Visiting my future home

So I just got back from checking out the village I'll be living in for the next two years. I move in around May 14th, so for now I'm jumping back and forth from my training village of Samba Laobe and the training center at Thies.

The Volunteer Visit, or VV, couldn't have gone better. It's called the VV because your village visit is being facilitated by a current volunteer. They act as your tour guide and translator. My "demyster" Charlene was awesome, she is great at the language and she has done soooo much in her village including painting around 10 murals, working on a huge thriving community garden, and she has planned and is almost finished facilitating the creation of a 1 hectare garden. There's lots more that shes done but ill stop there.

So here is the story told in a few pictures. It starts with us trainees being blindfolded and walked around a map of Senegal painted on the basketball court in our training center. The last picture is two of my three roommates at the training center. Ben, the one in the sunglasses, is saying "I live on a mountain between two mountains!". He is going to Kedegou, the farthest region but the most mountainous and therefore the most beautiful some people say. You almost always have a waterfall in your backyard.

Here are some pictures of Charlene's village, the donkeys there, cute little baby sheep, and the mural we painted on someones hut (the villagers jump at a chance for us to paint a mural on their hut, sometimes because they enjoy the message and sometimes because they just want some art on their hut):

If you touch poop and then eat, you get sick, but if you touch poop, wash your hands and then eat, your happy. The last frame is the senegalese way of saying im happy or its all good. Says Charlene, they don't do thumbs up.

These are the pictures from... My village! Really they are just pictures of the lake 2 MINUTES AWAY FROM MY HUT! It's a pretty special thing, I don't know anyone else that has water this close, and its beautiful.

There are gardens lining the water, and the gardens are really well maintained and well designed relatively speaking. This is good because gardening is not one of my strong points. The water is actually a reservoir created by a dam on the nearest river. People own boats, and I asked one of my community counterparts, the guy standing on his boat, if i could borrow his boat sometime, he said sure thing! I can put my bike on the boat and take it down river to Emily, my closest neighbor and good friend. Ohhhhh boy! The last picture is of a baby donkey that was born the night before said the owner.


These last pictures are of the bike ride to Emily's site, a few pics from there...

Her view from her backyard, scenic aint' it?^^^

 This was 2am at the PC Kolda regional house after our welcoming party which was awesome^^^^

 On the road reading a book borrowed from my regional house.

I'm ending with the puppies sleeping, even though they were in emily's village.

I will post sooner or later, my little 3G internet usb key thing likes to act up.

love and miss you

the pics n' stuff

the pictures i posted are: from the training center at lunch time, some are of the training center, one is of my school in the CBT site, beach ones are from my birthday at the beach with fellow trainees, there is one of a kid with her two front teeth missing or growing back in, my dad thought it would be a really funny picture haha.

There is one of my teacher or LCF samba kande, he is awesome. he has a great sense of humor, but he doesnt laugh and joke as much as almost all the other lcfs. Example would be when he's teaching us Pulaar Fulakunda, the language we've been given, he would explain how to use the word is by saying in pulaar "For example, ablai is a player, for example, today only". my response of course in pulaar is "no samba, i disagree, you are a thief, every day, I am the sky, I am a big tree, i am the sun"

I have to say that it takes a lot of confidence to learn a new language by jumping right in like we all have. I'm not being overconfident or egotistical when i tell my teacher i'm the sun, i'm just joking. In Senegalese culture, joking, making fun of others, calling people horses and chickens is like THE thing to do.

Okay im gonna go get my money from the admin office, 28,000 CFA or around 60 bucks for the next two weeks. its like a million dollars. Then directly after that we get blindfolded and placed on the area theyve decided for us! the decision is not random (jude lol) its made considering my language skills, my sex, that im a health volunteer, that im a water and sanitation volunteer, and on an interview we did in the beginning where we told a bunch of current pcvs who we are and what we'd like to do/where we'd like to go.

Later!

Pictures!

upcoming posts

My new post and perhaps the ones coming after them are transcribed from my journal. They are dated starting with the last post on march 14th, my first day in the village of Samba Laobe, my homestay training site.

Tomorrow all of us trainees get blindfolded, spun around, and placed on a chalked out map of Senegal. When we take our blindfolds off we will see exactly where we will live for the next two years. I'm going to try to post some pictures, i hope this works....

A salaam waalekum!

AHHHHHHHHHHHH! My computer is finally getting an internet signal! Oh my god what great days these have been, my first days in the Peace Corps. I'm just gonna stream of consciousness here and not try to write like a pro or anything. Here we go.

Okay so we landed in Dakar airport and took two buses to the training center in Thies 1.5 hours away. 50 volunteers piled out to people singing a welcome song at 7am. We were oriented into the training center. The center is beautiful. All the trees are beautiful, the flowers are beautiful, the people are so professional, nice and intelligent. We are being trained by the best staff peace corps has to offer no doubt. I want to sum up every day we've had here:Wake up at 7, eat breakfast which at the training center is coffee and tea and baguettes, and jelly, peanut butter, nutella, butter, or spicy beans, whatever you'd like and how ever many you'd like. Then first class, whatever that may be; language, security, cross cultural, logistics of everything thats gonna happen, and some other stuff. Then tea time, where you eat the same thing as breakfast, and drink coffee or tea. Every time you eat and every time your anywhere you have the ability to talk to the staff here, which I and others do. Thats when you really learn a lot in a more personal opinion way. You also can ask them how to say anything, like insults such as "your a cat!" or "big butt", or real stuff like greetings and other phrases and vocab. Then more learning and activities, then lunch which is a large bowl and many different tasty dishes; it can be short grain rice and meat and veggies: big chunks of delicious carrot, potato, bitter tomato, and beef or lamb or goat or fish. SO good! Then more learning, then free time till 7:30 when its dinner which is always great, then its free time again. Free time can be frisbee, soccer, running, going to market, playing music with people (i brought a harmonica) etc. I'm having the time of my life.

This morning we found out what languages we are learning, and begun to learn them. I'm going to learn Pulaar Fulakunda. It is a great language so far, much easier to learn than Arabic which i took in college. And my arabic is helping because the Pulaar people are proud that they introduced Islam to west african countries. So my teacher gives me more respect I think, maybe haha. I'm with three other girls in language classes and we are moving into our Community Based Training site tomorrow, which is the beach neighborhood of our city, Thies. Ahhhhh! I got so lucky! HERES HOW I DID IT: Be really cool to everyone, and give M&Ms to current PC Volunteers. I'll post this now and continue with another post.

This is great, if your outgoing and you like to be nice to people then you'd have a blast SO JOIN the PEACE CORPS. I havent been installed in my actual site yet but I will be in 8 weeks after training.

plus, there are 40 girls and 8 boys in my group, so thats great.

New good post coming soon

many of our computers stopped getting internet, they worked yesterday and now we cant get a signal. I have lots of pictures and I cant wait to post though. talk to you later.

I don't think there is such a thing as tears of joy. It's at least a misnomer! You cry because your sad; even though you have a smile on your face, everything is going great, your reaching your self actualization goals =), you still don't want to leave the people you love. Thanks to everyone who saw me off, bought me drinks, met me in the rain, helped me prepare, took care of my cat, and said see ya soon. You mean the whole crazy, mixed up world to me.


FYI: I like the word misnomer and will name my "pet" rat it, maybe