Dear blog readers...

I am on a quest... a quest to get home for two weddings and to see my family for three weeks in july/august this upcoming... if anyone would like to help me out with this, please let me know.. or my mom. lol thanks

-lauren

my neighborhood boys who hang out with me, usually everyday. they are awesome. and love my dog. and they dance for me. it cant get much better than that!

i am holding the smallest chameleon in the world, found only here in madagascar... another picture in the national park

me, and two other volunteers inside of isalo in one of the natural springs... INCREDIBLE!!!!

me standing in front of Isalo national park just before we started the ascend.

what i was walking through to get to the rice. yeah. right?

the satrana (palm) house i stayed in when i was in the tanam-bary (rice field). you wouldnt believe the inside. hooked up wtih tv/radio/stereo, the whole deal! people move from thier homes to the rice fields for months at a time, so they really do it big on the inside. they have an electric generator... it was crazy...

the turkey that was killed for my second thanksgiving dinner. apetising? it was delicious

the "sarety" or ox cart i rode home. the field in the background is the rice-field i was living at for a few days... pretty beautiful

me and my volunteer friends with the feast spread out on our lamaka... who took the picture? a guy from Holland who was just "passing by" he was cool and does tours in Madagsacar and has for a while. it was a great meal/evening.

my volunteer friend and i having a sip before we feast for thanksgiving!

me after freshly killing the thanksgiving chicken, plucking and preparing him to be fried. i am really good at chicked stuff. who'dve thought. i think i will raise chickens when i get older....

my dog, bubs, sleepin in MY class underneath the chalkboard as i teach. really classy. really lady-like. she follows me sometimes... my students love it.

me sleeping on my lamaka mat in my friends house. with mosquito net. creative, eh? its actually really comfortable....

my elementary kids, all lined up for the monday morning flag raising... national anthem is sung...

Blog #7- Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and more

Hello everyone!! I apologize for the INCREDIBLY long delay in updating my blog. I hope the plethora of pictures and the stories I am about to tell will make up for any anxiety/anticipation/disappointment. 

The last time I wrote was before Thanksgiving, right around Obama’s victory, and I was in Mahajunga with other Peace Corps Volunteers. Well, to say the least, SO much has happened since then, and I am in Mahajanga again,(this time for the inauguration, later today)

Some of my favorite comments ( and by this I mean thought provoking/insightful/stereotypical questions thought about the U.S. from a perspective of a Malagasy person) after the elections:

“So Obama is Malagasy?! He looks just like us!”

“So Obama isn’t REALLY American right? Because his father is from Kenya”

“No, he IS really an American. An African-American”

“So what does that make you? Your parents are defiantly not from AFrica”

“No they aren’t. I’m an American too, just like Barak.”

“So you are a real American, and Barak is just an African-american?”

“I bet a lot of white people are mad, right?”

“Do you think someone will shoot him?”

“How can he be president when there is still slavery in the U. S.?”

Yeah, the elections were amazing, interesting and people here were SO happy that Barak won. But, the best part about it was the thought provoking discussions I was able to have with my students and with people in my community about the United States, about the history of the U.S. and about the diversity that exists at home. Lets just say, people are not politically correct here in their speech. There are French (aka Vazaha, or anyone else looking white) Malagasy, and chinese. And they put people in categories accordingly unless you take the time out to explain to them the many different types of people and where they live etc. it was exhausting, but it was such an important and exciting discussion for me to be able to have with people. Dear Barak, thank you for being president and even ALLOWING conversations like this to take place and for barriers to be broken down little by little. Yeah.

Ok, Let’s start with my ThanksgivingS now (yes, that is plural).

My first Thanksgiving, I spent the weekend BEFORE the real thanksgving (date-wise) with three other PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers) at my friends site. Everyone brought something. Most of it was packaged food from home, but it was DELICIOUS!!! Stuffing, mashed potatoes (thanks mom) cranberry sauce, gravy, I brought the chicken and killed it and made fried chicken, green beans, the whole deal. We spent two days eating.

After I got back to my site, my school decided to have a training, I was not part of this, so I went with my friend to the country (deeper into the country than I already am) and lived/farmed with her and her family in the rice patty. Wow. This was something. She asked me if I wanted to walk. I love walking I love hiking, so I was really excited about it… 30 freekin kilometers of mud, rocks, and no shoes (impossible to walk on shoes in that kind of mud) we arrived at her grandmothers palm hut in the middle of a flooded rice field (which by the way I found out later is known as a nesting ground for local crocodiles). Yeah. It was intense. My feel were swollen for two days. We hung out with her grandparents, helped in the rice, walked around the area, went to a really beautiful lake and hung out with some kids, and cooked. It was such an amazing experience. I was there on what happened to be the “real” thanksgiving, and I was explaining to my friend and her family about my family traditions for thanksgiving… the turkey, the food, the football games (that one was a little difficult).

The next morning (thanksgiving morning) I see a turkey tied to one of the wooden poles outside of the house. They bought a turkey for me! And, the grandfathers birthday was that day too, so I make some tortillas and salsa, we killed the turkey, and had a feast (of course, rice was involved, as usual). It was so amazing how wonderful these people were to me. And they taught me so much about rice farming, about culture in the rice patty (appropriate times for planting, cutting, drying, de-shelling) about “fanafody gasy” (Malagasy medicine- people believe that there are mpamosavy’s or witchdoctors, in which one type can poison people and make them fall in love with them, kill them, make them very ill, etc). it was amazing. On the way home, we decided NOT to walk (also because we had to carry HUGE sacks of rice back to my town with us, and that would have been impossible for 30 km.) but to take a Sarety (a zebu-cart/ox-cart like thing… see pictures). AMAZING. It was a fun ride. Things are so much simpler here sometimes…

When I got back home I taught at school for a few weeks. Which, was really getting difficult. Some difficulties included: lack of student participation. Lack of students to have ANY creative thinking skills. Lack of parent appreciation for education. Lack of food and the kids are so hungry they aren’t even concentrating. Lack of seeing a purpose for learning English (hell I cant blame them. Why would they want to learn English when many of them wont ever have the opportunity to use it!) Lack of motivation. Lack of electricity at night to study lessons after a day of school and a day of working the farm/cooking. Yeah. These kids have so many obstacles in the way of their education. They are so beautiful (yeah obnoxious too sometimes, but all kids are) and have so much potential, but no one feeds into that, and addresses that, or praises that. I am doing my best.

The beginning of January, all of my Stagemates (the other volunteers I spent training with last summer for 2.5 months) and I were called together for an in-service training (IST) in the capital. So, we all went to the peace corps house in Tana, and got to see each other, have fun, blah blah, and then have sessions all day/week about our sites/experiences so far etc. I wouldn’t know how any of that went, because I was double dragoning the entire time. Hmmm double-dragoning, what is that? Well let me tell you. It involves liquid/solids/liquid-solids coming out of both ends, if not simultaneously, than one right after another. It was enjoyable. I didn’t even get to go to the training, but was in tana in the medical unit for most of it. I was sick. Im not sure what was wrong, the doctors never gave me an answer, but I got some shots, some medicine, some rehydration salts and I slept for a few days. Oh yeah, and I had some de-worming medication too the week before. I think maybe that’s what it was. Anyways, lucky for me, the day I “revived” and could stand up and walk again, it was time to hit the road for vacation. So, I hauled my luggage into a taxi brusse (a van stuffed with people) with 7 of my stage-mates and we headed south of Tana to Isalo national park.

We stopped in Isalo for three days. The most incredible scenery ever. Hiking. Beautiful. The environment, wicked. You’d be walking and then suddenly there was a little hidden natural spring or waterfall. Or scorpion or lemur. The lemurs were at our campground and came out in the mornings usually. It was really cool. We had an amazing trip there. At nights, we built fires, drank some wine and exchanged songs with the porters and our guide. Actually, it was more like they sang and we listened, cuz we don’t have songs like they do to sing that everyone knows. Lol we all joked at our lack-there-of of culture.

After Isalo, we continued South for a tour-guide training in Tulear. We spent five days there doing that and had Christmas camping on the beach with other PCV’s. We killed a goat, enjoyed the sun (NOT!!! IT WAS SOOO FREEKING HOT) and had some beer. At night, people brought crackers and chocolate and marshmallows, so we made kinda s’mores. It was such a great time…

Coming back north after everything was done was exciting too. The drive was beautiful. We stopped in another large city south of Tana and spent New Years there before heading back to our sites. We went out dancing and had a nice dinner… happy New Year!!!

So when I finally got back to my site, I was sooo happy to be back. My dog got HUGE. My next door neighbor has been taking care of her and she is so happy coming back and forth between the houses (which is a relief to me, cuz it is horrible for her to be all alone the entire time I am gone) and the little boys in my neighborhood LOVE her. They really take care of her and treat her kindly, unlike most dogs around town who are street-dogs and get rocks thrown at them. Once again, people are afraid of dogs. No idea why. Also, people are terrified of chameleons and that is another mystery to me. A grown man screamed the other day when he saw a chameleon. Chameleons are the slowest moving creatures, and they don’t bite, don’t bother, don’t make noises. When I asked why people were scared of them they said because they have ugly faces. Well shit, I know some people with pretty ugly faces around here, and I don’t see you screaming when they walk by ! yeah ok that may have been rude, but they laughed… Also, people are afraid of Owls. They think that the owls are the mpamosavy (witchdoctors) pets and they help them curse people. Interesting. Its all very interesting.

Being back at site after the holidays has been amazing. People have been so warm and welcoming and inviting me to New-year parties. Yeah, so apparently new-years parties happen during the entire month of January. It involves awkward traditional dancing (well actually its really beautiful and fun to watch, its just awkward for me when I am asked to dance and have no idea what I am doing!) beer/soda and a treat called “Kaka-pigeon” (pigeon shit, its some kind of fried flour in little pieces, like cheetoes but no cheese and harder). They have been a lot of fun to go to. Students at the high school, students at the CEG, students at the Nunnery, Teachers at the high school, teachers at the CEG, teachers at the Nunnery, the office staff, each “ethnic” group in my town, all have had separate parties. Its been a really fun past couple of weeks.

One of the difficult things being back at site is that it is January. This means rainy season. This means poor season. People physically look thinner. At the market, there is never meat, and barely any vegetables (I mean, certainly enough to live off of, no problem, just not like before. The market has even shrunk in size!). people are, im pretty sure, eating just rice now, for the most part. Its really hard to see. I have had a lot of people asking for money, asking for help etc. which is so difficult for me, because my job as a PCV is not to give money out to people. And doing so would/could cause some difficult repercussions in my community aka, people always coming for me/thinking I am loaded, increased risk of robbery/burglary, another barrier of actually becoming a member of the community, instead of this foreigner…. Its so complicated, and I wish it didn’t have to be. But, I have been offering my body instead. No not like that. I have been helping people farm their fields. It’s the least I can do. Plus I enjoy it, and get the good gossip in town. 

One quick story about an amazing moment teaching…. I gave my students an assignment to create a dialoge in groups of two-three using vocabulary from the “likes/dislikes and borrowing/lending” vocabulary we just did. One group of three boys gets up and this is how their diagloge went (may I just add they made no grammatical mistakes in their speaking I WAS SO PROUD OF THEM, I GOT TEARS IN MY EYES!!!) ok and first some background information, I did a section with my high school students on American music/culture and used Will Smiths “Fresh Prince of Belaire” song to teach about media/music for a week. We took the vocabulary and I explained a little of the “slang” that they would come across if they ever meet an American aka “gonna vs. going to”, “chill vs. relax/hang out”, “to shoot hoops vs. to play basketball”…things like that… they loved it. (and they are crazy about basketball here, so the terms they were able to express made them so excited and happy!) also, I have been sharing information about the elections with my students, about the two candidates about democrats vs. republicans, in the most unbiased manner I could think of… yeah, probably could’ve tried a little harder with that… and have been showing them pictures from the elections in the magazines (thanks mom, again) I have received.

Ok so here is the dialoge they made up:

Hey! Will Smith, whats up, how are you?!

Hey John MCcain! , not much, I am fine, how are you.

Who is your friend.

This is my friend hamado.

Nice to meet you!

What can I do for you Will Smith?

John McCain, I like you. I need to borrow your ox-cart. I need to go somewhere.

Oh I am sorry. I need it.

Oh. Well ok then.

See you

See you later.

Simple, short, but it was sooooo funny, and so cute, and they TOTALLY had the expressions down perfectly and they way they were creative and integrated what we have previously talked about in class was awesome. I was proud. Maybe its hard for you readers to understand why I would get so excite ( I just re-read the dialogue and realized its not that impressive AT ALL lol) but its little moments of victory like this that make this entire experience worth it, a thousand times over.

Until Next time…. Lauren

ps, “next time” wont be until March… its rainy season, my roads are almost already impassable. Ill be blessed to get back to my site within a day of travel tomorrow…

pps. I am officially moved to my new post box. Don’t forget to send mail there

B.P. 200

Mahajanga 401

Madagascar

Me on the beach in Katsepy... in the backround you can see Mahajanga across the bay.

this is a funny picture.... its a GIANT RAT... i wish i had a comparative, like my foot in the pictures... it was bigger than my foot, by the way... disgusting... it got jacked by a pousse-pousse driver... ill post a pic of a pousse-pousse next time i can...

My puppy, Bubs!! she's getting big! and her ears are starting to resemble Uncle Bob's!!! She eats more than I do now. It's really annoying actually... but i love her company

what my high school classroom looks like. imagine 70 bodies stuffed into this room. yeah. its hot alright.

the giant lizard that lives in my mango tree. he's cool, just really really big

an incredible view of a town very close to mine. its beautiful here.

this is a brochette lady. brochette are delicious meat cut up and friend on sticks... you eat it with paco paco... also delicious bread-like tortilla things... the doctors would strongly suggest not eating this kind of street food... but who can resist?

the beach in Mahajanga where i went later after election day. very chill. no people. hot, bathwarm water... AMAZING

my friend and I early in the morning after watching the election results at a local hotel in Mahajanga SO HAPPY!

So i thought that having this giant mango tree outside of my house would be like the most amazing thing ever... when have i ever lived in a place where i could have fresh mangoes drop from the sky all day long?

Well... let me tell you how wrong I was..... with having a mango tree, it does indeed involve many delicious mangoes which do drop like rain every day. However, just like everything, negative aspects naturally trail the positive. its all about balance...

Most mornings i go running... to stay in shape, to think by myself, to feel productive... when i go running, i get up at 4:30 and sneak out before my neighbors get up... its still dark. by the time

I return circa 6:00ish, there are approximately 10 neighborhood kids lined up at my fence not just waiting in a nice orderly line (just a note, people i am pretty sure, dont know what a "line" is here, not to mention the idea of "lining up") but literally fighting with each other to be the first to be let into my fence. no hello from the kids. nothing. just.... mango frenzy...

The second I open up the fence, it is like the gun just went off at the olympics and kids RUN, STAMPEDE into my fence to gather all of the mangoes, which usually ends up with AT least two kids fighting and the smallest of the bunch, I'll call him "D", falling down face-first in the dirt while the older kids trample him. For this, i try to keep two mangoes in storage to give to him from the day before, otherwise, he SCREAMS his little lungs out.

Now, if i DONT go running, perhaps i am feeling like sleeping in until 5:30 or 6:00 or perhaps just really want some quite time alone in my house reading, cooking, whatever, the kids start screaming through my fence "Miss Lauren Lauren Lauren LAurennnnnnnn, give us mangoes! give us mangoes!! we are hungry!!!!" You would think i would drop what i was doing and run to open the gate for thsoe sweet hungry little children... but I dont. i am trying to teach them patience. i am trying to teach them respect. but failing miserably. i am pretty sure i just have to learn to ignore them, or sleep with ear plugs. you may think i am being a horrible person. but trust me, this not only happens in the mornings, but every hour of every day. i have no privacy anymore. kids, adults alike baning on my door jfor mangoes. and i cant let everyone in. i have my safetly to worry about.

I hvae started allowing kids only into my fence three times a day to get mangoes at scheduled times. other than that, people can forget it. my language of rejecting people has gotten better though. i have really learned how to say no and have really learned how to build my boundary for people to respect and for my limits. because trust me, every single day, my limits are tested by people here. how far they can push me, what they can get from me. my final decision on this matter, because i am REALLY frustrated, is to make it all into a joke. when someone demands i give them my earrings, i tell them, these arent earrings, they are cows. and they laugh, think i am dumb or cant speak the language correctly, and leave me alone. or, i play dumb and act like i dont understand. or say i am in a hurry. many coping mechanisms. they are important!!!!

Other than the mango tree saga *which i am sure will continue the MINUTE i get back to my house, I have just spent an AMAZING past couple of days in Mahajanga with my fellow volunteers who have gathered here to be with each other for the elections among other reasons. We woke up really early Wednesday Morning (tuesday evening US time), found the only TV in this town , gathered around and waited, waited waited. It was really amazing, the outcome i mean, and many of us were teary-eyed listening to the speech of our soon-to-be new boss. It especially touched me when he aknowledged all of "those Americans in forgotten corners of the world, huddled around radioes" because that was literally us! I mean we were huddled around a TV, but most of us rarely ever see tv's and if we are lucky, like myself will have the luxery of a radio at one's site. It touched me.

We celebrated last night alongside our friends birthday with pizza and red wine. which was by far the most expensive meal i have had in a loooooooooooong time (i could buy food for a week with waht i spent for dinner last night) but it was well worth it. it was definately a day for celebration!!!

I will be heading back to my site tomorrow which i am excited and ready for. its funny.... you know you are well adjusted (or at least used-to/getting used-to everything) when you leave for a weekend to do whatever, and you actually miss your house, your commmunity, in my case, my dog... and even my mango tree.

The next time I will be able to write will be Decemberish when i go to the capital for IST... its the first meeting all of my group-mates from my Education Stage, will meet up and discuss our progress/issues/get prepped on ideas for secondary project etc... I CANT WAIT. but, that measn i will not be in touch for appx six weeks. I will get to spend thanksgiving with a couple of friends though, not in a town with internet. my part of the thanksgiving meal, buying and killing the chickens (there ARE turkeys in this country, however FAR to expensive and way to much meat for four peopole to share) and brining two big boxes of instant mashed potatoes my mom sent... YUM! looking forward to an interesting feast!!!

until then.....

-Lauren

Hello everyone!

my address will change in January as I am going to be sharing a mail-box with another volunteer, since it is cheaper and more easily accessible this way....

my new address will be:

Madamoiselle Lauren Kendall c/o Tara Smiley

B.P. 200

Mahajanga 401

MADAGASCAR

Thank you so much again to all of you writing me e-mails

Also, it has come to my attention that perhaps I have posted the wrong phone number... so i am going to repost those as well

I have two numbers and either can be reached at any time

011261-0325866256

or

011261-0331383301

Blog #5- Officially a Teacher!

So, I remember telling my mom when I graduated from high school, that the only thing I never wanted to do was to be a teacher. Wow. Here I am living in Madagascar in a small dinky town teaching classes of 70 students English. How did I get here again?

Things are going really great with teaching. My high school students are a little wild (aka, rowdy, hormonal, moody, loud, like any other teenager in any other part of the world) but I think it is working out really well. I am still trying to get the hang of teaching… I mean, I speak English well enough, but when students ask me questions about gerund phrases and past participles and things of that nature, I do what any normal teacher would do… I whip out the grammar books provided by peace corps. So helpful, so necessary. I think I personally am learning more about my language than I am teaching. And it is so helpful to teach my language in order to learn Malagasy. The more I understand the structure of the English language, the more I get the Malagasy structure (by sheer comparison) I also mostly compare it to the German language too, as I seem to know better German grammar than English. Imagine that. I guess my Denison University billion dollar education has worked in some way. Speaking of German, I WILL NOT lose it when I am here… so most of my journal entries are in German, and most of the books I read are in German. But still, its crazy cuz I know I am losing some of it (LEO, HELP ME!!! Lol)

Mangoes are coming in season, and my beautiful giant mango tree next to my house is slowly but surely producing ripened juicy mangoes… so good. Today I ate five. Its so nice to go outside and pick up food and not have to pay for it. It tastes that much better. Also, the coconuts here are ridiculous! I am learning to cook pretty well from natural foods which, is certainly a change from my easymac and raman noodles form college… although, I am not gonna lie, I would LOVE some easy mac right about now!!! Other than mangoes and coconuts, there are fruits called Fenesy or Jackfruits in my town. They look like giant porcupines things and are delicious on the inside. I don’t know how to explain them though. When you cut them open it looks like flower petals on the inside, but the taste of the fruit is so unique. Yum!!

I am currently on the internet in Mahajanga, which is the city I go to every month to bank, and break. My favorite thing to do here, is to eat brochettes and pacopaco and mangahazo on the street at night with a nice cold beer. I really don’t think it gets any better!~ brochettes are like shichkabobs but think really small, paco paco is like tortilla but think with flour not corn and with added coconut. And mangahazo is cassava. Soo delicicious. And I am pretty sure you all know what beer is.. by the way, Madagascar only has one main kind of beer THB (three horses beer) . I often wonder why it is horses and not cows, or pigs or even lemurs… I dunno just a thought.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me e-mails and letters and packages. Please keep it coming. It means the world to me to open up my post box once a month and get real mail. Its such a wonderful feeling to still know I have a connection to the outside world. Sometimes I feel like I am so cut off and secluded I don’t know what to do with myself. My dog is really great company. As are my flowers and small garden I have started behind my house. It’s a good way to talk to people.. they think I am crazy a little but then they laugh and I laugh and it’s a funny thing… especially with my dog. People think I am nuts to let the dog in the house and to pet the dog and to feed the dog out of a bowl. I can only imagine what they say when I am not around, but I like it ecasue it is a great topic of discussion, not to mention a great way to learn new vocabulary like : I am not crazy, or he will not bite you if you do not run, or he eat more rice than I do. All of these things make life funny. And why not laugh at the situation, right?

On top of teaching and trying to handle all of the students at the high school, I am still waiting for my schedule at the elementary school. I am a little frustrated because school was supposed to have started three weeks ago and I haven’t even received my schedule let alone start teaching there. So, I am, nonetheless, going a little stir-crazy. In my overwhelming amount of spare time, I have started running in the mornings, taking long afternoon naps, and putting my energies into trying to cook Malagasy food. I have finally managed to make an acceptable pot of rice and a delicious coconut fish sauce, or friend fish, or anything with fish basically. One day, I was gutting this deliciously tasty fish, and cut him open and out popped two little baby fish the size of my middle finger. Then I felt bad…. But, never fear, they did not go to waste, my dog was sure to eat those little suckers right up! People in my town also eat a lot of eel (delicious!!!) crab, shrimp and lobster. I love living on the coast! J

I am in town until Saturday morning, so if any of you have anything you need to tell me before next month, let me know! Until then, thank you for the thoughts, the prayers, the e-mails, the letters, I will write again next month.

Ps. I am coming here for the elections. That is all I have to say.

-Lauren

me at the independence day party in June. wow. this seems like forever ago!

Dear Family/Friends!!!

PST (“pre-service training”… peace corps LOVES acronyms. seriously.) is almost over! I am almost in disbelief about how fast it has gone by. It seems just yesterday we were being introduced to our host families, now we have already said our goodbyes!Since the last time I wrote (which was a while ago, I have been out of communication with any technology for a while now) much has happened. We have had our final language exams, we have been to our site visits, we have seen and met other amazing peace corps volunteers as our trainers… and now we are ready *hopefully, to go to our sites and start to teach!

I am in Mantasoa right now, which is where the Peace Corps Training Center is at. I personally like to call it Camp Peace Corps… its basically like a cabin wonderland on lake Mantasoa (largest man-made lake in Madagascar) with canoes and bball court/volleyball court, games, bonfires, and good food. Its pretty great and it’s a nice time to just chill out with our friends here and get prepared for our swearing in on Friday.

Tomorrow morning we will head to Tana (Antananarivo) again for final paperwork with headquarters and then Wednesday we head back here to Mantasoa for two final days of activities with our traning staff which includes a talent show and a mini-olympics with events such as “separating rice” and “chicken killing” we will see how this goes!

Speaking of chickens, my AMAZING wonderful host family sent me with a going away gift of three male chickens! I am really excited to mate them with females I buy at my site and mate them and have eggs every morning and baby chickens too! My host-mom gave me instructions on how to mate them properly and on when to eat them and feed them. Its so funny that my “host-mom” who is like 5 years older than me seems so much older than me in terms of, for example, raising chickens and cooking food. I literally feel like a child here sometimes, not because of my age but because I am constantly experiencing new things that I have to be instructed to do because I have not done them before… but people think I am probably crazy because it is things they have done since they were kids.

Anyways, I suppose I should explain my site-visit since it was AMAZING and was a really cool experience. So here we go: It started out with me and my counterpart who is the equivilant of a principal at the school I will be teaching at. Not only does he not speak English (which was great because I got to speak Malagasy my entire site visit) but he speaks a different dialect of Malagasy which I was not taught. Great. But he was amazing and very nice. We rode for HOURS to get to the main town on the west coast. Then had to take a boat across the ocean/peninsula to get to a smaller beach-town called Katsepy. After that a GRUELING taxi-brusse ride (which is like a van where they stuff people inside… literally stuff. Just when u think no more bodies will fit, five more people get on) for three hours to my site. I left Antananarivo at 4:00pm on Wednesday and didn’t get to my site until almost 10:00pm on Thursday night. It was intense. I was a bit cranky by the end of the trip to say the least… but it was cool!! There was a point in the first leg of the taxi brusse ride where I could actually feel the weather change. It was really really really really HOT at my site. Which apparently I need to get used to but I am really pumped about it because it is pretty chilly at night here on the plateau.

Anyways my site is like being in a completely different country. The people dress differently, and look different, the language is a little different, the food is a little different (other than the rice, yes they eat it on the west-side all the time too) and the weather/landscape is different. In general it is more of what my expectations of Madagascar to look like are… I am so happy with my placement.

This Friday is the swearing in ceremony and after that we are carted off with our installers (who are people to help us get settled in at our sites) to completely move to our sites. I cannot wait until Saturday to leave for my site again, but I will defiantly miss the staff and volunteers here. They are all really amazing and I feel very blessed to have worked with this group of people and am excited to continue to work with them for the next two years.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me letters. It is really really amazing to get mail here since I am pretty out of touch with any other form of technology other than e-mail from time to time.

I hope everyone is doing well! I will post my new address next week when I get it...

Peace Out!

-Lauren

Shout out to Buck- amazing work with HISA. I am so happy and literally cannot wait to go visit next June! You are amazing!

Sia, hope the coup is treating u well in Mauritania J

Emily Kridler…. Glad to hear you are getting ur own place! WAY BETTER!!

Danielle Erwin… Where have u been girl? I have been trying to get ahold of u via text? Xoxox miss you and love u so much girl!

Joseph. Glad u are e-mailing mom and dad. Love u too

Manohoana! (Hello)

Ok, so I have made it through to week three officially. Which really has not been so hard. I have really lucked out with my host family as they are AMAZING and flea-free (which seems to be a luxury with everyone here) and I have not yet gotten sick (which also seems to be a luxury). I am living in a small village right now for training which lasts until August 22nd when I swear-in at the Embassy in Antananarivo a.k.a "Tana" and become an official Peace Corps Volunteer…. Yeah I am still not even considered a volunteer, just a trainee. My family consists of a beautiful little girl 8 yrs old, a funny brother 2yrs old my "mom" 28 years old and dad 35 years old as well as a family relative who lives/works with us age 17. They are basically amazing. They own a store in the lower level of the house and I have been helping out, but minimally as my Malagasy is still pretty choppy.. Obviously. It’s only been three weeks. My mom also takes care of the family pigs, one of which was killed for the Madagascar Independence day party last week… that was seriously crazy waking up and looking outside to see a pig sliced in half… but whatever!!! I have a prime time spot here at my house because it is directly next to the market which happens every Wednesday, and because it is basically like part of the town square, which makes it quite interesting when parties (like the Independence Day one) take place because I get a birds-eye view of everything going on. It is certainly not an uncommon little town for word to get around fast in. people love to talk. What the Americans are doing… which one is sick…. Where the went hiking, who are "Sipa's" or Boyfriend/girlfriend. It is pretty much just like being at Denison all over! J

The language is not that difficult grammar-wise.. for all of you language buff’s : the verb "to be" in Malagasy does not exist! Nor do irregular verbs. Which is sooooo nice, however, that means that adjectives and prepositions have to be put in the past and future tenses which can get tricky. Also many words sound almost exactly the same. Orona (nose) Olona (people) Orola (problem) Orana (rains) they sound basically all the same, especially when people are talking a mile aminute to you. That is the other problem. It is difficult to prounounce the words. The "o" is almost always pronounced as the long sounding "oooo" and people skip words and mix them together. That is the hard part is that it really doesn’t sound anything like any other language I have ever studied so it is difficult relating the words. But little by little, I am getting it

Here is a typical daily schedule in a day of my life:

5:45 wake up.. Go running at the field across from my house

6:30- empty my Po (or indoor bucket for toilet use) and full up my bucket (another bucket, not the Po) with hot water and use the plastic covered logs as shelter for my Ladosy or shower

7:15- eat breakfast… usually consisting of rice or some starch, but now since I have started cooking, eggs or oranges

7:50- clean my room floor with a cut-in-half coconut brush for scrubbing the dirt by using my foot and a broom to sweep it up afterwards

8:00- school starts with either a four hour session of language or a four hour technical session (as in- how the hell we are going to teach here in Madagascar and all of the problems that come with teaching in this country) or a four hour medical/safety and security lesson (as in- how to not get malaria, schisocoliza [don’t even know how to spell that] worms, how to cook food correctly, how to be as safe as possible, how to immediately notify peace corps of an emergency etc)….. Basically that’s everything

12:00- home for lunch- always rice with some sort of "topping" like beans or lentils or soup or meat, and some side dish such as carrots with vinegar, salad with vinegar, tomatoes with vinegar… basically anything with vinegar, which I actually really enjoy… the food is actually really good here… just way too much rice consumption for one person.

12:45ish- either do my laundry hand-washing… it sucks. It makes me appreciate sooooo much having washing/drying machines in the states. You literally soap up every part of your pants/skirt/shirt/underwear and SCRUB it till it’s clean. Its frustrating, but the clothes really do get really clean… then it takes about three days to dry because it is "winter" here now, which means the 50-70 degree weather doesn’t dry it quickly enough for the short period the sun is up.

If I don’t do my laundry, I help out in the store, hang out, study Gasy, and do whatever, till 2:00 when "training" starts up again (which basically feels like I have started elementary school all over again at some points. Which is funny kinda… but then again not so much. ) Afternoon sessions are language, tech, or safety/security…

After class at 5pm I go home or chill outside the school (which is also like three feet from my house) and either help with dinner or help feed the pigs at the other end of town which I really like doing because they are funny and fat and it’s a great time to have time with my host mom talking and plus the walk is beautiful

At 6:30ish/7ish we eat dinner and it always consists of rice and a topping, a side dish, and now, they are making me pasta too…. But not to substitute the rice, they put the pasta on top of the rice.. .no seriously though, a Malagasy meal is not complete without rice, my host mother, who by the way speaks no English, tells me, even if there is pasta, it doesn’t matter.

After dinner at 8ish I usually either play cards or go to my room and get to bed. People go to bed really early here. To bed when dinner is over, awake at the crack of dawn. Literally. But there are roosters to tell you every morning when dawn is if you forget or get lazy and sleep in. they are everywhere, and they run around the town, but everyone seems to know which one belongs to whom. It’s really interesting, the concept of community and private space. Nothing is private here. Everyone just seems to eat the same thing, sleep in the same bed, share EVERYTHING, which is an ideal concept, except for a person like myself who has grown up in a society which praises individualism and who has very much learned personal boundaries from a young age.

Two weeks ago we found out our permanent sites…. The trainers made it really cutsie and taped out a map of Madagascar with clues on our names for us to translate which led us to our sites… I will be at a brand new site in the North West coast of Madagascar near Katsepy. I am really happy about being there, as the west/north is the general area of preference I had. I don’t know much about it, other than it is HOT all the time (which I love) and that I will be starting school (most likely) EARLY in the morning at 6-7 to avoid the heat… which I also don’t mind, seeing as though I am in bed by eight anyways and everyone goes to bed extremely early. It is really funny… I am probably the healthiest I have ever been in a REALLLLY long time! I am eating well, sleeping EXTREMELY WELL (certainly better sleep than any college kid has EVER gotten,) and I am exercising every day… but, I am really looking forward to my own place in August!! The 23rd, I will move in to my new place and will have a few weeks to adjust to town before starting off the school year in the fall. Which will be weird to be all alone... Here at training, it is nice to at least have the other PCV trainees/trainers with me and my kick-ass family… honestly, if there was a competition for the best family, I think I would win. I am definitely going to be back here MANY times to visit. They are too sweet, and sooo patient with my Malagasy and my progress here. My mom keeps telling me that I have so much courage to be here. She is wonderful and I really admire her.

The markets every Wednesdays are really beautiful. Mostly, fruits, veggies and meats are sold, but also candy from Tana, and there are always "Fripery" or second hand-clothes sold. As far as I know, second-hand clothes are about the only clothing that comes into Madagascar… there is a wide range of good-will type clothing which everyone likes to mix and match (as long as its clean and un-holey) which also rarely happens. The dress style here is certainly interesting to say the least. Also, in terms of laundry, most people have laundry people to do it for them. My family does, but I told them I need to learn to do my laundry myself so I can do it at site, but the more I think about it, the more I realize I will probably just hire someone to do my laundry for me. I was upset and taken aback by that a first, but many of our trainers (who are PCV’s currently and come one week at a time, usually in pairs to train us) tell us that in some places, if you as a "Vazaha" or foreigner, do not hire someone, it is looked down upon by the community because you are seen as cheap, because the general opinion is that all Vazaha, no matter gender or color or nationality, is rich. Right. I am volunteering and making basically no money… but that money I do make here goes a long way. The people here are really nice and the kids are so beautiful. It is hard to explain the general appearance of the people because they are all mixed of origin. Many look Native American, or Hispanic or African, while many look Asian as well, and most of them look like mixes of everything, which is beautiful.

Basically, I am so happy here, right now. I feel refreshed. I feel happy. I feel really carefree, and at the same time, constantly full of thoughts. I really do love it here. It does get lonely, but the feeling of loneliness is important for me to have now in my life. I need to experience it, and need to experience being by myself and struggling with my successes and failures and frustrations without anyone around me and without any distractions. I really am so happy to have free-time to read or write or just think or look at the sky. It’s nice to slow-down my college paced mind and just chill.

For all of my friends leaving soon for the Peace Corps (Jonzey, Sia, Treeeeeecia, Duffy) you are going to be CRAZY busy the first months, but just go with the flow. Make good with your family. But just make sure to enjoy yourself. Don’t stress out about the language or about the crazy diseases the doctors will make sure to scare you about. It’s just a part of the job…. And for those of you already serving (EMILYY KRIDLER, Patrick Hamilton) I hope you are enjoying your service as much as me and Emily I will be trying to call you hope you packed enough cold winter clothes!:)

My new phone number is the following:

From the States 001 (261) + 331383301 If you want to call me, just make sure to remember I am 7 hours ahead of Ohio Time or Eastern Time Zone. Don’t call past 9pm my time cuz people will be sleeping!

Basically to sum everything up, I am lucky and blessed to be livin’ the good life here in Madagascar!

Veloma!

-Lauren

So, I am obviously not in Madagascar yet, I really actually have no point in writing this blog right now. Just wanted to write down my thoughts about getting ready to leave VERY VERY soon! (It is 39 days, 1 hour, 43 minutes and 54 seconds until Sunday, June 8, 2008 to be exact!!) I have basically just begun to realize how soon I am leaving because I have been so wrapped up in work, exams, enjoying things at Denison etc... anyways, I am really excited, and happy, and feel very lucky to have nine other friends at Denison who are also getting ready to embark on amazing travels with the Peace Corps as well!!!

Ok, thats all i have to say for now!

Graduating on May 11th!! WAHOOO

-Lauren