O Hai

So I'm leaving in five (5) days! Ahhh getting excited. Figured I'd do an update here before I head out...

I graduated from Seattle U June 12th (!), and moved from Seattle back to Oakland for a few weeks. It's been awesome hanging out with friends and family here. I've also been spending a fair amount of time figuring out what to bring with me to Madagascar. Luckily, THREE volunteers currently serving in Madagascar wrote blog posts on what we should pack. They were really helpful; I think when the next group of volunteers is getting ready to head into Mcar, I'll just write a post linking to those three :)

Since my last post, I found out I'll be staging in Philadelphia before leaving the US. It will be a one day orientation/registration event for the 28 of us departing for Madagascar. Since I'm leaving from the West Coast, I'll be getting in the night before and will have the whole next morning to spend at Paddy's... But seriously, I will be getting a legit cheesesteak the morning after I get in.

I also found out some information about what training will be like. I might as well write about it now, because I've been told that I will have Internet access only a couple of times during that ~9 week period. Training takes place about 70 km from the capital of Antananarivo. I will be spending the first four weeks living with a Malagasy (the name for the people of Madagascar) family, attending language and other training sessions during the day. For the second half of training, I will be staying at the Peace Corps training center in the same town. One volunteer called it Camp Peace Corps because it is on the shore of a lake. But another one said that it will be like Seattle in November, so I don't know how much canoeing I'll be doing.

All for now. I'll try to post from Philadelphia. A la prochaine!