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!