It seems so weird that I've been here for almost a month.  The time is flying by!!!!

A normal day for me consists of getting up around 6:30 and bathing.  Bathing means filling up a bucket with rain water and taking it to a small outdoor shower, with no shower in it.  I use a small bowl to take water out of the bucket and pour it onto myself.  At the house where I am living they have a black rain collection barrel and sometimes the water is kind of warm from the previous day, but mostly it's a freezing shocking sensation.  Needless to say, my 35 minute hot showers have turned into 5 minute freezing ones.
 Next, I get ready for school and help my host mom make breakfast.
 Training starts at 8:00 and goes until 4:30 or 5:00 and we take lunch from 12:00 - 1:00.  I go home and have lunch with my host family.  Training is similar to a college class with lectures on different situations we might face throughout service and how to handle them. At the end of the day sometimes I will stay at the training center to do homework or to use the internet.  Other days I will go home and play with my host siblings or talk with my host family.  Then I help make dinner.  I am not good at cooking... yet.  I have burned a lot of things, but my host mom insists that I am slowly getting better

Yesterday I went to an area called the landing with my host siblings and one of their friends.  It takes me about 10 minutes to walk to the landing down a dirt road.  (All of the roads where I live are dirt/mud and sand.)  The landing is an area by the creek that people go swimming, do wash, and bathe.  The creek is black water and it will stain light clothes so I wear all black when I go.  I usually wear a bathing suit and wear a tank top and shorts over it.  We jumped off of the bank into the creek and played for an hour.  It's weird to me how similar the children here are to the children back home.  We played catch and had swimming races.

Today I had the chance to speak with the country director of the program and found out that he went to Hampden-Sydney.. what a small world! Right now I'm sitting in our training building stealing internet from the internet cafe..

I have uploaded a bunch of pictures onto Facebook and since then I haven't been very good about taking pictures!  So I will do my best to upload some more soon!


Only 2 weeks until I get my site assignment, which is where I will be living for the next 2 years!