Almost in

Well, home-stay is over (Peace Corps training). We almost wish we hadn't had such a great experience. A little afraid of peaking too early. Our family was great. We feel like we made as close to friends as you can when you can't really speak to each other very well. We had a great send-off including cooking hot dogs for what seemed like the whole village, and some really beautiful gifts from our host family. They gave us traditional clothing - a matching kamisa (for men) and pangi (for women), and some other neat stuff. Our last couple of weeks we actually started to be able to say some things beyond the basics, but when they are talking to each other or even talking fast to us, it's pretty hard to pick up the gist of the conversation. We'll get there. David even started having political conversations with his friend here - alot of gesturing and charade-type actions involved. They definitely know who Obama is and David learned a bit about local politics as well.


We're in the city for a week for swearing in (on the 29th) and buying provisions for going out to our permanent site. This includes big things like beds, furniture, tools, etc, as well as food provisions for at least a month. There is of course food available in our village but it is mostly limited to what they grow or catch locally. Other items are for sale in small stores but they are expensive and there is very little selection because they have to bring everything they don't grow or catch out from the city (by truck and boat - a motorized canoe that's about 4 feet wide).


The visit to our permanent site went well. The village is right on the banks of a big, beautiful river. Our main contact in the village - known as our counterpart - took very good care of us and showed us around alot. We even had a sit-down meeting with village leaders and talked about what Peace Corps is and why we were there. This was of course a little nerve-wracking since they don't know any english (our counterpart knows a little), especially for David since he was expected to do all the talking. We also discovered that bats are very poor housemates. At first, Christine was happy to have bats around as they eat bugs. But, they don't use the toilet and apparently crap while in flight. Despite this minor inconvenience, our new home is very nice - two bedrooms, a bathroom with a bucket flush toilet, smooth concrete floors and a spacious tiled front balcony. It will also be relatively easy to bat-proof the house.


Sorry for the lack of photos. Internet access is very limited and connection speed is a big problem. It once took 10 minutes just to load our email page so uploading pictures has not really been feasible. We now have access to the Peace Corps office computers (we're here now!) and should be able to post some good pic's this week. More later.