"Oh, I love the People! It's fun people fun time!"

We've just completed staging, which is slightly insane. We fly out tomorrow (Tuesday) around 5:30 pm. Of course we leave our hotel (which is only about 40 minutes from the airport) at 11 am, so that should make for some fun airport time (hint: call me to chat if you want to hear my beautiful voice one last time). We land in Johannesburg Wednesday night and spend the night there, and then fly from Jo-burg to Madagascar Thursday. Because we get in so late Thursday, they've decided to put us up at a hotel in Tana (Antananarivo) for the night rather than moving us to PC Headquarters which are about 2.5 hours away. On Friday we'll make the trek to pc headquarters and then to our host families.

Staging has been great--there are only 19 people in my group now (we started with 22 but have lost a few along the way. Hopefully everyone else is here to stay!) and every one of them is amazing. Evan was singing the praises of his group, so I was very glad to find out that mine definitely lives up to the hype. I couldn't pick better people to spend the next 10 weeks (and 2 years) with. We're off to a pub tonight to enjoy our last real American meal for awhile and we also begin our malaria prophylaxis tonight, and I've been told to expect some interesting dreams. I'll let you know how that goes. There's not a ton to report yet-training was mainly logistical, but I promise I'll update whenever I have internet and good stories. There isn't any internet access at training because apparently past PCVs used it inappropriately...oh well. So send me letters! And, as they keep reminding us, peace corps will tell you if anything goes drastically wrong, so no news is good news. Veloma! (Bye! And I'm pretty sure this one's right...)

ps if you haven't figured out where the title of this post comes from yet, shame on you.

"I wished I could go to the wild!" "The wild? Woah."

Instead of trying to send lots of emails when I may only have internet access every few weeks, I've decided that I'm going to try the blog thing out...bear with me, since I have no idea what I'm doing.

So, I'm going to Madagascar. It occurred to me today that I leave in less than a month, which is somewhere between terrifying and really exciting...closer to exciting. Up until a few weeks ago everything I knew about Madagascar came from the movie (by the way if you haven't seen it, you really should. If only so that you understand the title of this post) and since I'm guessing the entire island isn't populated by animated lemurs, I've been learning as much as I can as fast as I can. The culture of Madagascar is a blend of African and Asian known as Malagasy, which is also the name of the language spoken there (in addition to French). Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world, and since it's been separated from mainland Africa for 165 million years it is home to a huge number of plants and animals that are found no where else in the world (between 75 and 80 percent of its flora and fauna are endemic) including the lemur. It is also, however, one of the poorest countries in the world. Only about 50% of Malagasy children 12-23 months old are fully immunized and almost one in two children under three years old is malnourished. That's where I come in.

I'll be working as a community health educator mainly in a rural health clinic run either by the Ministry of Health or a local NGO. At this point I have no idea where exactly I'll be living or what exactly I'll be doing. When I get to Madagascar I'll have about 10 weeks of training in the capital before I get sent off to a village for my 24 months of service. I will be living alone, most likely in my own house, that could be anything from a mud hut with a thatched roof to a cement house with a tin roof. I will probably not have running water or electricity, but I could have either or both...I'll let you know when I'm actually there. Those are the basics. Once I start this crazy adventure I'm sure I'll have more details and hopefully some good stories and photos for you all. Until then, here's the PC Madagascar site and here's the Madagascar Wikipedia entry (yes I know how unreliable it is, but it can be useful). Mandrapihaona!! (supposedly that's "see you" in Malagasy. If it turns out to mean mango, sorry.)