Salama e!

bonjour, hey everyone! i'm alive and safe, sorry i probably won't say much because the keyboards here make it take forever to type anything (excuse any typos, sometimes an "a" turns into a "q") and i'm paying by the minute, but i miss all of you!

the flights were long but i was with the group and from paris to antananarivo i had three seats to myself which made for great sleeping :-)

we got to fort dauphin and the academic director met us and took us out to a countryside boarding school for three nights for orientation. pretty amazing, it was called manatantely and there's a great song and dance to go along with it that hopefully i'll record sometime. the kids were adorable and everyone was so nice and we learned a bit of malagasy:

salama e! ino vao vao? tsy mitsy... that means hi! what's up? not much... and it's about all i got down so far except the numbers and how to say sorry - azafady. and thank you very much - misaotsy betsaky.

we went hiking and learned how to do laundry by hand and carry water on our heads from the stream and prepare rice. every meal here had rice plus something else. some people have found rocks in their rice, but i haven't yet. i think i don't chew my food well enough. we also learned some really fun traditional dancing that was pretty much just moving your feet in different ways and sweating so much that you look like you just jumped in the pool. and the bathroom was outhouse-style - squatting down to pee in a hole in the ground. i've gotten pretty good at that - and bucket showers. no running water in the country.

now we're at a hotel in fort dauphin and it's beautiful. the beach is right down the street and we talked with a WWF guy (the panda not the wrestling - although WWE smackdown was on TV yesterday in a restaurant. the kids here are really into it and think it's real) and now we're paired up for a "drop-off" - we got set loose in the city to find different things. first prioty was changing money and internet. next is buying a phone and then lunch with a nice cold THB (Three Horses Beer). maybe some street fruit that will make us real sick. i haven't gotten sick yet, although i do have a zillion bug bites, obviously. if anyone gets bitten, i get fives times as many bites as everyone else combined. even with bug spray and nets. just gotta keep taking my phrophylaxis... oh and i'm ridiculously sunburned on my shoulders already, too. putting on a tshirt takes like 10 minutes. but we have "running rano in the douches" - there's a little franglagasy for you - running water in the showers. and flushing toilets. incroyable.

breakfast is usually a baguette with confiture and fromage and some café with sweetened condensed milk to put in it - DELICIEUX. i love love love it. we are getting so well-fed here so far. i even had some buerre à cacahouaite avec une banane. mmmm... me and another guy were like dreaming about peanut butter and had some the next day on our hike when we pique-nique'd near a waterfall. paradise, i'm telling you.

we meet our homestay families on wednesday and move in with them on thursday. ma mère d'accueil is a sage-femme à l'hopital... i don't really know what that means, like a wise hospital woman... i think someone told me but i forgot. i hope she's like a super cool witch doctor lady. probably not though.

haven't seen any lemurs yet. sorry to disappoint. and i'll post pictures maybe if i remember to bring my USB cord with me to a cyber-café. otherwise you can wait till may :-)

à bientot!!! (veloma e!)