Recap of First Month at Site

Where to begin, this past month has seemed to fly by and now the school year is upon me. The past few weeks have been spent becoming accustomed to my village, home, and the culture it entails. Village life unlike that of PST life has been much more laid back, and has been filled with me having to create things to do. Now after a month I have started to create my daily routines and I am starting to feel at home. When I am not home cleaning, preparing for the school year, or playing with my 4-year-old host brother (those adventures deserve a blog all their own, but let’s say they consist of dancing around, teaching him yoga, and having him help me do the house chores), I am out in the village. Normally midday I take a walk into the village just to say hi. Some of the late afternoons have me attending the soccer games in the village, which is always a fun time. Sometimes I get adventurous and venture down to the sea with friends to watch the sunset. I have made some good friends, and continue to meet new people every day. During the day it is almost always expected to receive one visitor, at which point I spend time with them just relaxing and talking about a various of topics. Once a week I make a trip to the capital to catch up with the other volunteers and restock on food (since most food here is retrieved from the farm). I have also had opportunities to visit other volunteers’ sites and having an adventure at their place. Even one weekend they came to mine to have a djosho (picnic) and celebrate my birthday/the beginning of school. Within this past week I have begun my teaching experience. Though due to a shortage of teachers and students the lessons were more fun introduction activities rather than serious lessons. Next week should start the actual school year, though only time will tell. We also get the experience of celebrating the Islamic New Year (a lunar based calendar) this upcoming week. As the days go on things get easier to do (I consider how it seems easy to get water from my cistern, when before I struggled not to drop water all over the floor). With electricity being something semi regular in this current time I will write a post with my weekly experiences up until now.

Until Then.