Epic blog post

My sincerest apologies for being such a delinquent blogger. It’s not that there’s nothing to write about. Au contraire, there’s too much. Here’s what’s been going on, in brief, since my last post:

Fourth of July celebration at the US Ambassador’s house

Helping with PST in Dedza

Lunch with the President of Malawi

Finished construction of toilets

Birth of my niece

End of school year

Camp Sky

First visitors from home

Start of new school year

Visit from Watering Malawi folks

So as you can see, I’ve been busy. We’re down a few teachers this year, so I’m increasing my teaching load. Additionally, I’m getting ready for 4 visitors next month, which is really exciting but a bit challenging logistically. MO says I can’t just give the short version; she wants details. So for my mom and others who want to know more about selected events from the list above, read on.

Can you say Bingu wa Mutharika? I know I ought to have more to say about this. Really, how often do you get to dine with the president of a country most people have never heard of? I enjoyed it, but it pales in comparison to what happened a week later.

Here’s Emi! At about the same time I was sitting in the school library, annoyed with my students’ inability to reshelve books properly, my niece was being born half a world away. She is, of course, the most fabulous baby in the world (I can say this with complete confidence despite the fact that I’ve never met her). One of the first things I do when I come into town is check Facebook to see if my dad has put up any more pictures of her.

Camp Sky: This year we held Camp Sky at the Teacher Training College in Kasungu. We had roughly 70 students from volunteers’ schools all over Malawi, learning and having fun together for 10 days. My responsibilities included being a substitute English teacher; teaching study skills to students and teachers; assisting with electives in sewing, solar engineering, and orienteering; and being a dorm amayi. I was initially not thrilled about being a dorm amayi (like an RA in college) but it turned out to be great. We had two extremely helpful junior counselors and our girls were wonderful too. We got more sleep than the PCVs in the staff hostel, except on the morning of our field trip to Parliament and the airport, when all the campers inexplicably woke up at 3 a.m. Overall, everything went pretty well.

Visitors: Lehua and Aunty Susie and I had a great time visiting the lake and my site. They made sure I was extremely well-fed from start to finish, which I highly appreciated. I may have lost weight here, but my appetite has certainly increased. I think I ate as much as the two of them combined. Some highlights of the trip–horseback riding at Kande beach, meeting up with various Peace Corps friends, fabric shopping in Mzuzu, and playing with my neighbors’ kids.

Toilets: In July we finished building the toilets at school and the kids worked together to create some rules for their proper usage (this was a pretty funny process, including suggestions like “No pairing in the toilets” and “Use tissue, don’t wipe your hand on the wall”). This week the founder of Watering Malawi, the organization that helped us with the funding for construction, visited the school and officially handed over the toilets to the students.

So as you can see, it’s been busy lately. I’ll try to have a bunch of pictures for you next time. I’ve got several good ones of the above events, plus some fantastic completely random ones.