ten* days til take-off

Yup. That's right. Ten days until I officially start my Peace Corps training. Because I inadvertently left quite a number of people off my attempted listserv, I decided it might actually just be easier to have a blog, although they aren't as fun as emailing and I'm fairly sure that I'm going to start talking to "posterity" even now, when I am still surrounded by your smiling faces (or can achieve your smiley voices via phone whenever I wish). And I really don't need the encouragement to be loquacious or cheaply profound that "posterity," as an audience, tends to afford. Oh well! Moving on.

As most of you know, I'll be leaving on July 19th for a 27 month stint in Madagascar. That is, if I make it through training. A brief breakdown of this:

July 19th I wake up and turn 23. Then, at 7 am or so, I will get on a plane and go to Washington DC, where I will have my first staging / orientation. We will all meet and greet and then sleep and get on another plane the next day, say oh about 5 pm. This plane will land in Johannesburg, South Africa, and will let us all off it to play for an evening, sadly & certainly AFTER the Alonso will have left the country. Ah, World Cup, why do you so certainly avoid me? The NEXT day we will fly into Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. We'll spend the night there (bec apparently we get in pretty late) and the next day we'll go to the training site in Mantasoa, about 70 km away from Antananarivo, and where 95.5 percent of the population farms. Oh, and it's currently winter in Madagascar--so 40's or 50's at night, 60's during the day. Which is going to feel a LOT warmer than it actually is bec it's so grossly grosshot in Philadelphia right now.

So, once we're in Mantasoa, we'll immediately move in with our host families and start training--pretty much a 9-5 day, with necessary language acquisition by the swear-in date of September 21st. So I'll be studying, likely, whenever it's light. After training, I'll start teaching at a site that will be decided upon during training. Until I get my site, my address will be:

Rebekah Caton, PCT
Peace Corps Madagascar
Villa Les Lierres
Lot IIk76 Lot. Bonnet Invandry
Antananarivo
Madagascar


But be forewarned: I will have no phone or internets, indefinitely. Because of this, one of the administrators has offered to send out a mass email to our family members simply saying we've arrived--Matt and my mommy will get one--but the best chance to hear from me will be to write letters and check back here. on that note:

PLEASE COMMENT AND WRITE ME LETTERS I will need your support very, very much.

alright, friendly readers, I must return to my American life for a few more days, there's so much to be doing!

hoothoot,

rebekah


*it's kind of eleven days til i leave. but ten alliterates. time is relative. whatever.