Settling In

I don't have any pictures today unfortunately. Next time, I hope, along with, if I can figure out to do it, video of our own Mike Huffman doing interpretive dance. Yup, you heard me -- you have to see it to believe it!

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. We moved to our new home. Let me tell you, that is a crazy feeling. We've been moving between our group training site to our language community based training and gone to visit other volunteers and visited our sites, but none of that travel compared, for me, to that last taxi ride where we strapped everything we owned on top, and drove in to our community to stay!

We've been there two weeks now and things are going well. This is the awkward stage where conversations are simple and there is a lot of smiling and "I'm sorry, I don't understand" ing. We are both more tired than usual, probably a combination of heat and cultural adjustment. We were well prepared for this time by previous volunteers and our trainers, and it is doable and exciting because we know that it's worth it! We will, through this, get better, little by little, at our language, get to know who is who in our community so we can figure out what the assets are we can encourage and build upon in our work. For example, there is a group of women who gather and make beautiful rugs by hand. When they need money for supplies, they work together and cook for special events in town. This is the kind of organization, as well as some of the neighborhood association's in our area that are working on delivering trash pick-up to the area, that we want to come along side of and see where we can pitch in.

We still have so much to learn and lots of people to get to know and get to know better, but things are off to a good start. Our host family has been great at taking good care of us, from good food to introducing us to everyone they know! An important part of the culture in our village is just conversation time. People will visit family, friends, or neighbors in the late afternoon and evening and sit and have tea and talk. About what yet we are not entirely sure. :) It'll come...we hope. :)

We'll try and let you know more about daily life around us, stuff we start to take for granted, but is different than life at home. Let us know though if you have any questions!