Volunteer Visit

I'm back in Thies (and about halfway through training)! The volunteer visit started out a little rough but ended really well.

I was picked up at the center Saturday morning by my ancienne (the girl I'm replacing) as well as by my new host dad (who has a car)! My host dad Mor is really nice and speaks French so that'll be nice. The room my ancienne found me is AMAZING and I love her so much for it! It's the only thing up a flight of stairs (I've already decided there's going to be a no-coming up the stairs rule). There's a bathroom in the room with a shower head (no more bucket baths) and a sink! I'll be living like a queen! The room doesn't have internet, but I can get it installed (and I will get it installed the first week there). After getting internet I'm going to get furniture (desk, dressor, table) and start living the life (of a PCV)... Oh I'm even thinking about painting the walls!

Anyway, enough about my room. After seeing the room my ancienne toured me around Bambey. It's a small town but I'm excited about the work possibilities. My ancienne did a really great job of setting up contacts and starting projects for me to work on. So after the town tour we found out that my counter-part (who's uncle of my host family) had heart failure and had passed away. The Peace Corps car that was driving to another site (the site I was actually originally going to spend Sunday-Wednesday at) was close enough to swing through and pick me up so I wasn't in my family's way for funeral plans. It was an unfortunate beginning of my volunteer visit but I was glad to see Bambey. The rest of my weekend was in another town kind of the size of Bambey. While there I made banana pancakes and garlic bread with the other PCT and the PCV hosting us. We also broke the fast a number of times (we weren't fasting for Ramadan but we still broke it with people).

I'm very glad to be back at the training center to get on the internet as well as to see my friends and hear about their sites. I'm already trying to plan an epic bike trip between other sites... stay tuned!

KO