Pulaar

Today we leave the center (and all the other 77 trainees) to start our two month homestay and language training. I was placed in village PK7 (in french literally milemarker 7) and my new language will be pulaar! since i passed the french test i was placed into a 3rd language. I havent had a chance to look it up yet but i heard its one of the most popular african languages (after swahili), esp. along the west coast. there will be 4 of us in PK7 but we are all staying with different host families (who may or may not speak any english or french). im reallly nervous about starting the homestay but also excited because its one more step closer to becoming a real PCV! In mauritaina pulaar is spoken only in the south along the Senegal river which is the exact region i wanted... i couldnt ask for a better placement!

over the next few weeks i will be living in PK7 taking 8 hour a day language courses and coming back to the Rosso training center about once a week for my technical girls education workshops.

look for a new post in a few weeks to see how village life with my host family is!

-picture is of the huuugggeee traditional mauitanian tent that was set up during staging

Bismillah!

First post from Mauritania!! We all flew into Atlanta Tuesday night and spent wednesday and thursday meeting everyone and learning alot of the PC Mauritania basics. Then we took a direct flight from Atlanta to Senegal and made a 7 hour bus ride across the border to Mauritania. As promised, it is HOT and very very sandy. Our PST (pre service training) site is in Rosso, along the river that borders Senegal in southern Mauritania. So for now there's about 80 of us hanging out in a compound of cement buildings and sand learning the basics about being a PCV in mauritania. Lots of shots, getting used the food, learning the basic greetings in all the local languages, interviewing with our bosses so that they can best place us and figuring out how to go to the bathroom without toilets and toilet paper. use your imagination...

its been kind of difficult getting use to all the changes but the other trainees are all sooo great. we all slept in the sand under the stars last night (in our free-standing mosquito nets of course) and finally were about to explore Rosso today. Im nervous about leaving the training center and most the trainees in a few days to go to my homestay but excited to really start living the PC life here. one of the good things i found out is that while we are living with our homestays for the rest of PST (until im sworn in august 28th) is that there will be between 3-5 other trainees living right near me so i wont be all alone (yet!).

so thats it for now! in case you didnt notice, the price for sending me a letter is now 94 cents instead of 41 or whatever the guy from the post office told me before. Id love to hear from everyone! for the next few weeks i wont have regular access to the internet so your well wishes via hand-written things would be great! and a wish list will be posted soon too (ive already thought of a ton of things!). For now candy (non melting) is always a plus!

First entry!

This is my first blog... just had eddie help me make it. There may not be much up now but hopefully i'll be able to upload pictures and entries often while I'm in Mauritania!

I thought that I would have all this free time after graduation but somehow I have spent almost all day every day for the last 4 weeks preparing to leave. I guess I didnt realize that my life was all over the place until i tried to get it all figured out. My going away party is tomorrow and im really excited to see everyone one last time... only 11 more days till staging in Atlanta then on to Mauritania!

Enjoy the blog!