Highlands Here I Come

So quite a few things have happened since I last updated this blog. Most notably I got my site placement! I will be living in Mokhotlong, in the camp town (which is sort of like a city). Mokhotlong (Mo-hot-long) is in the mountains on the eastern side of the country. I will be working with an organization called GROW, which works mainly with agriculture. I’m not super pumped about agriculture, but I will work it all out.
The day after we got our site placements we had to give village meeting (a pitso). My village chose to give a presentation on nutrition. It went really well and in general we were glad to just be done with it.
Last Saturday we had a barbeque. We drove to Buhta Buhte and went to this nice mountain lodge for a hike. I didn’t hike though (hiking in the boot is something I never want to do again). The volunteer that works with the lodge was the last volunteer to stay with my host family.
The last week went by pretty fast because we knew that we were in the tail end of training. Yesterday was the official end to community based training. We peeled and cut veggies with our host moms to prepare for the village feast that was being given for us. The feast was really fun. Some of the village girls performed a traditional dance for us and the bo-‘m’e and church choir sang. It was a lot of fun.
So most days I go to Irena’s or Melissa’s house and hang out with them and Chris (the North side of the village). We make dinner and just chill out. The other night we had a dance party outside Melissa’s house with her little nieces and nephews. All the Bokone people went to Irena’s house and we had an amazing dinner. We had Mexican night and made tortillas, meat, cornbread and veggies.
I totally miss my host family already. On my last night I played cards with my sister and cousins and made popcorn. It was really fun. My ‘m’e came in and gave me a t-shirt (all the trainees got them) and I gave her some pictures that I took of the family. About two weeks ago I became friends with my older brother Koali. He’s hilarious and I’m sad we weren’t friends the whole time lol. When Melissa and I taught him Go Fish it was the funniest thing ever! Also, although I haven't had the greatest luck with dogs, my family's dog was FABULOUS! At first I was scared of him because he's easily the biggest dog in Bokone, but ALL he wants to do is cuddle. Kevin (pcv) told me he named him bear because of all the bear hugs he gives. He would meet me at the road and walk me home at night and no other dogs would bother me...he was sooo sweet!
So now we’re back in Maseru at the training center for a few days and on Tuesday I go to visit my site. I took a shower for the first time in weeks and it was AMAZING! Also we all watched movies and are going to have a movie day tomorrow where we all watch movies all day. That’s just about it for now. I’ll let you all know how my site visit was! (a current ed volunteer Violeta is going to show me around on Wednesday).

New Update

So right now I am in TY again and we're going to visit Alison (a current volunteer) at her clinic...but we're food shopping first..aka using the internet. There hasn't been a ton of action since my last update, but here's what you missed. We had to give presentations yesterday in front of all of the trainers and the country director and program director, which was a little nerve wracking at first but ended up being totally fine. I did mine on making paper bag hand puppets of what you want to be when you grow up...and did most of the presentation in sesotho. Also I had some laundry accidents this week. First, I accidently set my wool socks on fire by putting them too close to my heater...booth pairs..oops. Second, I did some laundry, hung it on the line outside and when I went to go to school I saw that there was about 6 feet of raw meat hung on the line 6 inches from my clothes...gross. But these things happen and it just makes for another story to tell all of you. Also, I just want to shout out some penpal MVPs: thanks Jill and Hannah for being awesome with sending me letters, they totally made my days, and big shout out to Catherine for calling me!! You totally made my day better after the meat clothes incident!

Busy Week

So this past week the group was split up and sent to different areas for site visits with current volunteers. I went to Berea district with Elissa and Brice to stay with Merrill near the camp town TY. We had a blast. We got to hang out with her youth group and hike a mountain to reach the Ha Kome caves...which were super cool. To get to TY we had to take a kombi...aka a big white van that holds roughly 20 people. Kombis are a crazy experience. They aren't in the best condition and are generally packed full of people...but that just adds excitement to the trip. The best part is when they need to be puched backwards in order to start...much like a wind up toy car lol.
Since I got back from TY I've done some fun things. First I decided to try making Nisu..which came out ok given that I steamed it in a pot. We also took another mountain climbing trip to Thaba Bosiu on the 4th of July. On the 5th we were allowed to have a BBQ at the other training village that the Peace Corps paid for...which was so fun. Everybody was really excited to eat hamburgers. Overall it was a really fun week and when I have more time I will probably give more details, but alas, time is short so thats it for now.