Site Visit!

Hello everyone! I am writing you from an internet cafe in a brightly-colored restaurant in an urban shopping center in Lusaka. I came here today to buy enough food to survive the week in Central Province, where I will be visiting the site that I will call my home for the next two years. I am very, very excited! I will be in a village 20k from the Boma (town center), and apparently I will have a challenging bike ride because it's a hilly area. But that's all right, I haven't fallen off my bike lately (knock on wood) so I'm sure I'll be fine. I have just finished week 5 of my 9-week pre-service training period. Yesterday I had my second Bemba oral language test, and I didn't do too shabby on it (though I didn't do as well as the first one-- they're getting harder!). I really enjoy Bemba and am learning fast; I am also learning a lot about agroforestry, conservation farming, and environmental education, and I can't wait to get to my site and figure out what projects I will be working on. I am getting really excited to move in to my mud hut and start my life here, but I am also sad that pre-service training is going by so fast; I will really miss my fellow trainees, some of whom are going to the far reaches of the country and I will only see them a couple of times a year, and I am sad to leave my sweet little one-room house in the village with my host family. I have told my host mother I will visit her when I am a volunteer; I just hope I am given the opportunity to keep that promise.

I have had some requests to post pictures online for all of you; I hope to be able to share my experience with you visually soon, but right now it's not an option. I have internet access but would need a bigger, faster server to post pictures. But I am taking lots of pictures, so hopefully someday soon I will be able to post them!

I'm almost out of time here so I'm going to sign off. Wish me luck on my site visit! Thanks for all your support and encouragement and nice comments, they mean a lot to me!

Hello everyone! Mwashabukeni mukwai! I can't talk long, I am at an internet cafe and there is a long line of people waiting to take my spot. Just wanted you all to know that I'm alive! I've been spending my 9-week pre-service training period in a small village outside Lusaka-- I have my own one-room mud hut with a thatched roof, my own pit latrine, and my own bathing shelter. My host mother and my language trainer are both teaching me to speak Bemba, one of the 7 or so languages spoken in Zambia. It's hard work but I think I'm getting the hang of it! I finally got my phone hooked up with internet access today (so y'all can send e-mails if you want), and I went grocery shopping (and bought cookies and nutella and chocolate, the essentials of life), so I feel a little closer to home today, though to be honest I've really been enjoying the quiet life of a rural Zambian. I can see loads more stars at night (when it stops raining) including Orion, who is resting on his side down here in the southern hemisphere. I ride my bike to and from training every day, and fall off every other day (but luckily it's rude to show much leg in public in Zambia, so covering up the bruises isn't much of a problem). I really like Zambia, and my fellow trainees are awesome-- we have a lot of fun together. This experience is intense and life-changing already, and I've barely gotten started. Let the adventure begin!

Hope to write you all again soon!