Monday, December 7, 2009

MADAGASCAR!!







Well hello from Paris! Yep I'm gonna make a long story short. About three weeks ago maybe, we were put on consolidation. This is where all volunteers and trainees were brought together in their regions. Us trainees were all brought up to the training site where we stayed for a long time. We couldn't leave the fenced in grounds without a staff member with us. There was an attempted kidnapping on US Embassy workers in one of the regions here in Niger. It was unsuccessful but unknown if it was a planned attack. So after the couple weeks of being all together, Mary our country director decided since we hadn't been in country for that long, we weren't able to notice if there was a difference in the atmosphere, whether a normal situation had become unsafe. So she decided to pull us. Lucky we were almost all able to go together to Madagascar where we will begin our training all over again. Unfortunately, one person wasn't able to come with us. Her name was Alena. She is a great person, always positive and will be greatly missed. I am amazed that PC was able to keep us all together and move us all to another country. I had made Niger my home in just the few weeks we were there and I will greatly miss it. We had a great Thanksgiving where the trainees put together a fabulous meal for everyone. We had PLENTY to eat. We also held a fashion show which was just great. We dressed up in Nigerien clothes, thanks to our language teachers, and modeled them off. It was a fun time. We put on an American Olympics for the teachers to participate in, which myself and JaJa put together. We did things like an obstacle course with hopscotch, frog jumps, English tunnel of greetings, and the crab walk. We also had pin the tail on the donkey, tug of war and musical chairs. It was a blast and everyone enjoyed. I am still a Health Volunteer which I'm excited about. I'm definately super excited to be heading to Madagascar, more of a vacation destination. So I hope many of you will consider coming. My new address will be posted on here. I'm gonna load some pictures and then head out to see Paris! I still can't believe this. It's so surreal. Luv you all. Thanks to those that have written and/or called. The first picture is

my language classmates, Ashely and JaJa. The second is of me and my family. Basically who they are are my mama, the daughter-in-law Ramatu, the daughter Rakia, the two grandsons Moumouni and Ousmane and me. The third one is some camels that were just wandering around down by the tabaki, a temporary lake that forms after the rainy season. Here's to the third time training!