Hello, Friends

Well, friends, tomorrow is the big day for me - I ship out from Colorado Springs to Philadelphia for a couple days. There is a lot of confusion here about what's going on for me the next few months, and I don't really know either, but I can let you know what I do know.

I'm going to be in Philly until next Wednesday, with all the people who are going to Mali with me. There are only going to be people who will end up in Mali, and we will not all go to the exact same place, but we are all going to train together. While we are Philly we will get to know each other, learn how to be safe, learn how not to be sad, and get shot. Then we will fly to Mali through Paris. I figure that airport food in Charles de Gaulle will probably be delicious, and I am taking Euros for just that experience. After we get to Mali our in-country training starts. There is a big central training compound where we will start out, but in very short order we are going to be farmed out to private families to learn what it is to be Malian. At that time we will have very, very little language in common with our host families. I've heard rumor that I express myself well, anyway - we'll see how that holds up. While we are living with our host families, we will be taking language lessons, cultural lessons, and technical lessons. As I understand it, we are going to be having language classes in both French and Bambara, which is the Malian language that 80% of the population speaks. As for technical training, I don't know exactly what that will entail. I am in the natural resources sector, which ranges all the way from forestry and agriculture to water resources. Some people end up building fish farms. I'll let you know about that. And then, after we've been living with a Malian family for a while, we take a test to determine whether or not we are competent, and if we are deemed so, we are sworn is as Peace Corps Volunteers. This will occur in September. So that means, if you are up on your calendar, that we are going to be living in Muslim households during Ramadan. PC says that they have made arrangements that we can still eat even if our hosts are fasting, and then at the end of the month there will be a big party. That will be fun and interesting. After we are sworn is as PCVs (which means Peace Corps Volunteer) we will move to our permanent site, which is somewhere other than where we have been, and start doing our jobs.

So that's all I know that is going to happen for the next few months. Have a great rest of your summer here! (We've had a heat wave the past few days in Colorado Springs, and yesterday I went out to run at 2ish, and I thought 'It is way too hot to run!' and then I thought, 'You better toughen up real quick here, Kelly!')