I'm NOW an offical Peace Corps. Volunteer

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!

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.

I dont want to be a negative nancy.

I feel like my last post didnt completely convey how much I love being here and my life right now because there was a bit of complaining. However, I must say that I feel terribly sorry for all of you who dont get to take an outdoor bucket bath (its warm) under the Zambian stars every night. The sky here is truly amaizing. You can see so many stars with such breath taking brilliance that it ALMOST makes me never want to leave this place. Although then I start thinking about American food and well I know that I will inevitably return home, if just for ice cream...I realized that I hadnt shared that yet and its something I am truly grateful for every night...

No clean clothes and an ear infection

The title of this post pretty much stop up my life at this exact moment. Foot get me wrong overall I love love love being here. However the recent bout of rains weve had have not only prevented me from washing my clothes but have also insured that all the clothes i have are covered in a solid layer of dirt. And I mean solid layer. As for the ear ache I definitely did not get that when I did not in swimming in a local dam. Eh I have some medicine for it so it should in away soon. In other news my bug net and I had a serious bonding moment the other morning when I awoke to fine a palm sized black spider atop my net. As long as its out of my sleeping space its fine by me...

I am my mother's daughter.

After being in Zambia for about three weeks I think it may be safe to say that I have developed a somewhat serious addiction to peanut butter. In the US I have always enjoyed a good apple with peanut butter or a pb and j sandwich on occasion. This is different. I seriously crave peanut butter at every meal and you know, throughout the day as well. I always thought my mom was absolutely nuts for eating the amount of pb that she did while I was growing up and by the spoonful no less. However as with many other things as I grow up I am starting to see just how right she was all along. My diet here besides peanut butter consists of a lot me shima which is made from ground cornmeal that is ground until there is no nutritional content left and them boiled with water to make large lumps of thick tasteless porridge. On top of the shima there is usually a vegetable like rape, pumpkin leaves, or cabbage. Sometimes there is beans or a meat like chicken. The food isnt bad persay just greasy (because using oil is a sign of wealth and you always want to impress visitors and guests) and bland. Sometimes rice is thrown into the mix but thats about it for variety. And then there's really good peanut butter readily available. I mean as far as coping and adjustment mechanisms go peanut butter dependency is on the healthier side of things... Besides the food everything is going great. I have a great homestay family. I live with an older couple where children are all older and have moved away from home. It makes for a very quiet home life but they are really open minded and supportive so I have no complaints. As far as training goes its been refuty intense. I an learning nyanja for my language which means I will be placed in the Eastern province come May near the Malawian border. Language training takes up my mornings 6 days a week and I have technical training in the afternoon as it relates to different aspects of being a L.I.F.E volunteer. So life is busy and somewhat monotonous but the days are really flying by. I am trying to write a lot me letters while I am in training but I know it will be a lot easier once I get to my site at the beginning of May and have more free time...

Its good to be back

Ok so I am going to try and sum up the past two weeks as best as I can. So I met the other incoming 48 peace corps zambia in Philly on Feb 15th. We were there for about 36 hours for some preliminary paperwork and then proceeded to hop on a bus to JFK and then flew to South Africa and then took another flight to Lusaka. When we got off the plane in Lusaka we were told to be dressed in business casual attire because there would be a lot of people coming to meet us and that first impressions are considered very important. And that would have been totally fine except there wasnt anyone to meet us. Apparently they thought our arrival time was 7 hours later...well in case I had forgotten the continent on which we had just arrived I was quickly reminded t.i.a. this is Africa. After about an hour and half we were picked up and taken to istt which is a college/training center. The next two days were filled with medical and logistical stuff i.e. bike fittings, program overviews etc. We were then whisked off to the bush in small groups for 4 days. I got to visit a currently serving volunteer in central province. His site was so beautiful but the fact that he had to basically climb a mountain to get cell service was a bit disconcerting. But some volunteers do have service at their site so it totally depends on placement. Being in the bush was pretty great though because it really actualized the reality of this experience. I got to create a small cookstove out of river clay which is pretty awesome and I will definitely do again. After we got back from our site visit we moved into our homestays which is where I am now...

Oh I so made it

Hey so I am alive and oh so well in zambia. Its been a crazy almost three weeks but so great. Ive got to get to my training now and promise to give a real update soon