Ok, to say that this past week was one of the craziest of my life would be an understatement. I got back to Lusaka, Monday night after a pretty uneventful and very sleep filled couple of plane rides. I slept in the Peace Corps. bunk house that night and then back to the training center, where I have been staying for the past two months where I got to reunite with my fellow trainees. It was absolutely incredible to see everyone again. I missed them so much. I've been apart of some pretty incredible groups of people in my life (college, study abroad, etc) but this one may just be the best. They are some of the most supportive, funniest, nicest, and all around amazing people that I have ever met. I went back to my homestay family that night and it was good to see them again. I had felt so bad that I left without saying goodbye the last time because I was on site visit. They were very relieved that I was bac even though I was only going to be staying with them for two more nights. On Wednesday we had a cultural day for our homestay families where they came to our training center to eat a variety of American foods that we prepared for them and to listen to speeches in the local language by the fellow trainees. It was a pretty big production and I am really glad I came back in time to be a part of it.
Thursday morning we moved all of our things out of our homestay families homes and to another hostel type place in Lusaka province in order to get ready for swear in. We had meetings all day Thursday at Peace Corps Headquarters and got ready for our official swear-in ceremony on Friday. We got to go to the ambassadors residence for it that was pretty sweet. Everyone had local clothes made and looked very Zambian and clean. 46 of our original 49 swore in as official volunteers. After our swear-in ceremony collected our Peace Corps. moving in allowance and headed out to Lusaka to do some shopping for our sites, although I didnt really do any shopping because I'm headed back to the training center for a week to make up the language lessons I missed (but I am still an official volunteer!). We then got to actually go out in Lusaka which was really fun and definitely needed before we said goodbye the next morning. I think we got home around 3 am and everyone had to be up at 5:30 in order to load their cruisers and to head out to their respective provinces. It was really sad to say goodbye to everyone. I think everyone else was ready to get to their site and start their real Peace Corps. experience, but I was bummed because I just got back and had to say goodbye again. Such is life in Peace Corps. though. Now we wont see each other for three months, until our in-service training conference. But hopefully it will be fine I'm sure it will be. Now I've got a pretty low-key week of make-up stuff before I head back to Eastern province to move-in to my site!
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Americaland
So as most of the people who read this know, I have been home in America for the past week and a half. My stepfather passed away after a long battle with cancer a week ago today and I came home for my two weeks bereavement leave. Its been a pretty difficult experience but its been really great to be surrounded by my family and friends again. I didn't realize how much I missed everyone and everything before I came back. But I am headed back to Zambia on Sunday and to be honest I can't wait to return as amazing as it has been to spend this time with my family and friends again I really do miss Zambia and especially the other volunteers in my intake, I keep seeing their updates on facebook and it makes me realize how much I really want to be apart of that.
So right before I left Zambia I was on my second site visit, meaning that I got to actually see the site where I am going to be living for the next two years. I am a third generation volunteer which means that I am the third volunteer to be living at my site. There both are positives and negatives to this. I do get a pretty much furnished hut because the other volunteers have left behind a lot of their furniture and other essentials that they don't want to bring with them back to America however, my village is also going to have a preconceived notion of what a volunteer is like who I am before I get there. For example one of the the volunteers before me didnt allow children in her yard so therefore none of the kids in the village will come near my house which is something that I'm defintitely going try to undo while I am at my site, I'm thinking coloring books and some crayons and bubbles might help undo that one. As for my actually dwelling space I've got two separate huts. One has two rooms, a bedroom (aka a room that just fits my double bed) and a small sitting/misc. room. My other hut is small cooking space. I really like the set-up for my site because I had quite the traumatic experience with rats when I was studying abroad in Uganda so I like the idea of having all my food (and the critters that might be enticed by that food) in one place and sleeping in a completely separate dwelling.
I also got to spend a few days with the volunteer that I am replacing and that was pretty great. It was nice to have the perspective of someone who has been in the village for awhile and to see some of the projects that he has done during his service and some of the schools that he has worked with. I also got to see the Provincial House for Eastern Province which is like the headquarters for Peace Corps in my province where volunteers can spend a few nights each month to hang out with each other and have some of the finer things in life like electricity and indoor plumbing. Second site visit as a whole got me really excited to move to my village and start my service although I'm not sure how my move-in/site placement date with be affected by my time at home but thats not something that I am really going to worry about right now- at least not until Monday when I am back in Lusaka.
Oh and just a quick note I was looking at some old posts and saw some gross spelling mistakes and I just wanted to clarify that most of the time when I am updating my blog I am doing via my cellphone which has an old school small keyboard and I use text prediction so any weird spelling things/words can be attributed to that. I just had to clarify that to make sure that my grammatical integrity remains intact.
So right before I left Zambia I was on my second site visit, meaning that I got to actually see the site where I am going to be living for the next two years. I am a third generation volunteer which means that I am the third volunteer to be living at my site. There both are positives and negatives to this. I do get a pretty much furnished hut because the other volunteers have left behind a lot of their furniture and other essentials that they don't want to bring with them back to America however, my village is also going to have a preconceived notion of what a volunteer is like who I am before I get there. For example one of the the volunteers before me didnt allow children in her yard so therefore none of the kids in the village will come near my house which is something that I'm defintitely going try to undo while I am at my site, I'm thinking coloring books and some crayons and bubbles might help undo that one. As for my actually dwelling space I've got two separate huts. One has two rooms, a bedroom (aka a room that just fits my double bed) and a small sitting/misc. room. My other hut is small cooking space. I really like the set-up for my site because I had quite the traumatic experience with rats when I was studying abroad in Uganda so I like the idea of having all my food (and the critters that might be enticed by that food) in one place and sleeping in a completely separate dwelling.
I also got to spend a few days with the volunteer that I am replacing and that was pretty great. It was nice to have the perspective of someone who has been in the village for awhile and to see some of the projects that he has done during his service and some of the schools that he has worked with. I also got to see the Provincial House for Eastern Province which is like the headquarters for Peace Corps in my province where volunteers can spend a few nights each month to hang out with each other and have some of the finer things in life like electricity and indoor plumbing. Second site visit as a whole got me really excited to move to my village and start my service although I'm not sure how my move-in/site placement date with be affected by my time at home but thats not something that I am really going to worry about right now- at least not until Monday when I am back in Lusaka.
Oh and just a quick note I was looking at some old posts and saw some gross spelling mistakes and I just wanted to clarify that most of the time when I am updating my blog I am doing via my cellphone which has an old school small keyboard and I use text prediction so any weird spelling things/words can be attributed to that. I just had to clarify that to make sure that my grammatical integrity remains intact.
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