Home for the Next Two Years!

September 20, 2011

Hello from my new pad in my new city! A lot has happened in the last month so I’ll try to write about some of it here.

We the education trainees taught English to students in Mantasoa for three weeks in Aug/Sep. It was really tiring but helped us all out a lot with our teaching.

Other than that, the second half of training was pretty uneventful until the end. We swore in as volunteers Friday (not PC Trainees anymore but Peace Corps Volunteers!). The country director and members of our host families were there, but it was in Mantasoa instead of Tana, which was slightly unfortunate.

Then the first one of us left for site, followed by a lot more Saturday morning and the final 8 of us Sunday morning. I went with three other volunteers, a driver and a PC trainer straight to my new city. Two other PCVs welcomed us by cooking us dinner, which was really nice of them.

I moved into my new house yesterday, which is on the grounds of the high school where I will be teaching. It’s a big house by PC standards, with four rooms and indoor shower and toilet space. The previous PCV left a ton of stuff for me too, including bricks, cement, a gas stove, and a ton of other random things (like condom demonstration supplies lol).  Unfortunately, there are rats living in the ceiling, which sounds bad but is pretty common in PC. So I’ll have to take care of that soon.

Oh, and I found out that I have to start work next Monday, a week earlier than most of the rest of the country. So much for settling in time!

I will have internet access frequently here, so I won’t be off the grid for a month at a time anymore! I’m really happy with my site and PC in general right now. So yeah, hopefully you’ll hear from me soon!