would kill for a Coke with ice...

It's only been 13 days.  I keep having to remind myself that when I think of how long I've been here.  It feels like months since I arrived in my sleepy little village.  Language classes every day, security and safety briefings, cultural lessons on how to organize the pee, water, bathing, and washing buckets in my one room house, are among the things I learn everyday.  It's all interesting stuff, and totally necessary to fit in here in Lesotho, but the days are dragging on.

Luckily, Peace Corps arranged for us to stay on a week-long "host volunteer visit".  On Tuesday, I took off around 7:30am from HaMabekenyane to Maseru, where I met Joey at the Peace Corps compound downtown.  She is leaving Lesotho on December 5th, and has been a resource teacher: she teaches teachers how to teach.  We spend the morning drinking real coffee at a breakfast restaurant and shopping, and in the afternoon we took off for Mafeteng, the district directly below where I am living with my host family.  In Mafeteng, we met up with two other volunteers and went for a late lunch at the local hotel.  Pizza has never tasted so good. We drank cider and beer and sat outside in the shade talking about nerdy Peace Corps stuff and teachers' best practices and where is the best vacation beach spot in Africa.  Once the sun started going down, we hopped on an hour long taxi ride to Joey's site. She lives on the side of a bare mountain and has a black cement porch looking out on a beautiful mountain range.  Tuesday night, the mountains were orange and pink when the sun went down.

Yesterday and today, I got tours of both of Joey's schools, her community, and learned the best ways to wash dishes or use the latrine pit.  I ate "semp" at school today; it's a traditional corn porridge type thing.  Large is considered beautiful here, and the school cook tried to feed me too much.  I couldn't finish my plate, and I think she was disappointed. 

We ate too much good food, drank (cheap) good wine, and talked about American stuff: Glee, Lil Wayne, and tacos with margaritas.  It was such a nice break to have after a pretty heavy week last week. It got me very excited to just get to my own site and start teaching!

Miss you all and think about you everyday.

xoxox