You can get used to ANYTHING.

For example, some of the things I've gotten used to and don't think twice about anymore....

1) Sleeping on a sponge mattress supported by lake reeds as a bed.

2) Flea bites covering your body after a good nights sleep.

3) Daily sweeping up of bat poop that falls from your ceiling/roof.

4) 23 hour taxi brousse rides with 14 people crammed into a minivan while kids puke beside you, and a creepy man falls asleep on your shoulder.

5) Women pulling out their breasts to feed their babies (or toddlers) in the post office, bank, market, or taxi brousse.

6) Men, women, kids and elderly squatting on the side of the road to relieve themselves at the “rest stops” during a long taxi brousse ride.

7) Taxi brousses running out of gas on the way to the predetermined destination and having to siphon gas out of a passing car after waiting 2 hours for any car to pass.

8) Eating rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Everyday. For 2 years.

9) Standing up while going to the bathroom. It now feels weird to sit, so a toilet shall magically appear, I still stand while using it out of habit.

10) Watching women carry a bucket of water in their hand, with their babies strapped to their backs with a cloth, all while balancing a basket of heavy market purchases on their head. All without spilling a drop of water. Talk about multitasking!

11) Men driving motorcycles or bicycles with 3 children on the handlebars, courier rack and frame, without even the slightest fear that it could be dangerous.

Things that make you say GROSS (said in a true wisconsin accent)

1) Over Easter vacation I got hit in the head by a cow stump that had recently been slaughtered and sold in the market. No skin, just fresh bloody flesh smacking every so gently against my forehead. Mmm…. Beef.

2) Parasy: Or, little fleas that live in the dust and sand. They burrow underneath your skin on your feet and lay eggs inside you. You have to break the skin to release the flea sac, or else once hatched the baby fleas will come back to your foot to lay their own eggs. I have to say, I kind of enjoy picking out the egg sac now.

3) Cockroaches love my house. So much so that I’ve made a fun game out of hunting down their eggs before they hatch so they won’t take over my house. One day I drank some juice out of a cup and with a refreshing “Ahhh” looked down into my cup to see a cockroach egg stuck to the side of it. I now check before pouring anything into cups.

4) I have had giardia nine times already. That doesn’t sound so gross until you realize that giardia is caused by ingesting fecal matter. Basically it means I have ingested things that have been through someone or somethings intestines and out of their anus on NINE separate occasions. Gotta love Peace Corps.

5) Bugs get into everything here, from sugar jars to rice. We PCV’s have devised a timeline to label how long we have been here based on this.

If a bug is in your drink:

Stage 1: Stop drinking, throw out the drink and get a new cup.

Stage 2: Throw out the drink and bug but use the same cup.

Stage 3: Pick the bug out of the drink and continue drinking.

Stage 4: Continue drinking… that’s added protein.

6) The street sellers here don’t havef dish washers. Heck, most don’t even have running water. But, they use a basin of water all day long to wash little coffee mugs or juice cups in. After someone uses a cup they throw it in the murky water and use animal fat based soap and a 3 month old sponge to “wash” it and then give it to the next customer still wet.

Lemur sighting

I had a great weekend here in Madagascar. I rode my bicycle up to another volunteers site, which is 25 kilometers north of my site. Her name is Amy, and it was her last weekend at site because she is finishing her second year and extending for a third year but moving to another part of the country. So, I went there to help her with her goodbye party and to be her moral support when leaving her friends and home of two years. On Saturday morning we woke up at 4am and went to the tourist bungalows that Amy had helped create as one of her projects as an environment volunteer. The area around the lake has large numbers of endemic species of reptiles, amphibians, and a unique landscape of lake and marshland not found in other parts of Madagascar. The bungalows have a guide who will take you out on the lake in “canoes”, or hollowed out trees. This lake has the only species of lemur that lives above the lake in the reeds. Its called the Bandro lemur. So, we decided to go out and try to see them. It was still pitch black out as we got into the canoes and as the sun slowly rose the outlines of lake reeds became visible. We could hear the lemurs from afar and then luckily, once it was light, had the chance to see four different families of them. It was an amazing experience. As we were coming back into shore all the fisherman were heading out in their canoes to start their day of work. Amy’s town doesn’t have electricity or running water so we usually went to bed at around 8, two hours after the sun went down. Its hard to stay awake when you do everything by candlelight. But, that made getting up at 4am bearable!

The end of the school year is nearing, which means it’s almost the winter here. I still call it “summer vacation” though. Its hard to make that switch. I’m still loving my life here, my job and especially the people I have met and formed friendships with. I have some pretty cool plans for June, July and August. After the final exams I am going to a rainforest that is about an hour north of my site. We will have to send a paper note ahead of us to the place that hires guides to take us to the forest. It will take a ¾ day hike just to walk to the edge of the forest and then we’ll spend two nights in the rainforest in a tent. We have to bring all of our food, water and supplies into the forest. It should be a lot of physical work, but I’m really excited!! It’s a pretty secluded forest, which isn’t very accessible to tourists, so it will be cool to see a forest without much human impact. There are many types of lemurs that live there, as well as birds, chameleons, and other animals so it should be a cool trip. Then, in July the new training group of education volunteers will arrive in country and I will spend three weeks training them. It will be cool to see all of the staff again who helped train me and to feel like I am one of the elders in the Peace Corps community now. I can help share all my experiences and try to mold them into good teachers… in just three weeks. But, I look forward to hanging out with Americans again and seeing new faces and enthusiastic minds help with my morale. I’ve been stuck in my town teaching and haven’t had a change to get to the really rural areas that often, so this should be a good change of scenery.

Speaking of changing scenery, I’m visiting the US after that!! I leave for Minneapolis August 16^th and will be there until September 9^th. I will spend the first week in Chippewa and then head down to Madison for the second week and return to Chippewa for the third week. I plan on surprising my friend Tina by showing up to her wedding that she thinks I will miss! So, don’t tell her if you know her and see her at all!

I’m going to use this trip to gather English resources to bring back to the teachers around my area. AND see my nephew and family and friends!!!