I have been trying to make it a habit to write up enteries while i am at site and then type them up when i get to the city, but I have gotten a bit lazy and a it busy so I will be makeing this one up as I go along. Sorry if that decreases the quality of the post.
Like usual I am in Tamatave for my monthly banking days, and heading to In-Service-Training. As the title of this post would indicqte I am doing really well, it has finally stoped raining (I guess I shouldn’t complain, this is the rain forest after all and it is pretty awsome but the sun is nice) and it han’t start to get horribly hot yet so the weather is pretty much perfect.
Things at site are going really well in some ways and just getting more and more complicated in other ways. I still have not moved into my new house, it is so close to being done but isn’t quite done yet. I find myself more frusterated at this point than i have been in a very long time. Constantly having the posability of moving dangaled infront of my face and then taken away again has been infuriarating. It is paticularly maddening to watch other houses in the village get built in a 10th of the time that it is taken to get mine done. But then if you have money things get done faster. On a positive note the house building process has been a really fun learning expirence for me, I now know how to make rope out of palm leaves, weave bamboo walls and negotiate the politics of a Malagasy village. I may actually be moved in before I come home for the wedding but I am not going to put too much energy into hopeping as it most likely will not happen. But keep your fingers crossed for me anyways.
I am still trying to figure out the whole work thing, trying to convince people that I actually like to work and find sitting around on my butt all day to be extremly borning has been a huge challange. I can understand the perspective; if you have spent your entire life participating in backbreaking labor just to make ends meet the idea of a rich white persone wanting to work for nothing must be really flabergassting.
I have made some really great friends at site and adopted myself a new Malagasy Family which is keeping me well fed and well loved. So even though I still find certain aspects of life in a Malagasy village extremly challenging I now have something of a support system.
I am on my way to In-Service-Training and the opportunity to see mostof my friends for the first time in three months. I can hardly contain myself for all the excitment, one good thing after another. I might just starting doing dances in the internet cafe. I am going to try and contain myself for the moment and go get some ice cream and catch up on gossip. I will be back in the next couple of days with what will hopefully be better written an more detailed stories from site. Until then…
