Aprily!

Six months in, and Africa is really starting to feel like home. I had a great week, actually having legitimate conversations with a few people, and capped it off on Sunday evening by sitting with a group of friends on the beach, frying up cassava and eating it with a papaya-tomato-citrus-water salsa; looking at the stars above and the lightning in the distance. There are a million things that I randomly miss about the states, but it's also easy some days to imagine myself living in a little grass hut in Katsepy forever.

On the flip side, I don't think I've gotten a full night's sleep since I left America... a combo of being on mefloquin for anti-malaria reasons (causes you to have insane dreams, like the one on Saturday where I was being chased through someone's house by a bear with cow horns...), and of the rats who so kindly have moved into my house to keep me company. Apparently rats will eat anything, including my paints, handkerchiefs, anti-itch cream, soap, and one bite out of my apple. Yes, I still ate the rest.

The photo is of Emily teaching Nene how to weave mats (like the one she is sitting on). Emily is great, her family has adopted me, and I spend a lot of time at their house... she also informed me recently that her husband's younger brother needs a wife, so if I'm interested, hahaha... I told them that it would interfere with my plans of moving to Spain and marrying a football player. Once again, dodged the marraige bullet in Madagascar.

heaps of love, chan

Under the two month mark...

That's right folks, it's almost June 11th ,and you know what that means... WORLD CUP 2010!!! Can't wait. You see, my town has electricity each day from about 6 pm to 10 pm (game time), and they wheel out a tv each night that you can sit on the ground or on the wall and watch, so I won't have to miss a minute! It's the little things. I've had some chaos as of late, my house was broken into and my money stolen, then the owner of the house gave me a 7 pm curfew (so the town is building me a new house, long story), but the moral is: kala suru. Have patience. This will all be funny someday. It's actually funny already.. sort of.

Today I came to mahajanga to meet some of the PC crew up visiting, and at 11:30 the Baka (ferry) left the shore... circled back and picked up a cow that was hog tied and floated over, left again... circled back to pick up someone's duck who had tried to escape by throwing itself overboard, but was captured and returned to it's owner.. third time was a charm and off we went. Only 30 mins behind departure, not too shabby.

Will try for photos tomorrow, xoxo! chan

Mahajanga, day two.. It's been great to be in town catching up with Esther, Joanna and Devyn, volunteers who live south of me that I haven't seen since January. Spent today wandering around, eating gelato and buying veggies that I can't find in Katsepy. It was FREEZING this morning... finally got Esther to agree that it was low as 75, but she was leaning towards 80. The glacial breeze was what pushed me over the edge. Luckily the clouds cleared and the sun bumped us up to a much more reasonable temperature.

Can't think of anything too interesting to write, I'm putting in my garden and should have veggies popping up in a few weeks.. found a boat that goes north to Nosy Be (20 hours) that I want to take in Aug/Sept (hint hint, Em!), Jennie and I are hoping to do a 180km bike trip to Soalala in July, while the roads aren't big mud pits, and I can bumble my way through Gasy a little easier each day. Life is good. xoxo chan