My so called life...

So I thought up of some questions you might have of what my life is like in Madagascar so far and here are the answers….let me know if you have any more questions!!

How do I like it so far?

Where do I start? haha I love it here! The only place I can compare it to is Hawaii. It’s really beautiful and I can’t wait to explore more here! The people are amazing and watch everything you do, because we’re so fascinating haha. I’m getting used to it though now and it makes you feel famous almost I guess, minus the cameras in your face. They know everything you do before you even tell them. Word of mouth is easily spread throughout our small village.

What’s my host family like?

The best! I absolutely love my host family! They’re one of the younger couples in the village. My mom and dad are only 38. They have 3 kids, 2 girls and 1 little boy. They’re great and we make jokes and have a good ‘ol time. It’s fun having a little brother for a few months to play with. I bought a rugby ball in South Africa so we play with that a lot, my host dad is a rice farmer and we also have a cow, chickens, rabbits, and bees.

What’s a typical day like? (Besides exhausting? haha)

Everyday is not the same here, so it keeps it interesting for me. We have some structure and a flexible schedule we try to follow for the most part. When I’m at the training site I wake up with the roosters and the sun rise at 5:30. My family gets up around 4ish and starts breakfast and whatever else they do. I usually read in the morning/study/listen to music until after 6, then I sweep my room and clean out my bucket aka my personal bathroom. Sounds worse than it is, usually then I eat breakfast and shower every other day with a bucket of water. My family heats up water for me too, so it’s always a warm one. Then I get ready for school! Haha I wait for Corie then we pick up Nicole and whoever else is going then too. It’s not a far walk, maybe less than a milke. We have class from 8-5 M-F and on Saturday from 8-12. Class is language and technical training. We plant gardens, rice and learn a lot. Me and Corie share a garden named Vernon (after my pappy) and we have carrots, beans, cucumbers, and soon to be tomatoes. It’s so amazing and I love tech training! The language can be difficult at times, but I’m liking it more so that’s good. After class we all hang out (there are 27 Env and 5 SED) so it’s a big group. They’re all great and fun to be around and make this experience a lot less stressful and more fun. Then it’s time to go home and talk with the family and play. They help a lot with the language too. We usually eat around 6:30ish. When the sun goes down we don’t do anything at night here really. After dinner I go into my room and read or study. I’m usually in bed by 9:30 at the latest if you can believe it!

What’s technical training like and what I’m learning?

For tech training we’ve planted gardens, planted rice, made hot boxes (kind of like a home made croc pot), made a compost pile, and learned about different ways to plant. We learned about raising chickens and how to kill them. That might sound bad, but here if you want to have some meat you’ll probably have to kill it yourself or get someone to do it for you. Tech training is awesome though and we get to go on trips sometimes to learn new things. So far we’ve presented 2 presentations to our village and mine have been on double digging technique and hot boxes. I made a hot box for my host family, but we haven’t gotten to use it yet, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

How’s the language learning going?

It’s going alright, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot so far. We’re only half way through training right now, but I feel like I have learned so much more that I have ever learned in any other language I’ve taken before. We have great language teachers and living with the host family really helps. It’s a lot different than English and a lot of stuff doesn’t really translate completely back into English which can be hard sometimes. For the most part though I really like getting to talk with the people here and getting to know my host family is exciting too. The key to our success as a volunteer is learning the language so then we can help to teach and develop relationships with the people in our villages.

What’s the food like?

Rice, It’s what’s for dinner….and breakfast and lunch. haha I’m getting used to it. I enjoy the rice now and for breakfast I put sugar in it and it’s delicious! Every Wednesday we have pancakes for breakfast. They used to make them really small, until I asked to show how we make them in the States and ever since then it’s my job to make pancakes at 5am every Wednesday. I enjoy it, but it’s a long process, usually almost 2hours. I make them Mickey Mouse ones too, so they enjoy it. Sometimes we have pasta with bread, or egg noodle soup. I love the fried eggs with rice for breakfast or we have mofo balls, which is fried dough that you can put sugar on. It tastes like and elephant ear from the fair, so good! Usually with the rice we have a side dish of beans, carrots, salad, potatoes, corn, or something like that. They have tons of different beans here. I don’t really eat meat anymore, but I eat the fish we catch. They are pretty small, but very tasty! For dessert after every meal we have fruit. Sometimes it’s bananas, apples, pineapple, or persimmon. They are all tasty and I love, love the pineapple here. My host mom has started making me French fries for breakfast with rice. It’s amazing, I love it! It might sound gross, but trust me it’s not. The breakfast rice is more watery/soupy, so when you put sugar in it it’s more like oatmeal. All the food is good though, and no real complaints on that end.

What’s my training house like?

Well, let me tell you its sooo nice! My room is around the size of Dede’s at the OC. I have my own bed, desk, and dresser. My window looks out to a path and 3 noisy cows that keep me up at night sometimes. The chickens are on the floor beneath me, so they are my alarm clock at 5am. The chickens are everywhere around town and might out number the people, I’m not sure. Our chickens just had chicks, so for fun I catch them because they are so cute! The cows are like lawnmowers here, so if the grass is getting too high you tie a cow up in that area for the day and they mow it for you! Haha I love that concept here, and the cows are randomly placed every day. So back to my house…It’s so much nicer than I could have imagined. We have a big veranda that I love to be on. My window ledge in my room is big enough for me to sit on so that’s where I read, write, and watch people from. There is a big kitchen area where we all eat and make the meals. There is one other bedroom next to mine where they all sleep.

Would you like to communicate with me?

Of course you do! You should, it’s only 90 cents to send me a letter! Email is free, but I don’t get to check it very often at all. Still feel free to email me though! Letters are my favorite though, or packages! As for calling here, just let me know if you plan on doing so before hand so I turn my phone on and make sure it’s charged too. If you set up a skype account then it’s pretty cheap to call from your computer using that program. You can get calling cards as well for cheap. I’ll try to find out info about those. I can text though so feel free to text me whenever, and if I don’t respond then either I didn’t get it or haven’t turned my phone on in a few days. Just be patient with the texting, it can take a while to receive as well. From the east coast it’s a 7grs time difference to Madagascar because of day lights savings, so in November it’ll be 8hrs. So that means 10hrs for you west coast folks. For me to get mail such as a letter, it usually takes a few weeks but could only take 10 days. It takes a lot longer for you to get the mail that I send, so I apologize for that. They don’t have a lot of mail going to America so they wait until they do to ship it over. When sending me something, like I know you are dying to do haha then put Air Mail on it so it gets here faster! Thanks!

So, you really want to send me a package, but aren’t sure what to put in it? haha

Well, I’ll like anything you send first of all haha. You can’t be picky here! Thing I miss or would like are books ( you can look on my Amazon wish list for ideas or send something you like) gum ( can’t get the good kind here) dried cranberries, trail mix, nuts, pencils, raisins, tuna, peanut butter, clif bars, granola bars, pictures, football updates, Clemson news, headline news from the States and world, or sports news. If you do send a package then please make a list of what’s in it so I can make sure it all got here. Thanks!

Check my pictures out on flickr, click on Madagascar pictures!! It's slow internet here, so I can only put up a few at a time...sorry!!