Is It Winter Yet?
December 2nd, 2005 by Sarin
I’ve been away from the blog for a little while and am now mentioning certain things from the past 2 weeks. Last week, while everybody back home in New England braved cold temperatures in the snow to celebrate Thanksgiving, I woke up and slapped sunscreen on myself like it was any other day. I didn’t go without turkey however, as I was invited for dinner at the US Ambassador’s house at the capital city. It was a fairly classy affair dinner-wise, and the good drinks and the company of all the volunteers made the holidays overseas a good spent time. Although the day after when I was roasting in the Embassy pool, I did start to feel a little homesick. Somehow, I missed the hustle and bustle of Black Friday even though I never waited in line for those early bird specials.
World AIDS day has come and gone as well (yesterday). Funding for projects from the Peace Corps from now on will be very tight, and mostly all of our projects will be done with local funds. That said in mind, I helped out the high school in an AIDS information desk. Lots of kids came by, completely nervous and afraid to talk to an Asian American. I tried to probe them with questions and get them to answer but my language was really bad. A video that the last volunteer got from Peace Corps was shown, and lots of speakers including my coordinator got right into the classroom and talked to them directly about AIDS. Hopefully next year I can get more of a hang of things so I can start getting funding for projects alot earlier on instead of making do with what I have. I was also thinking that the town needs to start planning an annual march through town to spread awareness. Sho’ nuff, anything I lack this year, I will definitely try to make up next year.
I also have settled on plans for this Christmas. Several volunteers and me are heading to the northern islands of Sao Vicente and Santo Antao. Sao Vicente will be pretty cool, because its capital, Mindelo, is very European with alot of Mediterranean influences on its culture. Where else in West Africa are you going to find swept streets, sports bars, and delivery pizza? Heck, it will be a nice break considering I live in the most dirty and polluted of the islands. Also the island of Santo Antao is an hour long ferry ride and by many claim to have the best scenery and hiking of all the islands. I’m hoping to get my ass kicked if anybody wants to join me. It should be a fun time to get to hang with other volunteers and I’m looking into spending a good 5 days there. I’ll try to make an effort to actually head to the beach on Christmas morning and have some type of “White Christmas”. Complete island report and what fun activities I did will be posted afterwards.
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