3 week survival report...

It has been officially a month since I left home in Bend and I have now completed a full 3 weeks of training!!!! Yay!
Happy 4th of July to all of you in the States. :D Gaby, the Peace Corps cook, made a huge feast fo us yesterday to celebrate...it was kind of a mix of thanksgiving with some hamburgers and hot dogs...and some cake and ice cream too! Delish!
So this internet is seriously costing me and I've been here while already...so let me give you a summary of training.

Where I live:
I live i this little itsy bitsy town on the Platau called Alarobia (Wednesday-named after the market day). Most of the community are farmers so farmland stretches in all directions. Sometimes you get caught off guard by the beauty. The town itself is pretty mehm not a lot to catch and please the eye, but when you step to the edge of the town and look down into the valley...amazing. really. Anyway. I live with Mama Lala. That's what I call her. She is about 60 and then Plantain (yup her name is Banana) lives with us also. She is related some how but I'm unclear of how the whole family in the area is pieced together. We live in a modest house on the outskirts of town, about a 10 minute walk to the training center. The house is 2 story but we only use the uptairs. As you reach the top of the stairs the room to the right is their's the room to the left is mine. At the top of the stairs you walk out onto a porch and to the right we hang laundery and store some stuff, and to the left is the room they use to cook, it can get pretty smoky in there as they use fire to cook. Outside of the room there are 2 little shacks one is the Kabone (outhouse) the other the Ladosy (where i take my marvelous bucket baths.) Life is simple. but pleasent.

Training:
Training is 6 days a week. and that is ok. sometimes it is a lot easier to be in sessions no matter how uningaging than to be at home barely able to communicate and bored...But training is a mix of language classes, technical sessions (teaching, edu and the like), medical sessions, and other things related to Peace Corps. Sometimes training can wear on me a bit, but overall it is good. I'm actually learnig Malagasy. it's rough, but i can communicate very generally. so sucess! in another 3 weeks I'll be owning the language! holler! This next week we start Practicum. So I will be teaching 4 classes a week of mixed level mixed age classes, and we rotate through the levels and classes daily for 3 weeks to give us experience with various levels and parts of the curriculum. It's going to be intense, and I know that it is going to be exhausting, but at least I'll arrive at site with at least some experience teaching, especially teaching malagasy kids!

Food:
So rice. The malagasy people eat more rice per capita than any other country in the world. half a kilo of rice per person perday! now i thought this was an exaggeration before i arrived, but no. IT IS TOTALLY REAL!!!! Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Rice. Tsy vary, tsy voky. (no rice, not full.) With my rice, I usually am served a little meat and veggies, or some beans. but overall, food is pretty simple and really about being full more than eating balanced. I find myself buying lots of snacks, crackers and candy, to add some flavor and variety to my life...but I am also getting a little self concious about the amount of carbs, just carbs I am consuming daily. (Mama Lala eats more rice in one meal than I eat of food in an entire day!) So I am going to start getting yogurt for my snack, I found out one of the little shops has it. :D


But, overall life is good. I am well and healthy. (I've not been sick other than a very minor cold since I arrived...) I am happy and content here. And I am sooooo ready to be headed to my Site! which is................................MARAVOAY! it should be on most maps. it is in the NW of the country, located near Mahajunga. I'm about 2 hours from the ocean and headed to a medium sized town. I live on the middle school compound in what i've been told is a big, nice house. :D I don't know a lot about it. but I'm excited!!!! Coastal life sounds a little more exciting than Plautau life! Yay!!!

I just bought a phone today and can recieve calls and txts from the US :D So I'd love to hear from you that way if you are willing and able to spend the dinero to call. Otherwise, my next access to internet will probably be in about 4 weeks when I head to my site. So this is it. Au reviour! We do get mail one to two times a week from Tana so send me some!!!! it's a little lonely here and I would love to hear from you!!!! My address is posted perviously it is less than a 1 dollar to send me a note and I promise to write back...plus I don't have very many addresses of people to start writing! so write me.

my ### here is : 001-261-033-174-8661 (I think this is right when dialing from the US, but play with it and I'm sure it depends on phone cards and such. 001 is the us exit code, 261 is the Mad code, and then it's my ###)

love, peace and besos.
Whitney