i am really fortunate. i have a really awesome host family. my host dad is a professor at the high school, so in terms of familes my family is really progressive.
i am studying french, all of the other trainees are divided into the 5 languages spoken here, you are placed based on the city that you will be living in for the next two years. I was placed in a departmental capital in the south called boghe, i am learning french and pulaar because it has a huge population of french speakers. tommorow i will visit my site for the first time, and stay there for about a week.
the people of mauritania are really nice, and yes on numerous occasions i am mistaken for a mauritanian. There have been many times when people have either had a hard time believing i was american or didn't believe i was american.
the other pct's are so really awesome, there are about 71 trainees.
i am a trainee until the first week of september then i become a volunteer andmove to my permanent site. I will have 5 site mates, inshallah.
training is basically organized where you have a training village, after one week at the training village all of the trainees moved to our host family villages called cbt sites. at my cbt site there are 6 other trainees. i have french class with 2 of them monday-friday. from time to time we come into the training village for tech sessions{ for me thats health sessions}. but most of the time is spent in our cbt sites with our families, basically intergrating and practicing our language. my cbt site is awesome there isn't any electricity but there is a cell phone charging store that is powered by generators. its amazing how much i appreciate little things here for example, the peace corps gave us some old copies of newsweek and it was the only contact we had to american media for 2 weeks, we sat around reading them for a couple of hours and it was the hightlight of our day. {so instead of throwing away magazines, just send them to me} i can't tell you how many times i have read my marie claire.
and i can't tell you what a luxury it is to drink cold water.
when i eat vegetables its the greatest thing ever.
at christmas we are able to visit the capital, and i am so looking forward to eating pizza. b.c mauritania doesn't have cheese.
the other night the peace corps made us american spagetti and i seriously thought i was going to die, it was so good. i am not saying that the food here isn't good, its just it lacks variety.
for most of you, you know what i had to go through to get here, so even though its a challenge,i wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
just know that receiving any thing in the mail would be the greatest thing ever.
its not very expensive, when the post office asks you whats in the package just say religious material or educational materials.
tiff
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I am soo very proud of you. I saw Mitchy last week and we talked about how happy we are that you are pursuing your dreams. I wish you all the best out there. Know that there are lots of us who love you, miss you, and think about you all the time!
Hi Tiffany,
So glad to hear you are doing well...so good to hear your voice the other day. I imagine now you're at your future site getting a feel for what is to come. You are brave. At the B&B Rob and I stayed in in La Paz, there was an old bookshelf with a ton of books for the guests to use. I found an anthology an Peace Corps volunteer experiences and thought about you. It was so hot there...it's the desert on the Sea of Cortez...hot as a whore in church...or however that goes. We had the best time, fell in love some more and got dark and sun-soaked. We walked all around the town and ate...a lot. We found a beach with crystal clear waters that you can walk out into for a 1/4 mile. Nothing like I saw in Hawaii. Unique in a very non-touristy and deeply rooted sense. Family is everything there, so coming from such a booming place like San Francisco it was refreshing to see that family came first...fathers in such adoration of their kids. Not that fathers here don't care...but you know, priorities are weighed differently.
SO we're back. I go back to work tomorrow , feeling like we were gone a month. I tapped into the part of me that lives to travel. I can't wait for Europe, and to go back to La Paz. Oh! We drove through this other small town called Todos Santos that's an artists' town and is lush and green, smells like jasmine everywhere. We ate fresh local fish and about 1,000 tortillas. One more thing...we took a boat trip to Isla Espiritu Santo where no one lives but seals and fish are abundant. It was dry and eerie and covered with cacti. It would have been painful if it weren't for the clear blue water. Beeeeeeeautiful. I love you Tiff! When I make a little dough I'll get a little package together for you. I can tell with your BOLD letters how very bad you need some magazines. Do you need any sweets or body butter?
Love love love,
Molly
Hello my love,
miss you dearly...glad to hear you are getting out of this experience what you had hoped to...i had no doubts of course. i wanna send you some mags and things, not sure if you've put your address somewhere and i just didn't notice it...stuff with me is dull and crappy as usual...i'll get my stuff together eventually, try to follow your example =)
much love, stay safe...
ok. i'm a dork. i see the address, plain as day where it says "Mail me" lol.
love ya. i'm gonna go buy a calling card now. i'm assuming i can do it on the net...
FOR EVERYONE:
Spoke to Tiff a second ago and she asked that i put up this site where i got my calling card:
www.phonecardsavenue.com
I got a Zumba calling card that cost me twenty dollars for 1 hour and 32 minutes of talk time. They give you your pin and info right away. You have to sign up, then someone will call and verify your info, activate your card, and voila! you can speak to our little angel.
hi!! i was searching for info on boghe and your blog popped up! i was doing research there over the summer and i wish i could be back!! you sound like you're having a good time :) ...where is your family at? escale or doux? take care!!
Post a Comment