Hello!

Our internet here has been in and out for the past two weeks so it has been really hard to get on and write. I havent heard from very many people, just Lauren and my mom! I wanna hear what you are all up to and how you are doing!!

Lilongwe has been great! I absolutely love it here. Teaching is a lot of work...we get up at around 7am and are working through til about 8 or 9pm. It takes us about an hour to get to each school, we are at the school from about 10am-3pm and then we get back to the house around 4pm. Then we have to start preparing for the next day! However, I finally have a day off tomorrow, and our group has decided to go on a hike :) I can't wait!

Today we just finished our second school camp. Cutest kids ever - except for I made a really little boy (maybe 2 years old) scream cry today...some of the really little kids are scared of the white people I think. For this school, I was teaching kids who are standard 8 (grade 8), and their ages ranged from 16-20...at first I was a little intimidated to work with them because they are all older and a lot of them were bigger than me, but they are a fun group to be with. They try to speak English more than thel ittle kids, and they still all wanna sit by me, which is fun.

Working with the translators is really great. We learn so much from them about the culture and about Malawi because they are all from here. They try to teach us some chichewa, but most of us are not very good at it. They can give us so much more insight about some of the things that happen here. For instance, our class asked a lot about forced sex and what they should do if they are being forced and why it happens, which can be hard for us to relate to.

All the kids also love to have their picture taken. So I think I take close to 50-100 pictures a day because they all want a picture by themselves. haha. and then they all wanna see themselves on the screen. They think they need to be like an inch away from lens, it is kinda funny. But I guess a lot of them have never seen a pictyure of themselves before! So it is kinda fun to see how happy they are to have their picture taken.

The kids are all so funny. They laugh at me all the time and I never know why, and all they wanna do is sing and dance. They break out into song and dance regularly and spontaneously. And everyone wants to high five and do thumbs up all the time too, it is great.

Also, last wednesday, we went to a place called the Crisis Nursery which is a place for orphan kids and kids whose families can't afford them until they are older. All of the kids there are 2 years old or younger, and they are ADORABLE!!! We got to play with them and feed them their pourage for dinner! It was really sad to leave them! And I can't wait to go back there.

On Tuesday, we are doing a homestay with one of the village families near the school. Apparently it is pretty hard to communicate with them since they dont really speak english in the villages we go to, and I am horrible at chichewa. But we were told that there will probably be a large fire and lots of dancing :)

I have made a lot of friends here. My roommates are Paige and Megan, and their are nine volunteers total. That said my cooking is improving because we have cook groups (3 in each group) and we are responsible for making food for everyone in the house which is 17 people total (including our coordinators and 4 girls who are with Raising Malawi (Madonna's Org.)) We have to improvise A LOT because things end up being more expensive than we thought or they don't have it or there is something wrong with the food we bought.

Re-reading this email, I feel like I have barely told you guys anything! This is just the tip of the iceberg, and I can't wait to tell you more about everything!. Miss and love you all!

Laura