Thanksgiving 1 & 2

Term one is over! I made it through the first three months at site, the part everyone says is the hardest. Even though the days seemed to drag on, looking back it feels like the time flew by. In a few days I will be leaving my village for a whole month to attend training in Lilongwe and then travel around the country for Christmas and New Years. 

Last week was Thanksgiving and, although it was difficult being away from home, it was a good one. I ended up celebrating the holiday twice, with two thanksgiving dinners and two great days with friends. 

Thanksgiving part one I spent at a friend's house in a district close to mine. About ten people from my group met there and cooked dinner together. Despite the lack of ingredients and having to cook over charcoal fires and hot plates, we managed to make a full, traditional, delicious meal. After dinner we spent the evening hanging out and playing cards and it was one of the best days I've had here in Malawi. 

Thanksgiving part two took place at Mulanje golf club on Thanksgiving day. After classes on Thursday I rode my bike into town for the dinner. I assumed it would be just me and a few other PCVs from around the area but by the time dinner started at six there were over 50 peace corps volunteers, NGO volunteers, and other expats from around the country. I only knew a few of them so I got to meet a lot of new people. That night I stayed at a friends house in town with plans to bike home the next morning, but a group got the idea to hike the mountain the next day and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. So the morning after Thanksgiving a small group of friends and I took a day hike up Mt. Mulanje to a beautiful waterfall. The water was freezing but we jumped in anyway and swam. 

It wasn't the traditional Thanksgiving that I'm used to, and it was definitely hard not spending it with my family, but I still had a great holiday and I am very thankful that I am here in Malawi and have wonderful friends to have shared the day with. 

Fashion in Malawi

One of the aspects of Malawi that I find very interesting is the fashion. People here view clothes very differently than we do in America.  Looking "stylish" is definitely not a priority and people's philosophy seems to be "if it fits, wear it." Regardless of color, style, saying, or amount of holes. There are some who do put effort into looking nice. For example, the teachers at my school are always in collared, button down shirts with ties, and sometimes suit jackets, even in the 100+ degree weather. But for the most part, people don't care what they wear. 

All of the clothes here are second hand from America or Europe. In the major cities there are "clothes stores"- equivalent to a Goodwill or Salvation Army- but in the villages you buy clothes from the market, in piles or folded, on tarps on the ground. Since many of the clothes are from America it is not uncommon to see a Malawian walking around with a shirt that says "I ❤ New York" or "Red Sox". In my village in Kasungu I saw a women wearing a St. Augustine FL shirt! I was really excited and went up to he to explain that that is where I'm from. She was not as excited as me. To her it was just a shirt and she was just wearing it so she wouldn't be naked. 

I've seen girls wearing old princess Halloween costumes, women wearing used bridesmaid dresses, and men wearing pink leopard print pajama bottoms as everyday, casual outfits. The one fashion trend that does seem to exist here is Obama clothes. Malawians are pretty obsessed with Obama and his face, or his name, is on almost everything. Shirts, bags, belts, chitenjes, soap, gum etc. the quality of these products is not always great though, and sometimes his face is distorted or his name spelled wrong. 

The other issue I've noticed is that, since most of the shirts have English written on them, and most people here can't read English, people end up wearing shirts that are not appropriate for them. Either not appropriate for their age, their gender, or not appropriate in general. I often see boys wearing shirts that say things like: "princess" or "I'm a big sister!" or "proud grandma". Adults wear shirts for elementary school field days or other people's family reunions. And then there are the just plain inappropriate shirts. My neighbor in Kasungu once wore a shirt that said "I'm the guy you have to blow to get a drink around here". I thought about telling him that he shouldn't wear that, but really didn't want to explain what it meant. Recently I saw a young girl wear a shirt that announced "I have perfect breast a beautiful body so I realy don't need a asshole like you" (mistakes included). Again, skipped the English lesson for that one. And my favorite shirt I've seen so far was this one that I found at a market:

Chifundo

I am not a pet person. And I am definitely not a cat person. But somehow I have found myself the owner of a 4 week old, tiny, white kitten. This is how it happened. One day last week I woke up to find that, overnight, a rat had eaten half of one of my bananas an chewed through my phone charger. (Stupid rat. It caused a lot of problems and I couldn't charge my phone for a couple of days.) I went to the head teacher of my school to ask for advice. Specifically, where I could buy rat poison or traps. Instead, I was told that one of the other teachers had kittens he was giving away and I should take one. I hadn't really wanted pets here, mostly because I didn't want to worry about them if I left my house for the weekend or on a trip, but I told him I'd think about it. Apparently he took that as "yes! I'd love a kitten" because two days later a guy shows up at my house with a cat in a burlap sack. Being that I've never had a cat before, and have previously made a point to avoid them (I can actually count the number of times I've even touched a cat) I was a little worried about what to do with it. I texted one of my friends, who also has cats in Malawi, and got a lot of advice from her. So, now I have a pet. She's actually really cute, and it's kind of nice to have some company around my house. I wanted a traditional Malawian name so I asked my friend to pick out a name for her. He decided on 'Chifundo' which means 'mercy'. I think 'Wamisala' would fit her better, it means 'crazy', but I guess I'll stick with Chifundo. 

Chifundo

I am not a pet person. And I am definitely not a cat person. But somehow I have found myself the owner of a 4 week old, tiny, white kitten. This is how it happened. One day last week I woke up to find that, overnight, a rat had eaten half of one of my bananas an chewed through my phone charger. (Stupid rat. It caused a lot of problems and I couldn't charge my phone for a couple of days.) I went to the head teacher of my school to ask for advice. Specifically, where I could buy rat poison or traps. Instead, I was told that one of the other teachers had kittens he was giving away and I should take one. I hadn't really wanted pets here, mostly because I didn't want to worry about them if I left my house for the weekend or on a trip, but I told him I'd think about it. Apparently he took that as "yes! I'd love a kitten" because two days later a guy shows up at my house with a cat in a burlap sack. Being that I've never had a cat before, and have previously made a point to avoid them (I can actually count the number of times I've even touched a cat) I was a little worried about what to do with it. I texted one of my friends, who also has cats in Malawi, and got a lot of advice from her. So, now I have a pet. She's actually really cute, and it's kind of nice to have some company around my house. I wanted a traditional Malawian name so I asked my friend to pick out a name for her. He decided on 'Chifundo' which means 'mercy'. I think 'Wamisala' would fit her better, it means 'crazy', but I guess I'll stick with Chifundo. 

Lab#2 Photosynthesis

Yesterday I did a lab with my form 3 bio class. We were testing 2 different leaves for the presence of starch; a green leaf and a yellow leaf. The hypothesis was that the yellow leaf wouldn't have starch because it doesn't have many chlorophyll to perform photosynthesis. The lab itself went very well. The students were engaged, they followed the procedures, and the results were exactly what I had wanted. The lab reports, however, were much less successful. 

Last week we learned how to write lab reports. I discussed the format, what sections to include, and exactly what each section should contain. So this lab we were going to practice and work through the entire thing together. I wrote the purpose, materials, and procedures on the board so all they had to do was copy them. As a class we generated a hypothesis and that too I wrote for them to reference. After the lab we discussed the results. So all they had to do was come up with a conclusion. I even prompted them with that by writing: "the green leaf showed that it had starch because..." 

When I got the lab reports, they were a mess. The format was nothing like I taught, sections were in any random order and some on completely different pages. Some had the word "hypothesis" written three times but no actual hypothesis to go with it. Some of the conclusions were good and a few were pretty impressive, but most were like these:

"The green leaf showed that it had starch because..."

"First stating we can boil the water and because of boiling water the green leaf has starch."

"Photosynthesis to make food to green leaf but the yellow leaf has no starch because of there not make they food."

"The green leaf is chlorophyll."

And my personal favorite:

"Do not become yellow."

First days teaching

I have finally started teaching! After being in Malawi for over three months, I have officially started my job at Dzenje community day secondary school teaching form 1 math and form 3 biology. The first classes consisted of me introducing myself, getting laughed at every single time I said my name (I asked why but I still don't understand why the name Ms. Germany is so hilarious), discussing the class rules and procedures, and answering questions about America. Here are a few of the questions I received:

How many children do you have? (0)

What are the major cash crops in America? (Ummm...)

Why does America have so many wars? (Wow ...because... politics?)

Do people in America eat nsima? (No)

Are there black people in America? (yes)

Why is America so famous? (Probably because of Michael Jordan )

I made up a lot of answers. 

The classes after the first day have not been much easier. The biggest challenge is that the students barely understand English. It's not as hard to teach the form 3 class, but in form 1 I have to talk very slowly, very loudly, and annunciate everything. And they still don't understand. We started a unit on sets and grouping, so I was giving examples of ways to group things. I said that we could group the class into boys and girls and asked all the students who would be in the girls group to raise their hands. I got blank stares. "Ok." I repeated it very slowly while gesturing wildly, "raise. your. hand. if. you. are. a. girl." Of the 50 girls that are in my class, 3 girls and 1 boy raised their hands. It's going to be a long term. But pang'ono pang'ono (little by little) they will better understand me and teaching will get easier. They are a great group of students and overall I'm really excited about my classes. 

School starts everyday at 7:30 and the day is broken up into nine 40 minute periods with two breaks. The first break is tea time! 😃 Tea and bread rolls are provided for us in the staff room. There are only 13 staff at the school. 11 regular teachers and the deputy and head teacher, both who also teach subjects. Unlike in American high schools, the students stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers switch between rooms when it is their period to teach. There are only four classrooms (one for each grade) and about 100 students in each class. I have a pretty easy schedule this term because I am new, so I only teach 11 periods a week. When I'm not teaching I hang out in the staff room and read or work on lesson plans. Even though my house is less than 20 feet from the classrooms and I could easily go home between periods, I like to sit in the staff room because I often talk to the other teachers and practice my Chichewa. I also get a lot of interesting questions from them about America. Today I was asked if I had ever heard of a place called McDonald's. So I explained about fast food restaurants and the types of food people eat in America. The entire staff was amazed. At least I'm teaching something. 

A Sunday. And a wedding!

5:30 I woke up, same time I do everyday, started a fire, cooked some oatmeal for breakfast and got ready for the day. 

8:00 left for church with my neighbor, Sarah, and my head teacher's family. They go to a Jehovah's Witness church where Sarah is a sign language interpreter for a deaf man that attends. Malawian sign language is very similar to ASL so between the little Chichewa I know, and the few signs I recognized, I was able to follow about half the service. The deaf man's name is Joseph and, since he also knows a little American Sign Language, I was able to talk to him for a while. I think the rest of the congregation was dumbfounded by the azungu (white person) signing, and I got a lot of stares. But by now I'm pretty used to that.  After church we went outside because Sarah wanted to take a picture with me. Others were watching us and, before I knew what was happening, a line had formed and I was taking a picture with almost every person there. I felt like a celebrity. Or a meet-and-greet Disney character. 

2:00 I attended my first ever wedding! Although I have never been to an American wedding, I believe I can safely say that this was not at all similar. It felt more like an outdoor concert or an all-village picnic. There was a makeshift stage set up in the middle of the primary school field and a huge crowd gathered around it. There was a mosh pit type set up where people danced in the middle of the crowd. More people were scattered, standing and sitting, throughout the field talking. There were the food vendors, who are usually at the market, selling water and snacks. On the stage, the bride and groom sat, while an MC played music and yelled into a mic. From what I gathered his main job was to collect money and people danced up to the stage to donated to the new couple. The MC announce each donation and the total amount received. The entire time I was there the bride and groom stayed sitting on the stage, watching the people in the crowd and looking thoroughly bored and unhappy. It made me wonder what the circumstances of the marriage were and whether they wanted the wedding at all.  The event started at 2:00 and I stayed for about 2 hours. At some point I was handed an adorable child named Eliza and I held her for a while. It is now almost 8 and I can still hear the celebration from my house in full swing, with no signs of wrapping up soon. The wedding was the first village event I have been to and it was really cool because, even though I still got stared at a lot, many people knew who I was and came up to greet me or talk. And all of them tried to get me to dance. Which I did not. 

5:30 my bed, which I ordered about a week ago, finally arrived! The carpenter just finished it today and rode it to my house on the back of his bike. I wish I had taken a picture because a twin sized bed strapped to the back of a bike is really an unusual sight. (But apparently not as unusual as a white person at a wedding). I'm really excited about not sleeping on the floor anymore! and now my room smells like fresh cut wood and sawdust, which I love :)

7:00 my head teacher's daughter came over to my house with a bag full of food containers. Her mother had cooked me dinner and sent me over a picnic of eggs, vegetables, and nsima. So I poured myself a glass of wine and had a lovely relaxing dinner by lamplight (because at this point it is dark and I have no electricity). 

7:45 I am now getting ready for bed and looking forward to my first day of school tomorrow! 

This is a plea for mail!

Hi all! Now that I'm settled into my new home in Mulanje I have a permanent address: 

Dzenje CDSS 

P.O Box 57 Mbiza Luchenza

Malawi, Central Africa

I will still receive mail sent to the peace corps PO box but the new address is probably more reliable and much faster. Please send me mail! And get all your friends to send me mail too! I want to hear from you and feel better connected to America. I get no contact with Americans on a daily basis and very little with English speakers, so any communication is extremely cherished and greatly appreciated. I cannot stress how special receiving a letter is to me here. If you'd rather avoid the post office (especially since international mail rates are ridiculous) send me an email. If you don't already have it my email address is rgermany03@gmail.com and I'm able to check it about once a week. If, however, you are interested in sending a care package, I will love you forever and here are a few suggestions of items I would like:

•Any American food!-don't worry mom, I'm eating well, but I really miss a lot of the American snacky stuff I can't get here

•granola bars

•dried fruit

•candy (specifically twizzlers or Swedish fish. If you know me you know how hard it's been with no twizzlers for almost 3 months! Lol)

•Mac and cheese packets

•cheese flavored anything or anything even resembling cheese. They don't have it here and it's my favorite/ staple food in America 

•water flavorers (i.e crystal light packets, Gatorade powder)

•pictures of your pretty face! I didn't bring enough and I miss seeing everyone

•entertainment such as sudoku or crossword books, magazines, small puzzles, etc. (I have a lot of free time)

Can't wait to hear from you!

P.S Aunt Fern and Uncle Andy: I've started hanging my cards on a string like you do in your office and they decorate my house :)

I'm an official PCV! (Swearing-in, 50th anniversary, and site)

I've made it to my house and I am currently sitting on my porch roasting ground nuts over a charcoal grill. But before I talk about my site and living on my own, I have a lot to catch up on from last week. 

Early Wednesday morning we said our goodbyes to our host families and left Kasungu to go to Lilongwe for a couple of crazy, exciting, sleepless days. My training group is very lucky because our swearing in ceremony fell at the same time as Peace Corps Malawi's 50th anniversary celebration. Most swear ins happen in the village with only the host families and PC staff attending, but since ours was in Lilongwe, every current volunteer in Malawi (about 120) was there to see it and we are the only group ever to get sworn in by the global Peace Corps director, Carrie Hessler-Radlet. There were a lot of speeches and two of my friends performed a rap they wrote. We raised our hands, repeated the same oath the president takes, and became official peace corps volunteers! Then we had cake and a VIP lunch. 

The next day was the celebration of peace corps working in Malawi for 50 years. This one took place at the state house (Malawi's White House) and was attended by the PC director, the US ambassador, John Kerry's daughter, president Joyce Banda, and many other political figures and important people. There was an entire marching band to play the national anthem when the president walked in. It was a big deal. There were more speeches, a delicious lunch, and dancing. Yes, I danced with the president of Malawi. 

That night we put together a talent show and sat in the grass and watched as people performed their various skills. A few people told jokes or stories, some sang, two people juggled, and one guy did flame throwing! (apparently he used to work in Hawaii) The celebrating continued when almost 100 of us went to a bar called Harry's and danced and hung out until late into the night.  It was certainly a warm welcome into the peace corps. After very, very little sleep we woke up the next morning and departed for our sites. 

I have now been living on my own in Mulanje for five days and so far it's going really well. It's been difficult trying to get everything I need to live though. I walked into a completely empty house and have had to collect all the essentials slowly. The first day I had  peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I've since been to the market and bought more food, buckets, pots, plates, towels, charcoal, etc etc. Mom- I got a huge bag of ground nuts as a going away gift from my family and I've been using my cast iron skillet to roast them with cinnamon and sugar the way we like :) I'm slowly getting my house set up. When I first got here I wasn't very happy with my house because its really small and strangely set up, but now I love it. It is two rooms but they aren't connected. The doors to both rooms face each other and you have to walk outside, under a covered porch, to go between the two. I usually just keep both doors open which gives the whole place a very open feeling and makes me feel like I'm living outdoors. I have a stool on my porch and most of the time I just sit outside reading or looking at my amazing view! My house is on the top of a hill so my porch overlooks a valley and mountains. I can see Mt. Mulanje as well as some mountains in Mozambique. I've met a lot of people in the village already and even made a few friends. It's weird not being with the rest of my group, but so far it hasn't been near as difficult as I thought it would be. 

Transport

Let me preface this post by saying: Mom, you might not want to read this one. I am going to write about transport in Malawi. 

My first experience with Malawi transport was actually about a month ago when the group was assigned to travel to a market about an hour from our village by whatever means possible. Being the competitive person that I am, me and some friends decided to treat it like The Amazing Race, and see what pair would arrive first. Some took mini buses, one pair rode in the back of a semi, me and my friend Susan hitched a ride with a very nice woman and her husband. I was hesitant about hitch hiking since its so dangerous in America but, as I would later figure out, hitching is probably the safest and most comfortable way to travel in this country.  We made it to the market, but not as the winners. 

The next time I travelled away from my village was last week to Mulanje and it was not near as fun or comfortable. The first leg of our journey we took a minibus from Kasungu to Lilongwe. These buses are built for 12 but consistently manage to fit 15-18. I sat in the very back row. The trunk didn't fully close and I could see the road through a hole rusted in the floor. Thankfully we made it to Lilongwe bus deport and in about two hours. Unthankfully, Lilongwe bus depot is probably in the top 10 worst places on earth. I'll get to that more later. From Lilongwe we took another, larger, bus which was possibly less comfortable than the first. There we 3 people to a row that should have sat 2, people standing in the aisle, and huge bags of supplies everywhere on the floor so you couldn't put your feet down. The bus was slow and it took us about 8 hours to get to our next stop in Blantyre. It didn't help that every couple of miles the bus would stop and screaming people would come up to the window and try to sell you food and random items. Some of the things make sense like the snacks and sodas, but other things like belts, mirrors, and machetes I would never buy out of a bus window. Once we finally got to Blantyre we stayed the night there and continued our journey in the morning. Two more minibuses took me to the Luchenza boma where I hopped in the back of a pickup truck and rode another hour on bumpy dirt "roads" to my town of Nantombozi. While the big buses drive incredibly slow, the minibuses and personal cars drive alternativley fast. Also, nobody follows the road rules here, if there even are any. Cars dont stay on their side of the road and just drive down the center, speed limits dont seem to exist, and I haven't seen a stoplight since I got here. Anyways, from Nantombozi it's still two miles to my house so you can either walk or take a bike taxi. The bike taxis are everywhere and it involves sitting on a padded square cushion behind the regular bike seat while a man peddles you wherever you need to go. Usually they're not too bad but this particular trip we were traveling in the cold miserable rain through muddy roads. After two days of travel, I made it to my house. Finally! 

The trip back to Kasungu was much of the same. Crowded buses, long rides, and yelling people. On one of the buses there was a evangelical preacher standing in the aisle, shouting and reading scripture in Chichewa for about 40 minutes. Then we got back to Lilongwe.

 If you come visit me in Malawi don't ever go to the Lilongwe bus deport. When i say bus depot you may think of a big paved parking lot with a bunch of buses in parking spots and maybe a waiting building where you by bus tickets. It's nothing like that. It is a large dirt field with buses everywhere in no particular order and with no organization. Hundreds of people are also walking everywhere in front of buses and pushing people around to get where they're going As we pulled up in our large charter style bus we had to maneuver through the dirt lot on trying not to hit people. As soon as we stopped people were already trying to push their way on the bus before we even got off so they could get a seat. Many people threw their stuff in through the windows to save a seat. I saw one person throw their child in through the window. Since all these people are pushing to get on, it makes it near impossible to get off. Crowd surfing would have been the best option. Instead I had to push through a crowd of about 50 people trying to keep all my stuff with me. Once you make it through all that, people start yelling at you trying to sell you things and grabbing your bags to try to get you to ride on their bus. I had to fight through the maze of people and buses to try to find the one I needed to be on. Luckily I made it back to Kasungu alive and on time. So that is a summary of travel in Malawi and why I will rarely be leaving my site. 

Cooking (poor Ted)

I'm a little worried about cooking for myself once I get to site. Don't worry Mom, I'll manage, but I'm a bad enough cook in America where I had electricity, running water, and an unlimited supply of ingredients. The other day we had a cooking class about how to cook simple and nutritious meals with the limited supplies available. We were given about 10 staple ingredients (rice, tomatoes, eggs, bread, etc) and had to create as many dishes with them as possible. My group attempted fried rice, tomato soup, and French toast. The French toast turned out pretty well. We also learned how to kill and cook a chicken. Each group got their own live chicken to kill and include in their meal. We named our chicken Ted, then cooked him into our fried rice. I've heard the expression "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" and now I can also say I've seen it in action. Once I get to site I think I'll try to avoid any more chicken murders. Thankfully we were given a cookbook compiled by past volunteers, so hopefully I won't starve. 

Site visit

Sorry that I have been majorly slacking on writing on here. I have a lot of catching up to do. 

First of all, I'm moving to Mulanje! (Which I realize most of you already know) It is home to jungle, tons of fruit, tea, the tallest mountain in central Africa, and Dzenje CDSS, the school where I'll be teaching for the next 2 years. Last week I went on a site visit to check out my house, school, and village. Transport from my host village in kasungu to Mulanje took two days and was a horrible, terrifying, uncomfortable journey. I'll have to write a whole post about travel in Malawi another time. I went with the headmaster of my school and stayed with him and his family for the four days I was there. The weather was rainy and cold, but my district is absolutely beautiful! It is in the jungle, surrounded by mountains and tea fields. Everything is green and there are tropical plants and flowers growing everywhere. Imagine a scene from Tarzan an that is what it looks like where I'll be living. My house is inside the school gates and surrounded by classroom buildings. I'll definitely have to build a fence to separate my yard from the school grounds. The house is very small, only two rooms and a storage closet, with a separate kitchen and bath being constructed out back, hopefully to be finished by the time I move in. I don't have electricity or water but my school has solar so I can use theirs to charge stuff. Although my house is small, and definitely lacking in amenities, it is made up for by its location. The surroundings are amazing and my house overlooks fields and mountains, with a view of Mt. Mulanje from my backyard. Definitely a change from the Florida beaches I'm used to. 

 I am now back in kasungu, with only two more weeks of home stay before I move away on my own. I am looking forward to being independent and finally starting my service as an official PCV, but I will definitely miss kasungu, seeing my friends everyday, and especially my family. 

Home stay and training

I've now been in Malawi for over a month! 

 I am living with my host family, who are fantastic, in a village called Kaphaizi in the district of Kasungu. I love my host family, my Amayi (mom) and Abambo (dad) are really nice and speak good English so are very helpful. My Abambo used to play for the Malawi national football team which is pretty cool. I also have a 18 year old brother  and an adorable 2 year old sister. I somehow lucked out and got placed in the nicest house in the village. We have couches (a rarity), electricity, and even a tv! We watch a lot of Malawian music videos and football. We still don't have running water though, and that has been the hardest to adjust to. Every morning I help my Amayi get water from the pump a couple minutes from our house and carry it back on my head. The first couple of times I definitely spilled a lot but I've gotten much  better.  No running water means no toilets or showers. I take baths out of a bucket in a detached brick room in the backyard. The toilet here is called the chim and it is basically a hole, cut in a cement floor, over a deep hole, in another room in the yard. The first few weeks I was here the chim definitely scared me and, although I don't think I will ever be completely fine with it, I'm getting a lot more used to it.  I think one of the things I miss most from America is the food. The food here isn't horrible but its pretty much the same things everyday. Breakfast is usually bread or porridge with tea. Lunch and dinner consist of rice or nsima with cooked spinach-like vegetables and a protein, either beans, soya or eggs for me. Also, we do not use utensils and everything is eaten with our hands. 

 In addition to living with my family and learning how to cook, bathe, and basically survive in Malawi, I am also going to language and technical classes everyday. Most of the sessions are about peace corps policies, safety, medical, or teaching techniques. Last week we got to actually teach a Malawian class for seven days at the local secondary school. I taught form 1 physical science. It went pretty well but was more challenging than I expected. The students, in form one especially, don't understand English well which makes it very difficult for them to understand science concepts taught in English. Other than that, I think my lessons were good and the students seemed to learn at least a little. 

There is so much more that has happened so I will start writing more often now that I have Internet and try to include everything in future posts. 

This is a picture of the road leading into my village:

Onward to Kasungu

I wrote this post on June 24th but haven't had Internet access since then so I'm only now able to post it. I have been with my host family for about 3 weeks now and will write a blog about my home stay experience and training very soon. 

(June 24)

Today is our last day in Lilongwe. Since we arrived in Malawi on Thursday we have been staying in a conference center in the capital, meeting our trainers and getting to know our group. The last week has been filled with training classes, medical sessions and language practice. Our typical schedule includes waking up at 6:30 breakfast at 7 classes until lunch at 12 with a short tea/ snack break in between then classes until dinner at 7. After dinner we have been hanging out as a group either playing games or going to the small bar in the conference center. Although the past few days have been a lot of fun, I don't really feel like I'm in Africa yet. The place we are staying is very nice, even for American standards, with electricity, wifi, hot showers and good meals. It could easily be located anywhere in the US so I cant say that I've experienced the "real" Africa. Tomorrow, however, we move to the Kasungu district a little north of here and meet our host families who we will be staying with for the next 8 weeks. Although I'm slightly nervous, I'm also very excited to meet my family and move into a real African village! 

Some African firsts and fun events which have occurred since I arrived include...

I have gotten 5 immunizations in the past 3 days! 

I ate nsima for the first time (the traditional dish of Malawi) it tasted like a mix between grits and mashed potatoes, not great. 

Drank my first Malawian beer, Carlsberg green. 

Played an intense game of ultimate frisbee in which I scraped up my knee pretty bad but my team won two out of three. 

Spoke Chichewa with a native speaker 

Philadelphia

Tomorrow I am meeting the rest of the education volunteers in my group in Philadelphia for a short staging/orientation before we fly out, but I figured since I've never seen Philly why not come a few days early and make a vacation out of it. My mom, Stephanie, and I flew to Philly on Saturday and met my cousin Molly for a final family trip and farewell. We have spent the last three days touring the city.

We did the typical touristy history things; saw the liberty bell, independence hall, and toured the US mint and old houses. 

We had Philly cheesesteaks! (Mine was tofu)

And we mostly just walked excessive amounts and saw some really interesting stuff and buildings.

Overall it was a really great trip. I'm really glad I got to hang out with mom and Stephanie and especially see Molly before I left. I'm completely terrified about tomorrow and the next couple weeks, but I think I'm getting a little excited too. I don't know if I'll have internet access while I'm with my host family, so I might not be able to post for a while.

Two days left!

Well I am not a great writer, but Stephanie set up this blog for me so I'm going to do my best to keep up with it as much as I can.

After an almost two year process of applying and preparing for the Peace Corps I'm finally leaving for my service to Malawi, Africa in two days! I will be there for two years and three months. The first three months I will be living with a host family in Kasungu, Malawi and training for my job while learning the language (Chichewa) and about the culture. After those three months I will move to my own house in a different town (I don't know which one yet) and begin my permanent job teaching high-school science.

So on Saturday I start the first part of this crazy adventure. Me, Stephanie, and my mom are flying to Philadelphia where we will meet my cousin and hang out/ sight-see for a few days. On Tuesday I will say goodbye to them and meet up with my group of trainees in Philadelphia for a short orientation. The next morning we wake up at 2am! to take a bus to New York airport. We then take a 15 hour flight from New York to Johannesburg South Africa. Once there we take another flight from Johannesburg to  Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, and stay in a hotel there for a few days before moving on to Kasungu to meet our host families. After almost two whole days of travel I imagine I will be pretty much exhausted at this point.

The last few weeks in America have been consumed with paperwork, packing, buying supplies, repacking, and saying a lot of very emotional goodbyes. I'm going to miss everyone so much! but I finally feel almost ready to go. I'm equal parts excited and completely terrified but I'm trying to keep an open mind and have no expectations so I can get the most out of this amazing experience.