More training.

Hey everyone. We are back in our homestay village. This is our final three week stint in our intensive language classes. You should see us in our dirt floor classroom and our little wooden desks made for ten year olds (and look like they are made by ten year olds)! We go back to the training center on Sept. 7th and then (finally) swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers at the embassy in Bamako on the 12th. After that we'll be real Volunteers and the real immersion into language begins. We move to our permanent village for two years.
Things are going quite well. Everyday is an adjustment, though. Not a day goes by where you don’t look around and think, “Wow! I live in west Africa!” Not sure that will ever go away.
We got to see a bit more of the country last week. Went up to the Kayes region. Saw a nice Baobab forest. Got to hang out with some of the other trainees in a more adult setting, which was good. A small taste of public transport as well. What would take a few hours back home is an all day event here, but you knew that…
We went on a field trip yesterday to a great waterfall. It was an excellent break from our studies. Just to get out and do some hiking and hang out was great. We went to a cave and one of the biggest natural arches I've ever seen too. The rest of it is really hard to put into words so just suffice it to say that we are doing well and enjoying ourselves.

Off to our site.

We are going to visit our site tomorrow. Might be out of range for a bit. Say goodbye to the tropics and trees, apparently, as we are pretty much in the desert. We are looking forward to seeing where we will end up for the next two years. Things are going well here. Hope all is well in the states and beyond.

Still Studying

I ni ce!!! It always drove me crazy when PC Mali stuff would show up at our house and the material would would start off like that. Now that I understand it, I like to use it myself!

We are back in village studying hard to learn bambarankan. It's going pretty well, but they use 1 word for multiple English words. It's really difficult as context defines certain words. The tenses are pretty funky too.

After a few days at the PC training center we are back in our training village. We both had a warm welcome from our families, which made being back less stressful. Mark has since fallen ill, but he's recovering nicely. Dooni, Donni as they say here (slowly, slowly). It actually describes the way of life here.

In a few days we head off to the training center and then to our permanant site for 1 week! We are excited and apprehensive about living in Malitainia (n. 1. lands in Mali that are practically situated in Mauritania 2. The parts of Mali and Mauritania where borders are undefined) More to come on Malitania once we've been there!

I understand that people can't post to the blog. I believe I have fixed this. I think I set it to have your comments emailed before being posted, just in case you can't see them.