ny bad

Okay so i had been really bad with this. I apologize but I am going to try to catch you all up to speed. For Christmas vacation I did a few things. For Christmas itself I spent the day at the provincial house with other peace corps volunteers. The next day we went ti the orohanage in solwezi where we gave each child a toy and then left some community toys for the children. It was so humbking. Although I would say that this Christmas was my least commercial yet...the joy in each chikds eyes from some toy cars or small dolls was...I don't know the right word, humbling, heartbreaking. I am nit sure. It makes you appreciate things alot. At the end as we were leaving the children and staff sang us a song which was wicked moving, it brought tears to my eyes. There is a video floating around somewhere, if I can find it I will share it. You could hear in their voices ans are by the movement just how grateful they were. The next day me and a couple others from my province met up with two of our friends from a different province. We went to a chimpanzee orphanage when we literally got to hold some of the chimps and feed them. There was one chimp that was not fit for the human interaction so she was in a seperat enclosure and she was sourtung at us and throwing rocks at us as the guide was telling us about chimps and the program it was so awesome. I was also peed on by a chimp.I was sitting on a log and the chimp was in a tree and decided he had to pee. It was coo. How many people an say they have been pee on by a chimp? I posted some pictures on Facebook. We also went to a waterfall and just relaxed and then to solwezi to celebrate the new year.

For my birthday I spent it in solwezi with some friends. It was nice and relaxing although I did have an infected cut on my foot that made it swell alot and eventually the swelling spread to my ankle. It was difficult to walk. But I am healed now and only had to stay in solwezi a few extra days.

When I got back to my village from my birthday addventure I was confronted by my community saying that they had organized the nursery school and that I would begin teaching it the next day. Needless to say I was a little over whelemed, still not 100% but I was very apprefiative of my community's effort and so we began. It has been going really well different from schools in the united states. The resources are just not there, no paper, crayons, sissors, chalkboard But it is not only the resources but also the parental involvement. I feel that in many places I the US parents know what the children are learning about at school and reinforce it, but here most of the time the learning stops once the child leaves the class, especially the english which is what the parents want the children to learn the most. It has been challenging but rewarding.

I also have gone to a training in Lusaka which was nice. I got to go to the movies, eat some good food, see everyone that I did my training with and learn a few things. One bad thing that happened was one of the girls I trained with was sent home after being hit by a drunk driver while walking, causing her to break her foot. Her recovery time was too ling so she was medically seperated.


Right now Leanne, Kim,and I are in the proecess of writing a grant for a joint Netball and football tournament where we will have VCT, which is great since it is not availablin my community and people don't know there HIV status, and HIV/aids educational events. It will require some work but it will be nice if we can pull it off.

This Monday is youth day so we had one of the neighboring villages over for a celebration of dancingm, poems, songs, questions in English and track and field events. Sometimes I have a moment of "wow I really am in Africa this is awesome" and the definitely occurred during these events.

That is a quick update. Hope all is well with you.