I took my first holiday to Victoria Falls in Zambia! It was amazing! I went with 7 of my friends and we stayed for 4 days and three nights. Victoria Falls is the largest waterfall in the world and it's one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. It's too hard to describe it's beauty so I have a ton of pictures for you to see below.

While we were there, I went bungee jumping over the falls! It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. In addition, I also went white water rafting. I didn't like that so much, and my body was so sore for days after. Anyways, check out the photos below of my crazy adventure in Zambia!

Here is the link to see the video of me jumping off the bridge. Check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiba3U8tCM

Things have been going pretty well lately. This morning I got my pre-natal class approved. It will be 8 weeks long meeting once a week for an hour. I am going to cover topics like reproductive health (how they got pregnant in the first place), what to expect during their pregnancy and labor/delivery, how to eat a balanced diet, breastfeeding, basic newborn care, etc. Hopefully a lot of women will sign up... but I'm not sure how it will go.

So I wanted to show you all what the hospital looks like and some of the things I have been doing since I arrived in Nyangana. A few weeks ago I got to go out into the villages and teach alcohol and drug education in the schools. My coworker took some pictures and I've posted them below along with pictures of the hospital!

The hallway outside the Admin building where I get my internet access!The entrance to the Out Patient Department where my office (without internet) is located.

The front gate of the hospital (here spelled "hospita")

Nyangana District "Hospita"

Some fliers out front.New Start, our voluntary counseling and testing center where people can get tested and treated for HIV free of charge.

Doctors housing.

Some of the learners (a.k.a. students) that I taught. These ones won prizes for answering questions correctly in our quiz competition.

My coworker (and we share an office together) Mr. Kudumo talking to the kids.

Me talking to a HUGE group of learners. They filled the entire hall!

Me, my counterpart Helga, and our driver Christoph, still talking to the learners.

Me talking to another (but smaller and more manageable) group of learners.

And STILL talking :)

Another group of learners who won prizes.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures! Stay well!

4th of July was spent in Rundu! All of the Peace Corps volunteers staying in the Kavango Region met up in Rundu for the weekend. The houses were packed with people, but it was still a lot of fun. We celebrated on Saturday by having a BBQ. It was a great time. See pics below!!!

Me and my friend Emily.

A good old American game of football.

Caitie, Me and Emily.

Me and Kate.

Me, Justin and Kate. You can see the football game in the background.

Me and Lee. He is the closest volunteer to me, about 20 km away.

Ok, so I know it's a blurry picture, but there were some kids around and some of the volunteers were giving them piggyback rides.

Justin enjoying his dinner of pasta salad. It was soooooo good!

So these next pictures are the sequence of events when Katie Brown was trying to hit the pinata. Yes... Ashley made a pinata shaped like a penguin that said Freedom on it. Why? I'm not sure! And yes... we used a broom as a bat :)

Katie after she was spun around the first time.

Katie about to put a dent in the wall of the house... missing the pinata. This is a good shot of the "Freedom."

Katie hit the pinata this time, but broke it on the first hit so it could no longer hang.

Nick and Alex trying to rehang the pinata off of the DSTV dish. Poor freedom penguin :(



The poor penguin now is being hung with the rope around its next. Katie did manage to hit the penguin without breaking it this time.

After the Freedom pinata, we ended the night with fireworks. But not good ones. They were cheap and colored green and red. It was more like Christmas in July than Independence Day. Someone managed to get sparklers too, so that was fun. And then we sang a few patriotic songs then ended the night. Overall, it was a very nice 4th of July. Hope you all enjoyed it back in the states.

Here are some pictures from NID:Me and my team.

Giving polio drops in the bush.

Elephant dung!!!!

Out in the bush just before sunset.

Sunset in the bush.

Sunset again. It's so pretty!

A school in a nearby village.

A donkey in the bush. They tie their two front feet together so they can't run away. This makes them hop everywhere as you can see in this action shot.

Two of my friends riding the donkey. I was too afraid (and too short) to get on it.

The gravel road leading into the bush.

A dirt road leading into the bush.

A homestead along the gravel road.

A cute baby goat! I wanted to take it with me.

The back of our truck. It was full of pumpkins that one family gave us. They were very tasty! And one girl was given a chicken seen sitting in the tire.

On the edge of the Kavango River.

The Kavango River late in the afternoon.

A really nice chair in the village.

The nicest homestead I've seen so far.

So pretty.

So that's it for now. Hope you are all doing well back at home!

This week I will be working out in the field for National Immunization Day. We will be vaccinating babies 6-11 months for H1N1, children 6-59 months for Polio, and 0-59 months for Vitamin A. It will be a very busy week and I will not be in the office very much. I am bringing my camera with me so I will post pictures sometime next week!

Sad news... one of my host families dogs died this morning. His name was Matuguemena. Two days ago he came home and it looked like his hip was broken. We think that someone in the village beat him. He passed away sometime during the night last night. Very sad. I called him Gina's boyfriend. They were very close.

Hope you are all doing well at home! Miss you all!

Life has been... well... eventful here in the past few days. The weekend was nice. Saturday was a national holiday, May Day also known as Workers Day. I did laundry for the better part of the morning. And when I say laundry, I mean hand washing. My fingers peeled by the end of it. It is brutal! Mom, you can do my laundry anytime now! I know how you love it! I am seriously missing a washing machine.

On Monday I discovered that some of the sisters at the mission bake fresh bread and sell it daily. I bought a loaf for $10. It is the best bread I have ever tasted. I'm going to be spoiled by the time I come back home. Store bought bread is just not gonna cut it from now on.

Yesterday was also a national holiday so I didn't have to go to work. In fact, I was invited over to the house of the brothers here at the mission for dinner. It was very nice. But there was one draw back to the evening... the spitting cobra at the door. Spitting cobras look like this:

I was wondering why I was ushered in the door so quickly when I arrived. Later in the evening, Father Charles (no not you Dad... haha. What a coincidence, right?) told me that he had killed a spitting cobra in the house earlier that day, but it wasn't dead yet and he didn't want me to see it on the way in. I did, however, take a peek on the way out that night after it was dead.

I guess snakes are really common here. A black mamba was killed in the computer center last week. I have filled a pair of socks with sand and put them in front of my door to cover the crack between the door and the floor so hopefully that will prevent any snakes from getting into my house. And hopefully if one does get in, Gina will let me know about it. The last Peace Corps volunteer who lived in my house apparently had an uninvited guest during her stay a few years ago. The water is really high here now so I guess alot of snakes are around. They mostly live in the trees here so I try not to walk under them. And there are no trees over my house so that is nice.

Aunt Cheryl... please don't freak out! I know you are terrified of snakes.

I will be in Rundu this Saturday into Sunday so that would be a good time to call me. I will have great service there on my cell phone. Missing you all!

The tower has been fixed and now I have cell service again. Yay! Just wanted to throw that update out there.

So here is my new dog Gina!

Gina being bad and sitting on the chair.

Action shot! Gina rolling around on the ground cuz I was home for lunch.

Gina about to enjoy her lunch too.

Isn't she cute?

Finally, she is worn out :)

She is about 2 years old. I got her from the SPCA in Rundu. If you would have seen her 2 days ago you would have thought she was a different dog. When I went to take her home from the SPCA, she wouldn't walk to the car. I had to carry her. Then she wouldn't walk into the house, so I had to carry her. She was so scared, poor thing. She was raised at the SPCA so that's all she has ever known. I'm sure it was a shock to her. But now she is happy and runs and jumps and she seems to be house broken too (big plus!). She spends nights in my hut with me, walks with me and Rosemary to work in the morning, spends the day at my house at the mission, and then walks home with us at night. I love having her around. She is deff going to make these next 2 years less lonely.

So last night we had a huge thunderstorm for hours! It rained so hard and it was so loud on my tin roof (or zinc roof as they call it here). I would think to myself, "I don't think it could get any louder." Oh, was I wrong. Every time I thought that to myself, it somehow got louder. And the lightening was incredible! It would light up my whole hut! Gina did pretty well through the storm. She got frightened a few times and would come sleep next to the bed. But she would go back to her mat at the foot of the bed eventually. The storm did manage to knock out the cell tower so we have no cell service right now. I'm not sure when that will be fixed.

I wish I could explain more what it is like here and I how I feel, but it's really difficult. I guess the best way to explain it is that Peace Corps is like a roller coaster. Some days your up, but most you're down. At least right now. I don't think the mefloquin is helping the emotional roller coaster either. But we have been warned about the roller coaster, so I just have to push through it. I mean, some things are gonna turn into great stories. And I can already laugh at my emotional instability. It's also fun to hear about other people roller coasters. I'm telling you... great stories. It's hard not only being away from everyone at home but from my fellow group 31ers. We spent an intense 2 months together and now we are spread out over the entire country. And I won't see the majority of them until late July or early August at Reconnect. But I am planning a trip to Victoria Falls in Zambia just after Reconnect with some of my friends. So that's deff something to look forward to! And I am planning on spending Christmas in Cape Town, so that will get me to the new year. THEN... my parents are coming to visit in April of 2011, so I know I can deff make it till then. Just gotta plan some more trip for the second year of service! Botswana is deff on the list!

So, as soon as I have cell service back I will let you know. Until then, Gina and I will just be chillin in the hut!

I don't have anything new really to report, so I guess I'll just list a bunch of random things that have happened to me lately.

-There is a small gecko that keeps getting into my house at the mission. He wiggles his way under my door and runs around my living room. Every time I chase him out with a shoe but he comes back every afternoon. I guess he hasn't learned his lesson.

- I get up everyday at 5:15am... yes that's right Mom and Dad. I can function at that hour and not be grumpy. Granted, I don't talk much on the walk to work because I haven't had any coffee yet. I make that in my house at the mission before work along with a bowl of oatmeal. Yumm.

-I have almost eaten an entire jar of peanut butter this week. To quote one of my fave movies, "It's gonna be some kind of a record!" - Ave Ventura When Nature Calls.

- The malaria medicine I am taking has a great side effect, it gives you these super real dreams! It also makes you hallucinate! I have extremely vivid dreams almost every night and I have hallucinated three times since I've been here. The first time I woke up in my bed and I saw and air conditioner on the wall. I also felt the cold air coming from it. I remember thinking, "oh this feels nice." Then I realized that I don't have air conditioning, and that it wasn't real. So I went back to sleep. The second time, I woke up again in the middle of the night and saw my 3 year old host brother Mackenzie in the corner of my room. He smirked at me and laughed and then he hid his face in the corner. Then I realized that my door was locked so there was no way for him to get in. That's when I knew it wasn't real. The last time was just before I went to bed. I was sitting under my mosquito net when I felt and heard a bee fly past my ear. I freaked out, but there was no bee under my net or in my room. My windows were also closed. Oh the fun of Mefloquin!

- On my cell phone here in Africa, I can check my bank account balance, I can surf the web, and I get 100 free text messages a day. I had none of this back in America. Who would think that you would have to move to Africa to learn about cell phone technology?

So, that it for now. Please note that I have updated my address. It is on the sidebar. Stay well everyone!