Photos!

Hi, all! We're back at our training site for a few days before swearing in, which is Thursday. I'll be one of the speakers that day, so I'm sure I'll say something AMAZING.

It was really sad to leave our temporary host families. They gave me a lovely lihiya (wrap) that I'll wear for our ceremony this week. I will definitely try to provide photos.

Below are photos from the village we just left. Two are the view from my homestead on the hill on foggy mornings. I have more photos that show more of the village, and I'll try to upload some of those soon. The crocs are from the game park we went to several weeks ago. They were enormous.There were signs at the restaurant reminding people to avoid leaning over the railing because of the danger. Crazy. The photo with the mountain and the moon is of our village. There were mountains on the back side of it, and some of us climbed them. I did not climb the one shown, but some more hard core than me did. The last photo is me, my host make (mother), host bosisi (sisters) and host cousin. Nephew? Something along those lines.

We had our last language test, and I should get results for that today. I think it went OK, though I didn't know what to do when the tester lied to me. He told me he was born in 1995. I stared at him. I should have called him a liar, which is "unemanga," I believe. Whoops.

I move to my village on Friday. It's really nice to have a few days together as a group first, and we're having a good time. We have integration for three months starting Friday. That means we're only allowed to leave our village overnight once a month, and we're really expected to be there just about all the time. That's fine, it just means a LOT of alone time. We'll see how that one goes.

Thanks to everyone who has sent more packages and letters! Rae, I received yours, and I got packages from Debi and Larry and from Brie and Jay. Can't remember if I mentioned those here. Mama T sent me some clippings from the Post-Dispatch, which is excellent, and I've gotten a couple of letters from Jack. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You guys make me feel loved. That is a great feeling.

You can still use the same address if you'd like to send a letter; that one will be good for the next two years.

It's exciting to almost be a Peace Corps volunteer!

Salani kahle, all.