An African Christmas

My first vacation in Madagascar has come to a close. I went with 8 other volunteers to Mahajanga in the Northwest part of the country for Christmas and then back to Tana for New Years. We had a great time, but it will be nice to get back to site and get back to work. Classes start up next Monday, but the next few months are going to be consumed by starting up my secondary projects. I have a few ideas the biggest of which is building a library next to my lycee. I have a lot of work to do as far as figuring out the building plans, finding out the costs, getting funding and books and a bunch more. This is definitely a project that will take my full two years, but I’m pretty excited to get started. I also want to start English clubs for adults and kids in my town, a small convention every few months for the English teachers in the area, and a trash clean-up group to meet every few weeks. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that there are no garbage cans or garbage trucks. People burn trash fires outside their house, but it never really gets the job done. There are a lot of cities in Madagascar that are much worse than my town as far as trash goes, but hopefully this will be a good start towards cleaning it up a bit. Aside from these secondary projects, the second trimester goes until the end of March and then we have two weeks off for Easter break. It’s nice to have the school year so evenly spaced out with breaks. Excited to get back and get started with everything.

Hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. It was definitely weird not being at my parent’s house for the annual New Year’s celebration. Speaking of family, CONGRATULATIONS MATT AND ASHLEY who got engaged a few weeks ago. Ashley, I don’t know if you quite realize what you’re about to marry into, but I’m so happy for the both of you. Wish I could have been there to celebrate. SAME TO SHANNON AND JOHN!!!!! How awesome that everyone goes and gets engaged while I’m gone. Just kidding. Congratulations to all you guys. Keep me posted on them wedding dates.

I am going to try and post some pictures on Facebook, but there are about 30 people here all using Internet at the same time, so it may not work. I'm also going to try and upload a video of my house in Ampasimanjeva, but that most likely will not work.

I believe the last time I blogged I was about to play in a basketball game (teachers vs students). We killed ‘em. It wasn’t even close. I think the final score was something like 56-20. It’s amazing how amused the Malagasy people are by 6’4” white guys in a basketball jersey. Anyways, had a great time and I am looking forward to continued dominance. The school is apparently going to pave the basketball court next to the lycee within the next few months, so that will be awesome but I’m not gonna hold my breath. If not, maybe I can add another project to my list.