...

As most of you know by now, the Peace Corps Madagascar program has been suspended. After nearly two months of political unrest, the staff decided to close the program for the time being. About a week ago I left Madagascar and flew to South Africa, where I officially ended my service. It's incredibly sad news for Madagascar and for all the people who have been serving there, but it's for the best. I know it's hard to find new on Madagascar, but for those who don't know, there is now a new president. The former mayor of Tana managed to overthrow Ravalomanana's government by gaining control of the military. However, the problems are far from being over. Not only are no governments recognizing this new president (specifically France and the U.S.) but there is also a third party now going after power. As of yesterday, there are still protests going on, with thousands of people in attendance.

All the volunteers are safe and have been moved out of the country. Some are trying to get new assignments, but most volunteers who have only a short time left (such as myself) have ended our service. I am now back in the U.S. Hopefully, the situation in Madagascar will resolve itself peacefully and eventually the program will be re-opened, but no one really knows what will happen.

Now that it's over, I can look back and say that despite the way it ended, it was a great experience. Working in Madagascar, learning about the culture, meeting the people...it's been unforgettable. While there were many difficult, lonely days, it was still worth it. Hopefully someday I'll be able to go back and give my town a proper goodbye.

I want to thank everyone who donated to my field trip. Due to the evacuation, I was not able to use the money for either the field trip or the English center. I had to leave very quickly and was not able to get the materials for the center. As a result, I've refunded all money. If you donated, you should have gotten your money refunded by now. If not, please email me. Once again, thank you for being so generous. I would suggest donating to another organization on Madagascar, but unfortunately, all monetary support from U.S. agencies and organizations has been suspended due to the political crisis.

Anyway, this will obviously be my last blog post, since my service is over. Thanks for reading! If you want to keep up with news about Madagascar, BBC is usually the best way to go.

Erin's Mom again - Erin is back at site but situation still tense. She will not have access to internet for a long time. Field trip cancelled due to political situation but money being used to build an English center at the high school. Center will include English textbooks which the students will have for the very first time as well as other resources to help students learn English. Currently no textbooks are available so this is a big opportunity for them. Her students and local teachers are very excited about the prospects of having English books and thank everyone for their generosity. You will hear more from Erin when she returns.

It is a difficult time as Erin cannot leave her area as the unrest seems to have spread closer to her. She looks forward to phone calls. All is all she is doing fine.

This is Erin's Mom and wanted to let everyone know that Erin is fine. Madagascar is experiencing civil unrest and there is political turmoil and violence - mass protests. She has been evacuated from her site but not from Madagascar. Will try to update but it may be awhile.

She wants everyone to know that she still plans on having her field trip so if inclined donate to her fund. If in the end she is forced to leave Madagascar because of the situation, funds will be returned.

Mom's note - keep her in your thoughts and prayers -

One of the things about always living in landlocked states (okay - so texas is not landlocked, but I lived far, far away from the water, so it might as well have been) is that I never had to worry about hurricanes/cyclones. Tornadoes - yes, but not hurricanes. Moving here to Madagascar has opened my eyes to several new terrors that the world has to offer. One of these is cyclones.

I can't remember if I blogged about this last year (and I'm too lazy to check) but I experienced my first major cyclone a year ago. It was pretty bad - massive flooding, all the roads out of my town blocked, crops destroyed...it wasn't pretty. After it was over, I pretty much blocked it out and never thought about it again. Until this week that is...

Wednesday morning, I noticed it was a little windy out. Nothing to be concerned about, but a little annoying for people with hair flying around their face while trying to walk to school. So I wasn't paying that much attention to the weather, until a couple of hours into the morning when I looked out the window and realized that with all the rain and wind, it was nearly impossible to see 5 feet in front of you. You would think that I would have noticed sooner, but it's the rainy season right now, so I tend not to notice when it starts raining. Anyway, I get a little concerned at this point, but I just assume it'll stop and all will be well again.

After class, I went over to a friend's house to help him with his English. While we're sitting there, I see a piece of someone's tin roof fly off. (Most people here have thatched roofs, but the people with slightly more money have tin roofs) Finally, I asked my friend what was going on. "Oh - it's the cyclone," was his reply.

So - another cyclone. It didn't seem as bad as last year's cyclone until around dinnertime. The wind was so bad that you couldn't even walk down the street. Luckily, I was able to get to my house early so I wasn't outside for the worst of it. But the wind was crazy all through the night. There's wasn't as much rain with it this year, but the wind was much more intense. Once it got dark I just read all night by candlelight, waiting for the wind to die down. I wasn't scared until at around 11 o'clock a tree branch flew into my window and broke it. So the wind was also howling around inside my house, blowing everything around. Needless to say, it was not a fun night.

However, by the next morning, it was sunny and not at all windy. When I walked out of my house, I half expected the town to be gone. Luckily, nothing was destroyed like it was last year. A bunch of trees were knocked down, and some people's houses had some damage, but not like last year. Oh, and I got my window fixed the very next day, so all is well.

So I have survived another cyclone. Yay me. Hopefully it will be my last, because they aren't very much fun. :)

Anyway, check out our field trip website for periodic updates and such. We're trying to raise 750 dollars, and we already have about 30% of what we need! It takes place in April, but we need to try to get the money within the next month so that we can start booking everything and making deposits.

Hello!

So, as some of you already know, myself and two other volunteers are planning a field trip for a few of our promising students in April. We are planning on taking students who have shown an interest/aptitude for English to a large city where they will learn about opportunities for them to pursue English beyond just the high school level. My students have never left my village, so it will be a really great experience for them.

Please go to our website:

http://fieldtrip2.uuuq.com

to learn more about what we are doing. In order to do the field trip, we are trying to raise money. What is very little money to you goes a long way here, so please donate if you can. Even just 5 dollars is a big help!

Thank you!

Merry Christmas! I am here in Diego (also known as Antsiranana if you're looking at a map) which is up at the very north of Madagascar. In order to get here, I spent more than 24 hours on a taxi brousse. And not with any fun hotel stop for the night - literally about 26 hours straight in a bus. Not fun. However, I am here now and that's all that matters. Plus, I'm flying back to Tana, so I don't have to brousse it back.

I've only been here for a day, but so far it's been pretty fun. The town itself is different from the towns near me, so we've mostly just been walking around and doing some sightseeing. We spent most of the morning walking around and looking at the bay that Diego is on. While it is on the coast, it's not actually on the ocean. Tomorrow we're talking a boat right outside of the bay to spend the day on the beach on the actual ocean. For some reason it just doesn't feel like Christmas anymore if I'm not spending it in the Indian Ocean!

I'll be here for about a week, and then I'll be flying back to Tana to spend New Years Eve. After that it's back to site to finish out the school year. Only six months left! Let's just hope that by the time I leave, at least one of my students will know more English than when I started teaching them. :)

Hello all!

Wow, I can't believe that November is nearly over, but it is! They always say that the second year of peace corps service goes by very quickly, or at least much faster than the first year. I didn't believe it in the beginning - how could anything go by quickly here in Madagascar? It's true though. This second year has just been flying by. It helps that I spent the first two months of it living in Tana, but still. I can't believe that I have only 7 months left here.

Anyway, November has been a good month for me - especially after having a not so fun October. During October I had no electricity, and NO WATER for a significant part of the month. It was pretty awful. Normally, I can get water from a pump near my house, but the pump dried up. There was a major drought, and the only place left to get water was from a lake about a kilometer away from my house. The lake water was so dirty that trying to filter it was a pain, and using it to take bucket baths with almost wasn't even worth it. All in all, October could have been better.

November, like I said, has been good. It's now the beginning of the rainy season, so getting water is no longer a problem. The electricity has been not so stable, but I've had it for about one or two nights a week for an hour or two, so I've still been able to charge my phone and stuff. The reason November has been fun though is due to the fact that we had the election, then we came my birthday, and next week is thanksgiving!

For the election I went into Fianar to hang out with other volunteers for the big day. Luckily, it was during All-Saints break here, so I was able to leave site on a Tuesday. We tried to find a T.V. to watch the news, but no luck. So about 4 of us crowded around a radio all night (we had to stay up all night because of the time difference) to listen as the states were announced. By 9 o'clock, we were still up, and even managed to listen to Obama's speech on the radio. It was a lot of fun.

A few days later I celebrated my birthday here - for the second and last time. A few volunteers came to my site, and we made English muffin pizza - with homemade english muffins and sauce. One of the volunteers who came in stopped by a big city and picked up some cheese for us to use. We spent the night cooking in the dark because there was no electricity (surprise, surprise) but it was still a lot of fun. Adam even climbed a mountain in his town to call me and wish me a happy birthday!

Next week I'll be back in Fianar to celebrate thanksgiving with other volunteers in the area. It will just be a small group of us this year, but I'm sure there will still be a ton of food. I can't wait. Until then, I'll be back at site, teaching and finding other things to keep me busy.

Hello all!

I've been back at site for about 2 weeks now. Well, not that I'm at site right now, but I was back for about 2 weeks. Everything is pretty much the same. My house was not broken into and there's nothing major to report. I suppose it could be worse. It could be better though...I was hoping that during my absence a starbucks was put in or something. No luck. :) Anyway, I have had a lot of school meetings, but the actual classes have yet to begin. I'm hoping they start on Monday, but you never know.

In other news, I got a cat! His name is Jimmy and he's 3 months old. He's very cute. Hopefully I'll be able to put some pictures up. I got him from a place here in my banking town, so I'll be bringing him back to site for the first time tomorrow morning. I like him a lot already...he's very snuggly!

Anyway, I suppose that's all for now. I'll be back in a city next week, so hopefully I'll get a chance to blog about my first week of school then. Bye!

Tomorrow morning I will be heading back to my site, and this wonderful summer will officially come to an end. This last week has been really busy and crazy, so it's just flown by.

First, I went to the peace corps training center to do a workshop, like I mentioned in my last post. I won't go in to any details because Adam wrote extensively on the workshop. If you're interested, click the link to his blog. However, I will say that I had a mostly fun time at the workshop. I ate really great food and met a lot of people that I haven't met before. I love the food at the p.c. training center, because the cook there makes a special effort to make "american" food for us. So we get to eat things like tacos and hash browns. Mmm...

Second, yesterday, I went to the Presidential Palace and met the President. Well, I didn't quite meet him exactly, but I was within 20 feet of him at one point. Does that count? Myself and several other education PCVs were invited to go to the palace to hear the President speak and introduce the new plan developed my the Ministry of Education. There are a lot of changes that are suppose to happen between now and 2011. Mostly, better resources and schools for students. Another thing that is changing though, and the reason why Peace Corps was invited, is that English will now be first introduced in the elementary schools. The elementary school in my town is one of the first schools to be doing this this year, so I'm excited to see how I can help.

Anyway, back to the president...um...his speech was in Malagasy, so I didn't really understand most of it. I might have been able to understand more, but I was too busy trying to take pictures of him. I was hoping that I'd be able to met him after the speech, but he left right afterward and didn't attend the lunch he had for us. However, since he owns the largest company in Madagascar (which is a company that makes all of the dairy products), we were served ice cream for dessert! This made me less sad about not being able to meet him. I did have to fight a ministry official to get my ice cream cone though. People here can be vicious when it come to free food.

So, like I said, I'm off to site early tomorrow morning. I went to the store today and stocked up on all the things I need to get me through village life...oh the joys of powdered milk. Trust me, you get used to the taste. I will not have regular internet anymore, so I probably won't be blogging as much anymore. And if you write me an email, you must remember that I probably won't respond for about 2 weeks.

bye!

Okay, so it's actually "goodbye winter" but you know what I mean. Anyway, I am sad to report that my summer "vacation" is coming to an end. Tomorrow, I am moving out of my Tana house, and leaving for a town that is about 2 hours away from the capital. I will be spending the next 5 days with other pcv's and staff participating in a conference where we will discuss the "effectiveness" of peace corps here in Madagascar. It should be pretty interesting. I'll be able to hear what the staff thinks, as well as hear from volunteers in other sectors. It should be a pretty good week.

However, that does mean that my time at my human rights center is coming to an end. I'm going to be stopping by one last time on Friday to say goodbye to everyone before leaving for site, but then it's really the end. I've had a really great time working with everyone there, so it's going to be difficult to leave them. I've found that it's a lot easier teaching English to a group of motivated, educated adults...rather than a crowded classroom full of bored 10 year olds.

As exciting as Tana is however, it will be nice to get back to my nice quiet life at site. Even though I won't have internet or "vazaha" food everyday, I will have a lot of time to read and hang out with people. School will (hopefully) be starting in a couple of weeks, and I'm excited to start this new year. I can't believe in 10 months I'll be leaving this country. The first year went by so quickly, it makes me wonder how fast this second year will go.

As a 6eme teacher, I get the joyful task of introducing students to the wonders of English. Their sixth year (not quite 6th grade, but more like 4th grade) is the first year that Malagasy students begin to learn English. This is, as you may recall, their third language. So, the entire year is spent learning the very basics...numbers, greetings, simple present verbs...

Which brings me to the issue of explaining the verbs "to like," "to love," "to dislike" and "to hate." Despite the fact that there is no difference in the verbs "to like" and "to love" in either Malagasy or French, for me, it's rather simple to explain. At least it's simple to explain to students who have never encountered these verbs before. Which brings me to my story...

At the end of the school year last year, a group of student teachers came from a teacher's college in Fianar to shadow a teacher and practice teaching on their own in my school at site. One of the student teachers choose me to shadow, because she was also studying to be an English teacher. For her own practice, I let her teach the "to like" lesson one day...thinking it would be an easy lesson since she could probably explain it to the students in Malagasy if need be.

Anyway, during the lesson, I'm sitting in the back of the room observing, and everything is going alright in the beginning...until she starts talking about the difference between "to like" and "to love." She explains to the students that the two verbs mean exactly the same thing, you just use "to like" with objects, and "to love" with people. As a teacher, I just can't let my students be taught incorrect information, so I stand up and re-explain the lesson. I explain in the simplest way I can the difference, and then go on to say that it's perfectly okay to say "I like apples" as well as "I love apples." Just as it is okay to say both "I like Rakoto" and "I love Rakoto." The student teacher gives me a look like she doesn't for one second believe me, but she lets it go because it's my class.

Anyway, this happened a few months ago, I thought it was an isolated incidence and didn't think twice about it. Until a few weeks ago...

As I've mentioned before, I'm spending my summer teaching English to the lawyers at a human rights center. After teaching the "to like" versus "to love" lesson, I had one of the lawyers approach me and tell me that she was taught that "to like" is used for objects, and "to love" is used for people...exactly what the student teacher had thought also. She said that she was taught this in school. Again, I explained that it wasn't true, and that both verbs could be used in both contexts.

On my way back that day, I started thinking about it a lot. It seems crazy...but maybe as a native speaker, I just never learned that there is some grammar rule or something that prohibits using one verb in a particular way. I asked around, and no one else seemed to think there was any reason why you couldn't use both for either a person or an object. I even looked it up on the internet and couldn't find anything.

So, either sometime a long time ago an English-speaker taught all the Malagasy people of a certain generation something totally incorrect...or I'm just dumb. Can anyone tell me if maybe there is some merit to what all the Malagasy people were taught? I'll be teaching this concept again in about 8 months...so try to get back to me by then. :)

Despite the fact that Madagascar does not have string cheese or Dr. Pepper, it does have a few things to offer. For example - lemurs! As I mentioned in a previous post, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with a lot of Maki lemurs. Another thing that Madagascar has to offer is baobab trees! These are found other places in Africa, so they are not quite as special as lemurs, but still.

Adam and I left a few days ago for a trip to Morondava, which is on the west coast, along the Mozambique Channel. We went to go help another volunteer with a health festival going on in the area. The trip itself was not fun. We spent 20 hours in a Taxi Brousse just getting there. Sitting in a car for that long is awful to begin with, but sitting in a Taxi Brousse is even worse. The drivers cram about 4 adults and 3 children in a row that would comfortably fit two, maybe three adults. So imagine being stuffed into a space smaller than an airplane seat for 20 hours. Most of the trip was along a dirt road, so the dust was flying around the car all night, leaving everyone completely covered by the morning. It was not a fun trip.

However, it was all worth it when the sun started coming up in the morning and I realized that we were driving through baobab country. All along the road were huge baobab trees. I can't really describe them, so do a google image search if you don't know what they look like. After a few more hours of driving, we finally arrived in Morondava. The town itself is a pretty normal town, the only major difference between this town and others along the coast, is that there were only mosques and no churches. Madagascar is a primarily Christian country, so I was kind of surprised.

After settling in for awhile, we set off to see Baobab Alley and the "Loving Baobabs." If you type in "baobab alley madagascar" into a google search, you'll be able to see where I went. Baobab alley is about 20 km outside of Morondava, and the loving baobabs are about 10 more past that, so we had to find a car to take us there. Luckily, we ran into two Frenchmen who were going, and we were able to get a ride with them. First we saw the loving baobabs. They are two trees, but they grew together, and ended up twisting their trunks around each other. It's really interesting looking to see trees like that, especially giant baobabs. After that, we set off for the alley. We got there around sunset and were able to see the trees while the sun was setting. It was really beautiful.

We went back to Morondava afterward and had dinner with another PCV that we hadn't seen in a long time. It's always fun to see PCV's in their own element and not just passing through the capital. All in all, it was a fabulous trip. Unfortunately, it was cut short due to my being sick (I can't handle most foods anymore), so we ended up getting back on a brousse for another 20 hours only a day and a half after getting there. I'm glad we went though. I would not have been able to leave Madagascar without seeing baobab alley.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working in Tana until the middle of September, when I will be leaving to go back to site and start teaching again. As I also mentioned previously, I am working at a human rights center here in the capital. I've been working for a few weeks now, and it's been an interesting experience so far. While I'm there, I spend most of my time teaching everyone English. The people who work there are really interested in learning English, so I have a 2-3 hour lesson for them everyday. Compared to teaching 10 year olds in my town, teaching highly educated adults is a lot easier. It's been a lot of fun so far, and we've been able to cover a lot in a very short time. When I'm not teaching English, I mostly spend my time at the center observing what the lawyers do and seeing how the center works. And of course, I try to be as helpful as possible.

When I'm not working, I've been keeping busy. I am taking my knitting skills to the next level. I am slowly expanding beyond making a simple scarf, and am taking on new and more complicated projects. I am currently attempting to make an ipod cover for Adam's ipod. Next it's going to be a hat!

All-in-all, this summer has been pretty fun. It'll be pretty difficult to go back to site and leave all the comforts of city living behind, but I suppose I'll manage somehow. I have a lot of projects planned that will keep me productive and busy.

Ta-ta for now!

Hello all!

Just a quick post to let everyone know that I am alive and well! As many of you know, I just spend the last three weeks in America. It was incredibly fun and relaxing. I'm really glad I was able to come back for awhile. However, now I am back in Madagascar, and I still have a year to go.

Right now, I am in Tana, the capital. I'll be here all summer...probably until about mid-September. As I mentioned before, I will be working at a human rights center. I start tomorrow actually, so I can tell you all about it in the coming weeks. I'm staying in a really nice place here, so it's making the transition between american life and malagasy life a little easier.

My new school year doesn't start until the end of September, so I have a lot of time to prepare. I think the next school year will be a lot easier for me, since now I know more or less what works and what doesn't work. I have a lot of fun ideas to try out.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll be writing more this summer, since I will most likely be able to use the internet on a regular basis. I'll keep everyone updated on my new job here. Bye bye!

Hello! I am currently in Tana, the capital, for my mid-service conference. Yes, it has in fact been nearly a year since my arrival in Madagascar. However, considering I still have another year to go, it's not much to get excited about. Last Thursday though, made me remember why Madagascar is considered one of the most unique and beautiful countries in the world. I went camping in Anja...which is sort of like a national park, but it's not actually a park, nor is it funded by the government. The community protects it essentially. I went there with three other peace corps volunteers and about 20 high school students. I was helping a fellow pcv chaperone a field trip she was doing for her students. We spent the day and night camping in this park, which is actually just a forest area in the mountains. During the day we went hiking through the forest, where about 400 Maki lemurs live. Maki lemurs are those really awesome lemurs that have the black and white striped tails. (Do a google image search). As we were hiking, they were playing and jumping all around the trees above our heads. They are really playful and not very afraid of humans, so we were often able to get very close to them. I couldn't actually touch one, but believe me, I tried. At one point, there were about 100 lemurs surrounding us while we were resting. It was incredibly amazing to be so close to these animals that do not exist anywhere else in the world. I was able to get a lot of photos, and even a few videos. Life would be easier if I could just teach the lemurs English all day instead of the children...haha.

We spent the night camping in the forest in tents that were lent to us. All went well until after everyone started going to sleep. Somehow a rumor was started that a witch was prowling around the camp. Would be funny, except that in this culture, witches are very real. So, needless to say, no one got any sleep. The rest of the field trip went really well. All the students were very interested in the sessions and activities about leadership and such. It was a fun three days.

So now I am back in the capital, but I won't be around for much longer. Tomorrow I am leaving to go to the peace corps training center, which is not in Tana. So no internet for me...oh well. Bye for now!

Hello all!

I am now at the end of my wonderful 2 week break from school. It was a very busy 2 weeks for me, since I spent most of my time doing work and traveling for business. However, there were also some fun times. On Easter, I took a bike ride through the forest/rice fields and I encountered my very first lemur! It was just sitting there, hanging out as I rode by. It was very cool.

My other big news is that I now have summer plans! I will be working in Tana with a human rights center. I will be working directly with lawyers and law students. The woman who runs the center is very nice and she is letting me be as involved in the center as I would like...meaning that I will be doing more than just helping the lawyers practice their English. Not only will I be able to improve my french and learn about the french legal system, but I will also be able to experience what life as a human rights lawyer is like.

Nothing much is going on. I start school again this Monday, and will be starting my final trimester. I think these last 2 months of school will go by pretty quickly.

Bye for now!

Well, as I'm sure none of you heard in the news - Madagascar was just hit by a hurricane. (For some reason Malagasy news never seems to make it into American newspapers.) It was pretty bad - it affected about 90 percent of the island. My town included. I'm alright, and my house is alright, but others cannot say the same. We had very bad winds and a lot of rain. Roofs were torn off of houses, all roads were flooded, etc. School had to be canceled because of the rains, so I mostly just spent days reading in my house. The worst part of this, is that most of the crops growing in the fields around my village were destroyed. I don't know to what extent this will affect harvest, but it certaintly can't help matters.

Everything else here is fine. I just celebrated my eighth month in country - has is really been that long? Things are much easier now than they were in the past and I've started several new projects this month. I now teach two adult classes during the week for all the people in my town. There are a lot of people interested in learning English. Teaching the adult classes is much more stressful than teaching my normal school classes - at least right now. The adults expect me to explain everything in Malagasy, meaning I have to fumble around with the Malagasy language in front of many of my townspeople. I do think it will get easier with time though.

I've also started running in my free time. Unlike many East African nations, running is not something that people do around here. As some kindly explained it to me "Malagasy people only run when there's an emergency." So I get some very strange looks and comments as I run by people. Specifically, the children are terrified of me. They think that I'm running after them, and they will run away from me screaming. I think in a few weeks though, people will be so used to it that no one will really pay any attention.

That's all for now - probably no internet for me for the next month or so. It's very sad. Bye bye!

Hello out there! So, I'm a big slacker when it comes to blogging...sorry! I've just finished up a 3 week vacation/business extravaganza, so I've been a little busy. I had some more peace corps training during the middle of december, which was nice because i got to see all of my stagemates once again. I hadn't seen a lot of them for over 3 months.

After training, myself and about half of my stage went to Ile Sainte Marie. It's a tiny island off of the mainland. It really is a tropical paradise. The beaches are amazing and the water is so clear and warm. I spent Christmas day swimming in the Indian Ocean and walking around the beach. I'll try to get some pictures up at some point.

After a few days of beach fun, I went to a fellow PCV's site to play in a baseball game. They don't have baseball here in Madagascar, but the PCV put together a baseball team and taught them all to play. After a few months of practice, they felt ready to play some Americans. So a lot of us got together and formed Team America. It was a lot of fun. The PCV invited her whole town to come and watch us. I won't mention what the final score was, but just know that I was the star player.

New Year's was spent in Tana...pretty low key. Things were mostly closed, so we just stayed in and watched movies. After that I headed back to Fianar to do some banking and other business.

But alas...vacation is over. It's back to site for me tomorrow. Back to teaching everyone English. :) I think it'll be nice to be back though. I've finally stopped getting sick every other week, so things are looking up.

Also, if you would like a more detailed account of my vacation, go read adam's blog. He writes a lot. http://adamgascar.blogspot.com

bye bye!

Uh, so after being yelled at by 3 different people, I decided that it might be time to update my blog. Sad news is...I have nothing to say. I have been at site for nearly 2 1/2 months, and nothing terribly out of the ordinary has happened. My days are spent either teaching or reading...or being sick. Which is actually why I am able to write this blog entry. I'm back in Tana for the 3rd time for medical reasons. I was sick a few days ago, but I'm fine now. I'm here because the doctors want to know why I keep getting sick - because it's pretty annoying for everyone involved. It's nothing major, more just a matter of finding the right medicine to clear everything up. So no worries.

My birthday was a few days ago! Yay me! I was sick, so that wasn't too much fun - but it could have been worse. There are 2 PCVs that live in my area that came into town to help me celebrate. We just had lunch and dinner at a hotely and hung around, but it was still fun. I was suppose to visit one of the PCV's sites the following day, but I was really sick by that point and wasn't able to walk the 16km. And now I'm here in Tana.

Tana, despite having many fun things (like internet, electricity, and plumbing) can be stressful at times. Especially now that I've come to associate the city with me being sick. Still though, since being here I've gotten to meet 6 new pc trainees, which was fun. It's weird not being the newbies anymore. Also, I'm going to buy some apples - I can't get anything but bananas at my site, so variety is fun.

Everything else is going alright. Teaching is still difficult for me, but some days are okay. I have some classes that are really good and ready to learn english, and then some that are not so willing - at least on the surface. I don't have a problem with my 6eme students because they are still young and willing to have fun but still work hard when necessary. The 2nde students are a bit trickier (is that a word? am I really qualified to be an english teacher?) because they're at the age where they're just too cool for school and think they know everything. And unlike myself at that age - they don't actually know everything. Or at least they don't know english. They'll come around though, hopefully.

The upcoming months are going to be good though. I will get to see a lot of other PCVs around thanksgiving, because we are taking part in an AIDS education training thing. And then after that, I only have a few more weeks of school before vacation! I'm going down south to the beach, where I'll spend Christmas and New Years. I'm really excited about it.

So, that's all for now. Thanks to all those who sent my birthday greetings!

So, as it turns out...I'm still alive. I realize that it's been well over a month since my last blog post. Sorry! I haven't really had a lot of time to be on the internet, so all of my time goes to reading emails and looking at facebook. Haha. Sad...Anyway!

I am now officially (as of August 28th) a peace corps volunteer! Whoo! I've been living at my site since September 1st...so almost 2 weeks now. The first week was really, really difficult. After spending 10 weeks constantly being around americans all the time, it was really hard to suddenly be the only vazaha in town. And the only person that speaks English. Sigh. But that first week ended - and things are getting better, slowly.

I've developed more of a routine, which helps make the days go by faster. And I'm starting to get used to having a lot of alone time. I spend most of the day reading when I have nothing else to do. School starts next week for me. I'll be teaching Seconde and Sixieme - 2nde is in the Lycee (high school) and 6eme is in the CEG (middle school). For the 6eme kids, it'll be their first year of English so I'll be teaching just the basics. For the 2nde kids, they'll already have had a few years so the class will be more grammar and speaking-based. In theory anyway.

I'm currently in Fianarantsoa right now (Fianar to us cool people). I'm here to bank and visit some friends, etc. It's nice to spend a few days speaking English...but come Sunday and I'll be back at my site to start teaching, etc. I probably won't be able to get back online for about another month after tomorrow. But keep writing letters! I might have a new address soon - so be on the lookout for that. Until then, just keep writing to the one in Ambositra:

Erin Hogan, PCV

105 B.P.

306 Ambositra

Madagascar

byebye!

Ah internet. I'm back. For the night anyway. I'm going to my site tomorrow morning to spend a few days there just to look around and meet some of the town officials and such. I only get to spend a fews days there before I have to head back to complete the rest of my training. As a sort of fun thing for all of us before we flock to various parts of the country, my whole group gets to spend the day/night in Tana! Free to do whatever we want!!! I'm, clearly, interneting and eating pizza and ice cream. Haha. Oh life.

Anyway, read Adam's blog if you want actual news/stories/tidbits on what it's like to be a PCT in Madagascar. As I write this pointless blog entry, he is actually typing up real blog entries that he wrote awhile back and saved for such a time as this. It's true...I can see his fingers moving. Anyway, go read his blog and learn about my life. Haha...I'm awesome.

Keep writing me letters/emails!!! I'll be able to use the internet sometime next week after my site visit, so I'll write all about it then, I swear. Also, hopefully I'll be able to get my new address.

Ok, bye!

So I'm back in Tana for the afternoon to get my yellow fever vaccine. Fun fun. I have to leave in a few minutes, but I want to let everyone know that I'm still doing well. I am halfway done with training now - I have a month to go before swearing-in. It's going to be a busy weekend for me. Tomorrow morning I'm playing in a volleyball game. It's Peace Corps vs. The Gendarmes. It's like the army-navy game...except much more pathetic. After that I'm spending the afternoon in a malagasy cooking class. I'll be learning to to cook things like rice and beans without a stove or oven. Let's hope I don't burn anything down. On Sunday I'll be spending the morning washing my clothes. Let me explain the process...

Manasa lamba aho. I wash clothes. In order to wash my clothes, I first have to walk 25 minutes to get to a lake. I have to walk over a hill carrying all of my clothing. Most of the women here carry their clothes in baskets are their heads. My neck isn't strong enough to do that, so I just sort of drag my basket behind me. After I walk over the hill, I get to a really beautiful lake. I then proceed to soak all of my clothes in the lake. Then I take my soap and scrub them the best that I can. After washing them, I then rinse them out back in the lake. Then I spread them out on the grass to dry. Depending on the weather, it can take anywhere from 3 hours to 4 days to dry. Then I have to drag all my clothes back to my house. It takes me the entire morning.

So anyway, after I manasa lamba, I'll be studying all day because I have my 2nd langage test on Monday. I passed my first one...yay me.

Anyway, I have to run...but I miss everyone. Also - a special note to Aunt Jean... I got the pictures of the family reunion! Thank you so much!!!

Hello!

I am suffering through a french keyboard to write this post...so be excited!!!

I am back in Tana, but just for about another hour or so. It's saturday right now, so I only had school in the morning. Adam and I decided to skip town and flee to Tana to use the internet - so read his blog also because he probably posted something a little more reasonable. Oh, and by 'skip town' I actually mean that we requested and received the PC's permission. :)

Anyway, I've been in Madagascar for a little over a month now and it's been really crazy so far. For the past 2 weeks, my days have been filled with language classes and teaching. I teach every morning for about 3 hours...then I have teacher class, then lunch, then 3 hours of language class. My days have been so incredibly busy. I have to wake up really early everyday to take my bucket bath and then literally hike to the top of a huge hill to get to the CEG (school). Whoever came up with the idea to put the school on the very top of a hill probably never had to walk up there at 7 in the morning. Anyway, each day I teach a different level of english. This way I get to practice with each level so that whatever level I end up teaching at my site, i'll be prepared for. I prefer teaching the older kids simply because the little kids are really loud and it's hard to keep their attention. Although, the older kids ask me a lot of english grammar questions that I don't know the answers to...darn being a native speaker and never having to think about grammar.

So yeah, after all my teaching and lunching I have language class each afternoon. I have found out my site, so I'm learning my local dialect nowadays. I'll be living in the region south of Tana for the next 2 years. I would say the name of the town, but there are rules against things like that...but I'll email everyone my new address at some point. I won't actually start living there until the beginning of September, so just keep writing to my current address until I say otherwise. I'm really happy with my site though...the dialect is very similar to standard malagasy, so that's helpful. Also, I'll have a french tutor at site because people there speak both malagasy and french. So by the time I come back to the states, I will be fluent in both languages...in theory anyway.

Umm...what else? I find it really difficult to describe my life here in Madagascar because it is just so different from anything else. For instance, on my Taxi-Brousse to Tana this afternoon, I sat next to a chicken. A live chicken. Every night I brush my teeth out my window using water from my water filter. I regularly see people walking with slaughtered cows on their heads. In order to wash my clothes, I have to walk 25 minutes to get to a lake where I scrub them with soap, rinse them in a steam, and then lay them on the grass to dry. And I can't even explain to you what a 'po' is.

I'm really happy here though. I do miss plumbing and such, but I've adapted pretty well to everything here. I'm halfway done with training. I get sworn-in as an actual PCV at the end of August. Once I move to my site, maybe I'll be able to better explain my life here. In the meantime...keep sending me letters! It's really, really expensive for me to send any mail out, so if you don't get a letter from me, it's not because I'm ungrateful or anything...I will write when I can, I promise.

Hi everyone!

I only have a minute - so this will be quick.

I'm in Madagascar! Yay me! I've been here for almost 2 weeks. I live in a small village about an hour away from the capital city. It looks like a typical 'african village' with all the animals roaming the streets and the dirt roads and markets and such. It's incredibly different from anything I've ever experienced, but I don't have time to say anything else about it. Sorry - hopefully I can write more soon. I'm in Tana right now on sort of a weekend vacation, so I think maybe tomorrow I will be able to write more.

Everyone send me letters! I'm trying to write letters but I'm too tired at night...so...sorry. I go to sleep around 8pm each night because I have to wake up at 4 to get ready for training classes. I have to take bucket baths and boil water that I get from a well and such. There's no plumbing in town. I have electricity, but it's not always reliable.

Training is going well...I spend most of my day learning Malagasy, plus I have other technical classes so that I can be a good teacher.

Ok, bye! I'll try to write more tomorrow! Just know that I'm happy here, but it's hard and I miss everyone/everything a lot.

veloma!

see adam's blog for a real entry...i'm too lazy to write. There's a link on the side of the page.

As of yesterday, I have exactly one more month left until I leave for staging! Yay! I'm going to spend my last remaining month (of living in the U.S. - not of being alive) reading, swimming, and making some attempt at learning Malagasy.

Here is my address during my 3 month training period:

Erin Hogan, PCT Peace Corps

Bureau du Corps de la Paix

B.P. 12091

Poste Zoom Ankorondrano

101 Antananarivo

Madagascar

After I finish training, I'll have a new address, which I'll let everyone know of when I get it. For now, just use that one to send me all sorts of fun stuff. :) Mail usually takes 4 - 6 weeks to get to Madagascar, so plan ahead. Also, it would probably be helpful if you numbered your letters, so that I'll know if I missed one.

Send me lots of letters!

So, change of plans. I was suppose to leave for staging on the 10th of June. However, I found out this morning that I actually won't leave until June 13th. Something about heavy D.C. to Johannesburg flight traffic. Oh well. It's only 3 more days...but still. Bummer.

Tonight I went to a Peace Corps Party! Or at least it was a Peace Corps gathering. There was cake though, so maybe 'party' is the right word. Anyway, lots of people were there. Not only were there nominees/invitees, but there were also RPCV (returned peace corps volunteers) and even parents of PCV's that are currently serving.

We watched a video about the PC, which was nice. Then everyone sort of got the chance to talk about what their relation to the Peace Corps is. It was really fun being able to talk with all the RPCV's. There was even one person there who had served with the PC in 1962 in Nepal. He told me all about what his training was like...apparently it was really different from what the training is like now. He said that every morning he would be woken up at 4am and then forced to run 5 miles...and then he had to swim across a lake...and then he had to climb a mountain. It was like boot camp basically.

Talking with all the RPCV's made me even more excited about going. Especially after talking with my campus representative...who had actually served in Madagascar. He told me that it's an amazing place to live and that he would do it all over again if he could. Also, he's going to send me the email address of a friend of his from Madagascar that lives in Chambana. With any luck, I can maybe talk with them before I leave and perhaps they can give me some tips on speaking Malagasy and living in Madagascar. :)

Also - I got a PC luggage tag and a PC sticker! Whoo! Haha. Actually, I saw someone with one of those window decals things you put on cars that had the PC logo on it, and I really wanted one. Unfortunately, they were all gone when I finally got over to the swag table. I want to ask my PC rep here in town if I can get one from him. But...that seems like a weird thing to do, right? I should probably just let it go, since I'll be selling my car soon anyway.

In exactly 2 months I will be leaving for my staging. For those who don't know - staging is a 2-day Peace Corps orientation type thing that takes place before we travel to our new country. I get to meet the group I'll be working with, and we all go to Madagascar together. But anyway - 2 months! I'm really excited, but at the same time there are things that I'm currently thinking about more...like finally graduating!

I have started to prepare for my departure though. Last weekend I got a rain jacket (Madagascar apparently has a rainy season) and a huge duffel bag/suitcase type thing. My jacket is very pretty...it's purple and has a very subtle plaid pattern. My new bag is just black, so it's not quite as pretty. It's still hard to comprehend that in 2 months I'll be packing everything I'll need for the next 2 years into a duffel bag and a backpack. When I first moved to college, I couldn't fit everything I wanted to bring into a car...let alone 2 bags. But I guess in this situation I won't be needing to bring my Hello Kitty toaster or 4 different winter coats. I will most likely end up over packing anyway. Oh well. :)

So...everyone's doing it. Seriously...everyone in the peace corps has a blog. Awhile back, Chris mentioned to me that he was thinking about starting his own peace corps blog. I made fun of him relentlessly for it. Needless to say, he never started a blog. But...I've changed my mind. See, while I was in the process of applying for the peace corps, I sat for hours reading other people's blogs. I was completely obsessed. This one guy had a blog that seriously totaled 200 pages worth of stuff...and I read ALL OF IT.

And it was really helpful to read other people's blogs...and it was fun. So that's why I am going to have one. So don't make fun of me.

Anyway, with that said...I'm going to Madagascar!!! Whoo! I leave June 10th for staging.

I won't be writing much before that date, obviously...since I'm not actually serving in the peace corps yet. From June 10th onward though (for roughly the next 2 years and 3 months) I will be writing about my daily life.

P.S. I get that my pink blog is obnoxious...I like it that way.