The lost blog...

This was a whole blog I typed up in July and though was lost forever when the computer crashed.. turns out that google blog is smarter than I am, and auto saves drafts. Technology. A bit old, but covers my vaca north.
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Sorry about the delay, hope this blog catches you up a bit on life in Madagascar... I had IST training at Lake Montasoa in May, and while it was good to see the other volunteers and share stories, it didn't really send me back to site with the information that I was looking for, so I returned in a bit of a funk.. plus, fater slacking on speaking gasy for two weeks, I was much less mahay, which never makes for a good return; ('mahay' is sort of the equivilant of 'to know'). Luckily, I only had a few weeks before I took off on my first vacation/business trip to the north.

Met up with two fellow PCV's, Sara and Nicki, in Mahajanga and celebrated Nicki's bday in style - brochettes by the ocean, WC soccer, and many a lukewarm THB (Madagascar's own Three Horses Beer, written in english but you pronounce the letters in French.. go figure). Headed north to our friend Katie's site, where we added another chatty vazaha to the crew, causing the taxi brousse passengers to comment on how much we talked. Hit Diego and had a meeting with Sun For Life, an NGO that works with the Moringa tree, is very interested in collaborating with Peace Corps Volunteers, and sent us away with a cadeau of 17 kilos of seed!! Very exciting. My counterpart at site wants to start a tree club, so hopefully I can interest him in Moringa. Next stop: Brit's site for some cookstove building, tree grafting, and World Cup soccer watching. Luckily, her neighbors provided us with a 48 hour party (aka loud music blaring all night).

Back to Diego - met up with a few PCVs who were on their trip before they left the country, having finished their 6 month tour as Peace Corps response vols. Crashed in a beach house for the night, then hopped down about 100km to Ankarana, a national park with lemurs, chameleons, tsingy (awesome limestone rock formations), and BAT CAVES! The caves were amazing - I'm sure that it's not good that we were able to do what we did, but we got to climb waay back in the caves and scramble around. There were spiders that inspired Nicki to develop a new fear, sparkling rock beds, creepy noises, and no other people around.. not something that you can usually experience at a national park.

Fahatelo: Ankify, aka my new favorite place ever. Three days, two nights in a beach house, swimming in the ocean, eating delicious brochettes, manioc and coco... are you noticing how much food is mentioned here? Our trip was the northern madagascar brochette sampling tour. Sara and I walked to the Port to Nosy Be for breakfast and met a guy who had knoa former PCVs in the area.. he showed us the path and even took us by his house -to the surprise of the people there. Not every day you show up with two white girls in small town Mad.

After Ankify we headed back to Mahajanga, and then I went home, the end of a great trip, but luckily I had a big event in town to get me right back into the swing of things - my Gasy Parents' son was getting married! Three days of celebration, all in my backyard.
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Since I already wrote about the wedding I'll cut out now... lots of love to all! xoxo tiz