Hello friends,

After months of no blogs (there really was no internet), this blog may be a bit of a surprise; this posting is coming not from Guyana but the United States. I've made the difficult decision to cut my service short after 6 months in Guyana, for personal reasons, and I returned home this past week. I will be continuing my adventures in Minnesota for now. Keep in touch!

I wanted to address the language questions many people have posed....Guyana's official lanaguage is English. The majority of people also know "proper" English but Creole (Guyanese) is spoken in the home and with friends. Guyana is considered to be a part of the Caribbean community and the Creole English spoken here reflects that. It is a Creole not too unlike what you'd hear in Jamaica, but also pretty different. It is, from what I can understand, English with a few grammar rules changed or simplified. There are two kinds of Creole; Meselect and Basilect, the latter being the hardest to understand. I can understand a lot of what people say but some accents and harder than others and it really can seem to be a foreign language. If it is a child, forget about it! They can be so hard to understand. Many people will take mercy on a foreigner and speak slowly or in English. The Peace Corps Volunteers who have been here a year already seem to have no problem understanding even the hardest of accents, and those who have made the effort can speak it themselves.

To give you an idea, here are some phrases in Guyanese:

1. Me nah undastand a word of wha yeh seh, nuh! : I don't understand a word of what you're saying!

2. Waam, bai? or Wappenin, gurl? : What's up, man, girl?

3. Wa ya name? : What's your name?

4. Me goin to da market dis marning. : I'm going to the market this morning.

5. She nah walk wit she foot, she walk wit she mouth : This is basically saying that this girl is a huge gossiper- she "walks with her mouth". Gossiping is rampant here, and you shouldn't be surprised if everybody is all up in your business!

6. And the inspirational quote we all need sometimes: "Turle can't walk if he nah push he head outta he shell" : You can't move forward and make progress unless you are willing to take risks.

Luckily, I am from Minnesota, the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" and I've totally embraced all of the water in this country. However, there are unlucky people who get seasick on water, and unfortunately there are so many areas of the country (including the city I will be living in) that are unreachable unless you get into a boat and slam across the water for varying lenths of time- across river deltas, up rushing rivers into little Amerindian villages, out on ferries in the ocean, in every case, the boats being packed to the limit and sometimes even taking on water.

Here are some general Guyana stats to give you an idea about the country. The population is around 750,000, and it is one of the only countries where the population has not grown in the past 10 years. It is hot and HUMID, and since it's about 5 degrees about the equator, the sun will burn you quickly (people walk around using umbrellas as sun shades, and they also protect against the frequent rainfall, the kind where the sky just opens up and pours with no warning). It is currently the rainy season, and there is another one starting in December, and in between is the dry season which I am nervous about since it will get even hotter. Here you take at least 2 showers a day; it helps with the heat and deters the mosquitos. Depending on where you are you might get a hot shower, but I've been enjoying rainwater showers!

There are things I've really come to appreciate about Guyana, one being its beauty. It is covered with pristine rainforest, savannah, and mountains. It has the world's largest single-drop waterfall, Kaiteur Falls. The only problem is the transportation - it is pretty tough to get many places, and sometimes there are no roads to get there; often times, it is a gravel, pot-hole filled road which may flood in the rainy season. This is the kind of place 4X4 vehicles were built for. My first impression of Guyana was coming in on the airplane, when I was aware we were going to land but could not see any lights and was astonished when we hit the runway. We were either landing in the middle of the forest or the electricity for the houses that really were there was cut off by that hour (we got in at llpm, and electricity in some places is just from 6-10pm). It is a lot less-developed than any other place I've been, is what I'm trying to say. Then of course, I stepped off the plane and was hit with the wall of humidity.

Here is a short history of Guyana; the country has been under the influence (most recently) of the Dutch, the French and the British and you can see a bit of each culture here - for example, the excellent drainage systems created by the Dutch, the French names of cities (La Belle Alliance, La Jalousie), the British legacy of driving on the left side (I'll never get used to that). In 1831, Guyana became British Guyana, and then the country gained independence from the British in 1966 and is now a Democratic Republic. Slavery here ended in 1939 and after that indentured servants were brought from Portugal, India and Asia. Now, the majority of people are E. Indians, then Afro-Guyanese, Amerindian, and there is also Asian, European and Portuguese heritage (the Portuguese are not categorized with the Europeans because they were brought as indentured servants). Today, Guyana is a migrant country and is one of the rare countries where the population has not grown in the past 10 years.

And the most important thing you need to know about Guyana: Danny Glover is from here. (Don't quote me on that, I didn't check my facts, but the gossip reached me so I am passing it on).

Dear Family and Friends,

Welcome to my blog! I hope this message finds you happy and well! I have created this journal in order to write about experiences during my time as a Peace Corps Trainee and now (we had the Swearing-In Ceremony yesterday) a Volunteer. I just completed the 8th week of the 8-week training program for the Peace Corps in Guyana (for those of you who've never heard of it- there are many, don't worry- it is a small country in South America bordered by Venezuela, Brazil, Surinam and the Atlantic Ocean).

This day has been a long time coming. I'd thought about joining the Peace Corps since spending an excellent year studying abroad in Ecuador. I eventually turned in my application just after Molly and Bryan's unforgettable wedding day last September. Afterward, I headed off to France and worked as an English Teaching Assistant in a French middle/high school in Montpellier. It was an amazing year and now, writing about it seems an overwhelming task.... I'll just say, in short, it was one of the happiest times of my life! The quality of life there is extremely good (chocolate, cheese, wine, good friends, nice people, beautiful language, relaxed atmosphere, astonishingly beautiful architecture, 35 hour work weeks, the Mediterranean Sea, what more do you need). I became friends with other teaching assistants who were serious travelers and we got to explore around the south of France and embarked on some voyages through Spain, Andorra, Italy, Germany and England. I ran the Paris Half-Marathon with some other teaching assistants. There were so many people in the race, I was knocking elbows the whole time. The teaching program ended April 30th and after that I spent 2 lovely weeks at home in Minnesota, racing around, and managing only to see a fraction of the people I'd hoped to see....

My adventure with the Peace Corps, which will last 28 months, started May 26th when I tore myself away (again!) from my mom and dad and got on the plane to Miami. There were 2 days of orientation where I met the 34 other trainees (actually 35, unfortunately one girl dropped out after 3 days in Guyana), who are mostly in their 20s but also includes a handful in their 30s and one just entering her 50s. On Wednesday the 28th we took the plane to Georgetown, the capitol, nicknamed the Garden City because of its many trees and parks (nowadays, sadly, not very well-kept). It is a fast-moving city of 300,000 where mini-buses and taxis fly around blasting club music, animals walk the roads (it is not uncommon to see a horse or donkey-drawn carriage drive by), trenches lead out to the sea, pickpockets run rampant. Georgetown has architecture unlike any other I've seen. It has a colonial feel, and also the world's largest free-standing wooden structure, St. George's Cathedral.

After spending a couple days in Georgetown we headed off to the coast, piling all 34 Trainees into speed boats for the bumpy 40-minute ride across the Essequibo River to the Essequibo Coast, where we were placed with different host famililes during training. It is an agricultural area and rice farming is the main industry here. There is a lot of livestock; many families raise their own chickens, keep goats and sheep (which provide my favorite background noise), roosters (my least favorite , but a good natural alarm), cows, donkeys... all of which cross the main public road any time they want. The other day I was greatly amused by an intense bull fight which broke out on the road outside my house, creating a minor traffic jam. Since there is only one main road, this sort of animal traffic makes the going very slow, but I am thankful for these unexpected speed-limit enforcers, since many cars wouldn't seem to heed a speed limit otherwise. However, the other Trainees have seen cute little cats, kittens, dogs, and more, being taken out under cars which refused to slow down! Yikes.

I am currently living with two host parents (who have left to visit a daughter in Toronto) and their son Darsh and his wife, Sharon. They are a family of East Indian origin. The village where I've been staying is mainly E. Indian and the people have retained a lot of their Indian culture. Although I have yet to attend a wedding or big ceremony, I've seen many Bollywood films, learned to cook curry/naan(called roti here)/daal etc., attended religious services at the mandir and Sai Ba center (a group that worships Sai Baba, a man in Southern India, and the service is 2 hours of continuous singing in Hindi). My family has a very impressive garden and they grow all of their own fruits and vegetables and sell them at the market. One of the highlights of my life is the mango tree in our yard- I'm used to having to pay $2 for a mango in the states. My family lives right on the Atlantic Ocean and the sunrise is incredible; however, in this area tragically it is not advised to swim in the ocean since it is not too clean. Because (if I'm not mistaken) of the fast-running rivers and waterfalls, the water is brown with sediment and that runs into the ocean, creating a brown sheen which nearly reaches Trinidad. When the sun is shining on the sea, it kind of looks like a desert. Life here on the coast is slow-going and relaxing, and people (well, the less hard-working ones) spend time "liming and gaffing" -standing around and chatting/gossiping....although people are hard-working. Many families are up and working before 6am... possibly to take advantage of the hours when you can still move without breaking a sweat.

During these 8 weeks of training I have spent an incredible amount of time, every day except (most) Sundays in class with 33 other Trainees. There are 16 in the Health Sector, 4 in IT Education and 14 in Education, me formerly in the latter category but now I've been placed in an IT Education site. My city is located in the mountains, right on the border with Venezuela, and near the coast. It is suposedly an enchantingly beautiful city; I guess I'll find out when I get there tomorrow! As for now, there is no internet capability in the city, however another Volunteer and I are working on getting it there...so, I may or may not be keeping up this blog, depending on the internet status. However, if you'd like to receive a snail mail letter, send it to me here or at my email address if you'd like! If no blogs come because I don't have access, the next post will be when I come back to Georgetown for more training in November. Tomorrow I fly out to my site, (there are no roads reaching over the numerous rivers in the jungle) the other options being a perilous 24-hour ferry ride over the ocean from Georgetown(not surprisingly the cheapest option) or a 7-hour speed boat ride from the coast. So tomorrow when I reach my site, I start the exciting process of community integration! Wish me luck!

P.S. I also have a new cell phone - let me know if you'd like the number. Trust me, getting a phone call from a familiar voice makes my week, sometimes month.