Community Entry is Finshed!

Alright! Community Entry is over! What does that mean? Well I have been in the village for 3 months (In Zambia for 6 – when did that happen?). It means that I can now leave my district, use the provincial house (which has internet) and use my travel days. I live insanely close to the house by Peace Corps standards and will now have much more access to modern forms of communication. Next week I head out for IST training for 2 weeks directly afterwards I head to Livingstone. My mom is visiting me on the 21st -30th so if you want to send something to me contact her. I have a lot of things I could write about for you, to be honest I have 3 journals filled with thoughts but due to laziness I’ll just give you greatest hits of sorts.
- Killing a black Mamba
- Co-teaching grade 9 Geography / grade 7 CTS
- Holding an HIV and AIDS workshop (explaining that no you cannot catch HIV from a mosquito bite).
- Building a grass fence around my house
- Attending 2 funerals (explaining that requests its own post)
- Getting a cat!
- Art trade with Megan
- Working with women’s group to apply for grants
- Changing my own bike tire
- Thinking my house was on fire and falling into a sink hole while running frantically to it…
- Sewing chitenge curtains
- Weighting babies at the under 5 clinic
- Biking up both giant hills
- Biking 150k in a week
- Visiting 5 of my schools
- Pre-school in the Nsaka
- Sports days!
There’s so much more. Living in Africa is so surreal; it is an adventure every day. So far I’ve been enjoying, and I’m excited for the rest of my service. I love teaching in a cross-cultural environment, it’s amazing to see the differences in education and thinking patterns between cultures. I’m also enjoying my work with the women’s groups, the progress is slow but it feels like we are making real strides. I’ve only got 21 more months to go which is insane, I feel like I just got off the plane from philly yesterday (and with IST and vacation I’m losing a whole month). I’m trying to take everything as slow as possible so I can really take in this experience, most of my life I’ve been in a hurry to “keep on track” but here, I’m not sure if it’s the culture or not but I’m taking a significantly more relax pace.
Stay classy friends.