Mrs. Rainivosoa

I am sitting here in my hotel room waiting for my friend Helen to come back from wherever it is that she went this morning trying to readjust to using an English keyboard, I have a nasty cold that some time last night turned into a fever so I am not feeling particularly witty or wordy at the moment. Yet despite all that I wanted to share a bit of news with you all. You might have noticed that this dude named Mbola keeps showing up in my posts and pictures though I have always identified him simply as a friend we have been dating since July.

Mbola says that we met when I came on site visit in March and that he fell in love with me right then and there, I don't remember meeting him until the end of June when I was at the Malagasy independence day dance, I was sitting with my friend Vlola and not really dancing as I was tired and it was the second dance I had been to in as many days. There was this guy that kept coming over and asking me to dance and I kept turning him down, quite simply I didn't want to dance, but after about the sixth time he asked I finally relented just so he would stop asking me. He ended up insisting that I come over to his house the next day for lunch and again after much refusing on my part I finally agreed to come have lunch with him and his family when I discovered who is father was. Mbola's father is the delege, a federal administrator and one of the more important village leaders. The delege had invited me over before and I had never been able so I decided to take the opportunity and go, it's not like I had any other plans for the day. It was a fantastic lunch and the conversation was great fun and within a month Mbola and I were dating.

Things have been going along swimmingly since then, I ended up falling just as much in love with him as he is with me and we recently got engaged. Yep, that's right Mbola and I are engaged. We had fun keeping it a secrete for a while and just enjoying knowing we would always be together and making plans for the future but now we want to share this joy with everyone. So there it is, I will be marrying a Malagasy musician/car mechanic and eventually bringing him back to Minnesota with me. As things stand at the moment the plan is for us to get married this November when my mom and step dad come to visit and then return to the States in May of 2009 when my Peace Corps service is over. What an adventure this will be.