At long last...

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone/anyone who reads this! I am in Lilongwe, waiting for PC transport back to Dedza, about an hour south of here. Yesterday I arrived in the capital from site visit, which means I have spent about 30 hours on a bus in the past 6 days. So far, it seems worth it -- my site is gorgeous. It's at Chitimba, on the border of Rumphi and Karonga district. I traveled there with my headmaster, Chance, who was gracious enough to let me stay in his house during my visit. And then I got to see my new house and explore around Chitimba. The house is enormous. Visitors are always welcome. AND I have electricity! So I lucked out. No running water though. But the electricity is especially welcome, because it means I can have a fan. It's really really hot. It's about a 5 minute walk to the beach, and I have plans for some beachside ukulele-ing.

Funny story: so I was wondering what Malawians wear to go swimming, and I asked my headmaster. He said, simply, "Pants." Naturally I thought, that makes sense. Malawi is a very conservative country (I'm supposed to wear skirts below the knee at all times), and I don't think people have the income to buy scuba suits. I was forgetting, however, that this Malawian conservatism doesn't always follow my American logic, and that, more importantly, "pants" in Malawi means underpants. The next day I wanted to go into the lake, so my headmaster's lovely wife went with me. We got to the sand and I took off my wrap, revealing my "sturdy one-piece" that the packing list had instructed us to bring. The headmaster's wife looked at me, laughed, and promptly stripped down to her undies. Malawi is a confusing place sometimes.

So for a quick sum-up of the two months I've been here:
We've been in PST, or Pre-Service Training, which means we are not officially Volunteers yet. We will become Volunteers on Dec. 9th. So my training class of 20 has been having a lot of language classes, a lot of technical preparation, and a lot of excitement when the mail arrives. Speaking of which, I have a new mailing address! It's on the sidebar. So we had homestay for 6 weeks, where we stayed with village families and taught at the local school. It was an adventure, mostly because of the lack of communication ability. My family spoke nearly no English, and my Chichewa is not quite up to par, so there were some funny moments. I taught Form 1 (freshman) English at the Katsekaminga Community Day Secondary School -- their essays were, at times, hilarious, and at times, very impressive for kids who have never owned a book. [Sidebar: I'm definitely looking forward to working on the library in Chitimba -- there's a bunch of books that a previous Volunteer got sent to the school, but right now the kids can't access them because they're not organized and they're all in the staff room, where the students are not allowed to go. It is strange to be allowed in the staff room, actually -- a lot of my students will be my age or possibly older, since often they break off in the middle of the school year to help with the farming or other work, and then finish the following year.]
After homestay was over, which was both sad and relief -- it was hard to never decide what was happening to me, but my family was incredible -- we had a week back at the College of Forestry. We got our bikes (they are hardcore), went to Ed's, the bar down the street, hung out a lot, and forgot a lot of the language we'd learned in homestay. It was a good week. Up next: language intensive, which for us Chitumbuka speakers is in Rumphi boma (boma = city). Then, we're back in Dedza for a few more technical wrap-up things, and then it's off to site! Then I'll start teaching English to freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, in classes of about 50. Yikes.
It's definitely exciting.

Should roll out now, but I hope I can post again soon, and I miss you all!