rats, outta control cows, lemurs..oh my.

Well hello there. This is Melissa. It has been awhile. After getting back from IST, I realized I had new roommates. RATS! Not too pleasant are they. They deSTROYED my house. Ate everything and anything they could chew through. Including, but not limited to, my clothes, a soccer ball, anything plastic, some baby formula that i mistakenly bought thinking it was powdered milk...ha, my camelbak which I would be using on our bike trip, and they even ate my walls. UGH! I did laundry a day or two after getting home, and sure enuf I found 3 baby rats in my laundry basket. It took me a long time to do laundry that day. I bought some rat traps, told the neighbor kids that when I catch one, they'll have to help me get rid of it becuz "I'm scared." More like DISGUSTED. They kept me up night after night and then finally I heard a SMACK! Sure enough I think I caught the ring leader, the head hancho, ZAKA BE! I threw it outside with a ten foot pole and as some kids were on their way to school, I pointed and made a disgusted look. They were amazed at how big it was. Yeah it was HUGE! After that I made them wash their hands and we sang the washing your hands song. Not too long after that, I caught another one. Only this one's butt got stuck in the trap so it was still alive. Taking my ten foot pole I got it outside to where the kids beat it with a stick to make sure it was dead. UGH. Me and Alison had been training for our 220km bike trip this month. We were biking about 28km a few times a week. We even made it to Vangaindrano, a city near us...25km away or so. All up and down hills. Once we got into the city, a cart being pulled by a cow was coming the opposite direction and saw me and went buck WILD. It started bucking and running. I looked back to watch it and the guy "driving" it was either thrown off or bucked off. it was kinda scary. We started planting at my garden. We celebrated Madagascar's 50th year of independence on June 26. That was interesting...more like Gasy's partying for 5 days straight. But it was all good fun. I made the trek up to the capital...again. On the way up I stopped in Ranomafana with Abe and Brian (the two PCVs in my banking town area) and visited with Mike for a couple days. It was glorious....but I froze my buns off. We did some beautiful hiking, swam in a pool where the water came from the hot springs and took a bath at the hot springs baths and saw some LEMURS!! We met up with some Americans that live and work there to celebrate 4th of July. it was a blast. I headed up to the capital and now here I am. I went to the dentist this morning and let me tell you, I don't mind the dentist but that was a LOT of poking and scraping and man it hurt. But yeah next week we have training of trainers for the new group of peeps coming in. That should be exciting. Then we have a bike trip. It's around Madagascar's largest lake. 220km. We'll be stopping in villages along the way to promote awareness of AIDS and provide education for health topics and environment topics. So it should be fun. It's over the course of like 9 days. Then I'll be heading back to site for three weeks and coming back up here to actually help with the training of the new guys. So it'll be a busy next couple months. I put pics up on facebook, it should be open to the public. That's about all for now. i miss and love you all. I have all my mail on hold until I get back, but from what I hear, there should be a wave of them, so THANK YOU in advance. Well I love and miss you lots. I'll be watching the World Cup final on Sunday. I'll also be thinking of Mr Sam Gerardy on Sat for it's his bday...and Ms. Sarah Albert for it's her bday on Sunday. LUV LUV LUV YOU!!! AND hello to all my friends and relatives in CALIFORNIA....Skowronski's...High's....Klingers...all my G-15ers still out there.and anyone and everyone else around the world...thanks for the love and support.