Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I missed my family more than usual yesterday since it was Thanksgiving. Luckily the US Ambassador invited all of Peace Corps Suriname to dinner at his house. It was wonderful! There was stuffing, peas, sweet potato casserole and TURKEY! Turkey is not something the people down here eat so apparently it was difficult to find enough turkey for everyone. We watched a little football before dinner, YAY PACKERS!!!, then stuffed ourselves with the delicious food. You have to be careful about inviting 30 peace corps volunteers over for dinner because they will eat ALL your food. After dinner I got to talk with the family back in Tallahassee. Karis informed me that she was writing a new song with Pop Pop. I can't wait to hear it!!

Life in the village is still going good. I recently had my first community meeting about the project I will begin to write. The meeting was supposed to start at 9am and by 9:30 no one was there. My counterpart was irritated and decided to ring a bell to make everyone come to the center of the village. At around 10am we finally had a full meeting. It went great! My counterpart did all the talking, which is ideal because i'm supposed to co-facilitate while a community leader actually facilitates the meeting. During the meeting the community decided on what project I would write, how they would contribute and agreed on doing all the labor required. Now i'm in the city and writing up a rain catchment system project. I will begin looking for funding to purchase 60 Durotanks (rain catchment system) and supplies needed to install them. Currently the villagers catch their drinking and cooking water from the creek or rusty barrels that catch rain water. I'm really excited about this project!

I finally went to a Brokodei, a huge village party they throw when a community member passes away. They celebrate the persons life by throwing a huge party. It begins around 8pm and last all night long. I went to my friend Evan's village, about 10 minutes from mine, to go to the party. Before leaving one of my friends in my village decked me out in a new koosu and angisa, she said I needed to dress extra pretty for the party. While waiting to go to the party some women from Evan's village came to house to bring us a traditional soup they eat before the party. It was a meat soup, big chunks of meat in a broth. We ate it with cassava bread. It was really yummy. However, I was looking in the bowl trying to figure out what kind of meat it was and I saw a little hand... Turns out it was Pork and MONKEY soup!!! Yep! There was a little monkey hand in my bowl. After that we decided to go dancing. We danced with the little kids for a little while then called it a night. I didn't have enough stamina to stay up all night!

The next morning we went to a ceremony they call Puu adjo. I don't know what that means but there was a lot of traditional dancing by women and men. The men of the village were sitting together playing traditional drums. It was really incredible to watch. The women danced in a circle to the beat of the drums. It's hard to put into words but it was one of those moments that I think "wow, i'm really in a whole nother world!". Half way through the dance several men came running out dressed in masks. They are called Maasgadu. They chased the kids around and danced with the women. It was so fun to watch. We sat on the side with the older women. People passed out lots of food including cakes and cassava bread. We also washed our hands with Palm Rum as the other women were doing.

I had a blast at the party but I was exhausted by the end and ready to see my little village again. I head back to site in a few days and then i'll be back for Christmas. I'll put up some pictures soon!

Happy Thanksgiving and if I don't update before Christmas, Merry Christmas too!!!!

Bats, Rats and Tarantulas

Site is still going good. I'm still figuring things out and making my life there. I've been keeping track of the highlights that happen at site but ofcourse I don't have my little note book with me at the moment.

Lets see...

One night I was woken up by someone ringing a bell at about 1am. I was super confused on why someone would be ringing a bell in the middle of the night. Then I heard the people of my village walking to the center of the village, which is directly next to my house. I was thinking that it was incredibly bizaare to have a community meeting in the middle of the night. I heard my captain (the leader of my village) speaking to everyone, I stayed in my house the whole time, but I couldn't really make out what he was saying. Then everyone at the meeting began to scream and wail extremely loudly. I was pretty scared. Turns out that a woman in a neighboring village had passed away and my captain was letting everyone know. In their culture they wail loudly when someone passes away. The next week involved a lot of traditional ceremonies that they do when someone passes away.

I went to a ceremonial washing in the neighboring village with the volunteer that lives there. First I walked 30 minutes through the jungle with the women of my village to get there. The jungle is beautiful and scary all at the same time. I could barely see the path that we were walking on that the women seemed to know by instinct. There are enormous trees and huge butterflies that are bright purple. Eventually we made it to the opening to the river and we caught a boat to take us across the river. After a few hours of everyone from Carolines village and everyone from my village washing, a little old man came and took Caroline and I to wash where everyone else was washing. However, a little woman stopped us and tried to get us to take our shirts off... Nope didn't happen! We washed with our shirts still on, thank you very much. Anyway, we stood at a little alter thing they built while two old men poured water with leaves all over our heads. We were completly soaked! It was really neat to be able to be a part of their traditions.

Instead of walking back to my village I rode back in a boat with several people. On our way back one of the men on my boat saw an iguana swimming across the river. Iguana's are highly saught after out here. They LOVE to eat them. Especially a female iguana that has eggs. Yum! The driver of the boat turned the boat around so we could chase after it. We chased it for about 5 minutes but it got away. It was highly entertaining though.

I celebrated my birthday with my villagers on September 23rd. In their culture you are supposed to buy lots of food, drinks and provide the entertainment for your birthday. I told them I didn't have enough money to do that but that I would cook a little for a few people. I cooked bamie - spaghetti noodles with soy sauce, terriyaki sauce, maggi cubs and oil. When it was done cooking I called my neighbors over and everyone brought their own plate and I served everyone some bamie. They loved it! But they told me that next year I needed to buy some chicken and soft drinks. Ha!

Recently we had our early service training in Paramaribo. During the training we (all the volunteers) played a soccer game that had no rules. I didn't have shoes to wear so I played bare foot... Inevitably my foot got stomped by another player that was wearing shoes. I had to get it x-rayed but luckily nothing was broken. However, when I got back to site a week ago one of my friends in my village noticed that I was still limping. She asked me what happened and told me she had something that would make it get better. She came back to my house and poured kerosene on my foot... Other than make me flammable, it didn't do anything.

I'm getting a little more used to all the critters in my house. The newest two are the tarantula that lives outside my front door and the bats that moved in the day before I left to the city again. I'm okay with the tarantula because he's pretty chill and just sits there quietly. The bats on the other hand are obnoxious and need to go. They crawl in my roof making a ton of noise and then fly chaotically around the INSIDE of my house. I told my neighbor that I had bats and he responded with "be careful they bite" THANKS!!! sheesh! So hopefully they will have moved out by the time I get back to site.

This week i'll be helping with Camp Glow. Camp Glow is a 4 day camp for 6th grade girls. We'll play games, have HIV/AIDS awareness stuff and career/life motivation talks. I'm excited to hang out with the girls and have fun.

Soon i'll begin writing my rain catchment system project for my village. My village does not have access to clean drinking water yet so we've decided to write a project for Durotanks. Durotanks catch rain water and store it for clean drinking and cooking water. Right now my village uses creek water to drink. The creek is very unsanitary and causes a lot of health problems. Stay tuned for more information on my project!

I hope everyone is enjoying fall! Carve a pumpkin for me!

I've had a lot of people ask for my address. Here ya go!

Peace Corps Suriname
c/o Jamie Cliburn
PO Box 9500
Franchepanestraat 12 - 16
Paramaribo-Zuid, Suriname
SOUTH AMERICA

PS - I love getting letters!!!

Adjustment time

Hey everyone!

I've successfully completed a month and a half-ish at site! It's been great and luckily i really enjoy my village. PC gave us the go ahead to come in early to restock on supplies so me and a few other volunteers are here in the city stocking up on things.

So much has happened in the weeks i've been at site that i don't know where to start.

My house is great, small but great. It's full of little animals and HUGE spiders. I have rats, lizards and lots of spiders but except for one ruined thing of deodorant nothing bad has come about from having the little roommates. One night the rats knocked my deodorant off the wall and into my pee pot... Needless to say i tossed that deodorant in the trash. The worst problem i'm having with the rats is that they wake me up. They are noisy!! I also get angry that they are running around so in the middle of the night i am beating on my walls half asleep trying to make them leave! I'm sure i'm quite the site.

The women of my village are amazing and are thoroughly enjoying teaching me how to do things they do on a daily basis. I have beat rice, cut rice at grounds, peeled TONS of cassava, made cassava bread, beat seeds to make oil, cooked oil, fished and cleaned fish. They were impressed i already knew how to clean fish. Thanks Uncle Lynn!!!

About two weeks into site, i played Slagball (baseball meets cricket) with the kids of my village. After about an hour of playing one kid went to hit the ball but let go of the bat and it knocked me square in the head! I had a HUGE goose egg on my head for a few days. It was hilarious getting taking care of by the villagers though. They all came to my house with their "medicines" mostly it was viks vapor rub and another unidentified goo they would smear on my head. I smelled really weird for days. But my head got better!

I'm working on my routine at site... So far I wake up at 7am (even though the BLEEPING roosters wake up at 3am!!!) and walk to my Durotank to get water for my morning washing. Sometimes i'll make hot water to bathe with but mostly it's cold. After washing I walk to my neighbors and tell them good morning. Then I make my breakfast of tea with oatmeal. I leave my door and window open so i get to chat with people as they walk by. Once breakfast is finished I read for a bit then walk to the creek or river to wash all my dishes and clothes from the previous day. Washing stuff takes forever... Probably just because i'm slow but I see no reason to rush. ha ha! It's HOT!!! There are always lots of people down at the river so I get to chat while washing my stuff. I've been slowly working washing myself at the river into my routine. Dry season has begun so I need to be cautious of how much of my rain water i'm using. My first time washing myself at the river was pretty hilarious. I wore a sports bra and a koosu (skirt thing). I got water in my ears and up my nose since i looked like i was a flopping around fish in the water. The current was stronger than anticipated so I got knocked over. Probably flashed everyone at the water front too. Whatever! Eventually i was clean and had to the tricky koosu switch-er-roo... There is an art form to this that i haven't figured out yet. You can take one koosu off while putting a new dry one on IN FRONT OF EVERYONE! Well... I am terrible at this and the women had to help me because I got stuck and tried to jump up and down to make my old one fall off... It wasn't working so when they could stop laughing at my they came over and helped me pull my wet koosu off and tie my new one on more securely. The women of my village laugh at the way I do things a lot but i've decided it's good. They think i'm funny and seem to like me. :)

Currently everyone in my village is trying to teach me how to carry my things on my head without using my hands. This is going to end very badly but i'm trying. Ha! They are trying to make me into a real "Saamaka Mujee" Saramaccan Woman.

Everyday in my village people go to their grounds to cut/dig up vegetables, rice, cassava and other food. One woman took me to her grounds so we could cut rice for several hours. The rice they plant out here grows like wheat. You use a knife to cut off the top of the plant. It was kind of fun going to grounds with her. I got to chat the whole time and try to ease drop on her other conversations. I'm really good at understanding what people are saying when they are speaking to me but I'm not so great at being part of a large conversation with several people because I can't understand them when they speak to each other. So i'm working on that.

Speaking of going to grounds!!! One SUPER old man in my village went to his grounds by himself the other day and by nightfall he had not come back. My village was extremely worried so they sent out all the men of my village (about 8 men total) into the jungle at NIGHT to look for him. They came back late that night after not finding him. The next morning men from nearby villages came to help look for the little old man. It was intense seeing so many men decked out in rubber boots, shotguns and machetes walking into the jungle. After about 5 hours everyone in my village that had stayed behind began to yell. The yelling began at the front of the village and like a wave of sound ended at the back of the village where I was sitting. The men had found the little old man!! Everyone in the back of the village ran to the river to see the men bring in the old man. It was really cool. He was okay, dehydrated and hungry but okay. He had missed his path back and gotten lost. After the search party (about 25 men) walked him to his house the women of my village washed him. They carried in a huge bucket of water with leaves in it and washed him from head to toe. He was wearing a loin cloth time thing so luckily he wasn't naked because that would have been massively awkward. My ENTIRE village surrounded his little house to make sure he was okay. When the women were done washing him they washed the faces,heads and necks of all the men that had gone into the jungle to search for the man. It was incredibly interesting to watch.

I can't imagine what sleeping alone without shelter in the jungle must have been like for him. Scary!!! But he survived and he's doing great.

Tomorrow I head back to my little "wosu" house in the jungle. I'll be back in the city in October!

I miss you all and thanks for reading!!!

Official!

It's official! I am a Peace Corps Volunteer for Suriname! Today the Ambassador came by to swear us all in. 23 trainees came to Suriname on May 4th and 23 were sworn in today! SUR-17 is awesome!

Tomorrow the chaos of shopping for site begins. I need to buy a lot of stuff. My house is completely empty so that will be a HUGE endeavor for me over the next two days. Tomorrow we go shopping for furniture then Friday I go grocery shopping. I need to buy enough food for 3 months! Woooooo! We'll see how that goes. I think there is lots of tuna, beans, rice and spam in my future. Awesome...

I'm very excited and super ready to go to site. I have had a great time this past week in the city but i miss my village. I'm ready to start building friendships and learning how to live like the Saramaccans!

If you haven't checked out the Bizarre Foods episode for Suriname you should! The village they visit on the show is pretty close to my future village. It's a really good portrayal of what life is like here.

I miss everyone and i will update you in 3 months!!!!!!! Love you guys!

Almost finished with training!

Hey everyone!

We are in they city now. No more NAKS for us! We just got back from a second stay with out host families and it was great. It was wonderful getting to see our host families again and to see how far we have progressed with our language skills. My host dad gets a kick out of teaching me the language so he has been a huge help to me with my language. This visit my other little host sister was at the house too. Last time she was in Paramaribo for school. She is 19 years old. I hung out with her a lot and she was so great to learn from. We played a game called Slagball one day. The game is as if baseball and Cricket had a baby. The women and young girls here play slagball so we were trained on how to play. It was a lot of fun but super muddy. After three matches with the girls of the village our team of Peace Corps Trainees managed to win! Woo woo!

One day during home stay was Keti Koti, the Surinamese emancipation day. My host mom gave me a koosu (sarong type skirt) that she sewed for me to wear and we all went to church. It was really interesting to see how dressed up everyone was. It was very colorful and all the women wore brand new koosu's and head wraps. The men all wore bandja koto's, a sarong they tie over one shoulder. The children in the church put on skit about Keti Koti and it was super cute. My little sister, the 12 year old, was in the skit and she was hilarious. I loved it. After church we took family photos. Yay!

We got to teach English one day at the local primary school. Each of us taught something different during our session. I taught the students how to sing "the itsy bitsy spider". It was super cute and they did a great job with it!

Now we are in Paramaribo and doing our final training sessions before swearing in. We had our final language and program interviews today and I passed! Woo woo!! Looks like i'll be officially sworn in on July 13th!

Yesterday we went to a huge July 4th celebration at the Ambassador's house. Our whole class was unofficially sworn in by the Ambassador and we all got to meet the President of Suriname. It was really fun and we got to get all dressed up. We had a great time. You all should try and google it because there was a ton of media there and we saw ourselves on the Suriname nightly news!

This week we have a little more training then swearing in! After swearing in i'll start shopping for my little house. I'm excited for my adventure to really get started!

I miss everyone! Love you guys!

Site visit

Hello again!
Training is getting close to wrapping up! We only have less than a month before we are sworn in and start our service!

We have been back at NAKS for a little over a week now. Prior to coming back to NAKS we did a portion of training that involved visiting a current PCV at their site and then visiting our future sites for a few days. The purpose behind visiting a current PCV is so that we can see how they live in their villages. We were able to see how they set up their houses and witness their daily routine. I was super nervous before I arrived to the PCV’s site that I was visiting. It was just weird that I was actually finally in the area of my future site! After a 5 hour wagi (a van) ride down a partially paved road and then a one hour boat ride I finally arrived at the current PCV’s site. She was waiting at the waters edge for me when the boat pulled up. Side note – the boats are about 25 feet long canoes with a big out board motor. There were women of her village washing clothes and dishes at the water front while I was awkwardly trying to get out of the boat without falling into the water!
The visit was great! I loved the PCV I got to visit with and she was a HUGE help. I made a list of everything she had in her little house that I want to buy for my own house. We also cooked a lot so it was great to see what she cooked with and get ideas for cooking at my future site. You have to be creative since fresh food is hard to come by in the interior. I’m going to load up on canned veggies and tuna. We made tuna melts one day and they were delicious! Cheese doesn’t last long so that’ll be something I treat myself to my first week at sight.

After a few days of visiting with the PCV it was time for me to hop on another boat and head to my site. I was very nervous but super excited too. My village is about 45 minutes away from the PCV I was visiting. The boat pulled up and two young girls from my village helped me carry my stuff up the ramp to the village entrance. It was weird to finally be by myself with no other trainees or volunteers with me. It was an adjustment but a good one. As the girls took me farther into the village more and more people started coming out of their houses to greet me. It was overwhelming how excited they were to have me there. All the women gave me hugs and were super nice to me. By the time I reached my house I had a crowd of probably 20 women and children with me. Everyone took me into my house to show me around. I’ll put up a picture! It’s a wood house with a thatch roof. Super small but cute! The crowd of women huddled together to discuss what my name should be. I think I’ve mentioned before that in their culture they think it’s bad to use someone’s name too much so they call each other by a nickname. So after they discussed it my new name for the next two years is Bajamai. It means “Good hips woman”. Ha!

After being naming me they helped me set up my water filter and my hammock. The women of the village then brought me some food. Rice and Sopropo (super bitter cucumber thing) with an egg. It was awesome that they brought me some food. I didn't have anything to cook with or on. I did bring food but i had no way to prepare it. The rest of the day i hung out with the leader of the village's wife. Her name is Mama and I love her. She's super old and very sweet. They walked me around my village which takes about 10 minutes to walk around the whole thing. It's super small.

So eventually evening rolled around and it was truth time for me. Everyone probably knows that my biggest phobia is the dark. Yep i'm scared of the dark and always have been. I knew it was coming that i would be by myself in the jungle at night but i was still nervous. The ladies of the village brought me a kerosene lantern after they saw me fumbling around with my headlamp. So i had a little bit of light! I locked up my little house with me in it at about 8pm and hopped in my hammock. My heart was racing! My village has electricity but my house does not. Maybe one day! So the rest of the village was still up watching movies and listening to music SUPER LOUD. I couldn't sleep... I was scared. :) So grand total that night i got about 2 hours of sleep. Maybe! The next night was MUCH better since i was exhausted from the previous night/day. I'm proud of myself that I made it through it! And i'm excited to go back so i'm totally conquering my fear of the dark! Having the lantern on all night was what saved me though. So i need to make sure i bring plenty of kerosene with me when i go back.

During my visit i hung out with different women of the village and tried to talk as much as possible. My language is still lacking so I didn't talk much. I decided it would be better if I tried whatever they were doing. So one day I banged rice with a huge club thing, banged a nut open to get the seed out so that they could make cooking fat with the seed and carried lumber on my head! My village seemed to be impressed with me trying out their chores. Two women invited me to go to their grounds with them. Grounds is where they grow their veggies and rice. We walked for about 20 minutes through the jungle on a path that i could not see! I don't know how they know where they are going, it must just be instincts. Finally we came to a clearing and they showed me around their grounds. They grow rice, bananas, okra, tayauwii (looks like elephant ears) and a bunch of other stuff. It was super hot when we were there so we came back pretty soon. Each night i slept a little bit better than the previous night. The women would wake me up at 6:30am each morning by walking to my door and yelling "BAJAMAI, I WEKI NO????????????". I loved it! i'm sure i'll get tired of that but it made me feel great that they were excited for me to be there. i'm also getting numb to creepy crawlies. My house has spiders called House Spiders that are literally the size of your palm. They are so big you can hear them running on the walls! but they eat other bugs so you learn to love them.

I loved my village and i'm excited to go back. Next time i'll take pictures of the actual village not just my house. :)

This week we are headed back to our host families for another visit then we go to Paramaribo for swearing in! I can't believe training is coming to an end! I officially move to my site on July 16th! I have a lot to buy since my house is completely empty. But i'm super excited about it.

Well i'm out of time and need to make my way back to NAKS. I miss everyone! Love you guys!

I know my site now!!

I'll be headed to a small village on the Upper Suriname River. It's actually the southern part of the Suriname River but the river flows from south to north so thats why they call it the Upper Suriname.

My site does not have running water and does not have electricity. There is a chance that occasionally it will have electricity because they have a generator but it depends on if they have fuel for it. I'm not sure what kind of projects i'll be doing but that will come later. I'm super excited and ready to meet people of my village. I'll be visiting them this week!

I'll update you guys on the flip side! I need to go pack AGAIN and go grocery shopping for the week.

I got two packages today! It was the first mail i've gotten and it made my week! If you want to write me or send a package here is my address:

Peace Corps Suriname
c/o Jamie Cliburn
PO Box 9500
Franchepanestraat 12 - 16
Paramaribo-Zuid, Suriname
SOUTH AMERICA

Love you all and miss you!!!!

Home Stay

Hey yall!
Last week we did the portion of training called Home Stay. During home stay you live with a family in a community similar to the community you will eventually live in. The day we were supposed to leave for home stay all our “host moms” came to NAKS to pick us up. My mom is a sweet little old. It was awkward meeting her at first since I still don’t know much of the language but we were able to make small conversation. Everyone boarded the buses and we went to a Sunday market to buy food for the week. My mom grabbed my hand when we got there and off we went in search of chicken. The meat portion of the market is just gross but I’m embracing the differences of Suriname. It’s an open air market with no refrigeration and the meat is butchered and bagged on tables right in front of you. There are flies flying around and it smells BAD! My mom picked out a huge bag of chopped up chicken, bought it and put it in her little cooler she brought with her. She grabbed my hand again and it was time to pick out veggies for the week. I told her I loved veggies so she bought me all kinds. I have since learned my lesson and there are a few veggies here that I do NOT like. Sopropo is a lumpy looking cucumber that is super bitter. It’s nasty. Unfortunately she bought a lot of that so I ate that a lot this week. My favorite veggie so far here is Kosubanti – Long Beans. It’s a SUPER long green bean that is absolutely delicious. After shopping at the market it was time to head to our Home Stay sites. I was one of the last people to get dropped off the bus. My village has one big street that all the houses are situated around. We walked down a path to our little house and I immediately got super nervous. It’s nerve-racking to live with strangers but add to that a different culture and limited language communication and you have one heck of an awkward situation. My mom showed me to my room and I put away all my stuff. My mom went to change her clothes so I sat down to talk with my little sister – Shayna. I called her Shayna because I can’t pronounce her real name. By the end of the week I could though! Anyway, my little sister is 12 years old and is really good at speaking English so that made me feel much more comfortable. Shayna decided we needed to go on a walk through the community so that’s what we did. We met up with the other trainees and their host siblings along our walk and checked out the village we would all be living in for the next week. I’ll put up pictures!
Eventually it was time to head back to the house for dinner. In their culture here you have to wash before you eat so you wash SEVERAL times a day. We got back from our walk around the village and my mom met me at the door to tell me to go wash then I would eat dinner. As I was washing in the wash house behind the house I realized that I really should have practiced bucket bathing because it was terribly frustrating. I got soap in my eyes and in my ears! Then there were bugs and geckos chilling in the wash house with me so that made me want to wash faster and just made the situation worse. I had a small bucket, a kuyaa – a bowl made from a thing that’s similar to a gourd, and the water came from a spigot in the wall. I splished and splashed and eventually I was all clean! I went to the kitchen where my mom had already fixed me my meal. I ate fish soup and cassava bread that first night. Cassava bread is a super hard flat bread that you break into pieces then dip in broth to eat. The soup was super yummy but the part of the fish she served me was the face so I didn’t eat much of it. It was looking at me the whole time! Yuck! After dinner I watched Bring It On with my little sister because she loves watching movies. So by now you can probably gather that the house I was staying at had electricity and running water. It was pretty sweet. Other trainees in different areas were not so fortunate. I had a flushing toilet out behind my house but most trainees had latrines. Once the movie was over I went to bed. All cuddled up in my bed under a mosquito net, I tried to go to sleep. I didn’t fall asleep until 3am. I had one of those nights where I couldn’t stop thinking and freaking out about whatever animal just made my pee pot scoot across the floor! I could hear things in my room but not see them. I chose not to look since nothing could be done. Side note – you pee in a pee pot at night in your room then empty it out in the morning.
The next morning started bright and early thanks to the FREAKING ROOSTERS!!!!!!!!!! Those are the most obnoxious animals ever. Luckily I needed to get up anyway. I woke up and ran to the bathroom then swept the house then washed then ate breakfast all before 7am! Yea! My host mom went to work so I spent my first full day hanging out with my host dad. He is super quiet but eventually he started talking to me more. It was cool to just sit with him on the porch and chat all day. The other trainees and I decided to go exploring in our new village so we went on a long walk through the community. It was great since we all got a chance to practice the language, mainly the greeting. You greet everyone in this culture and not just a “Hey!” when you see them. You either ask them how they woke if it’s morning or how their day is if its afternoon. Then you have a short conversation about where you are going and where you came from. Here’s a taste:
Me: I de no? (greeting for afternoon)
Villager: Ai u de. (response)
Me: Unfa I de? (how’s your day)
Villager: Mi de bunu. I seei tu? (My day is good. And you?)
Me: Me de bunu. Mi nango. (My day is good. I’m going.)

So you do this conversation a whole lot with the people you see but it’s a great way for people to get used to you being in their village.

I learned a lot this past week and I had a blast. I basically just chilled out with my family and helped out when I could. My dad played a lot of “What’s this” with me. So he would point to a chair and ask me what it was so I would respond with the right word in Saramaccan. We ran out of stuff to talk about so that’s when he would just start asking me what everything was. My mom showed me how to cook chicken, sopropo (yuck), lalu (okra), kosubanti, bamie (noodles), and rice. She seemed to have a fun time laughing at me and the way I acted. I got really excited when I understood what she was saying and she thought it was hilarious. My sister tried to braid my hair multiple times but my hair just won’t braid. She said it was too slippery. For fun we would walk down to the river to swim, I wouldn’t swim because my parents told me not to but the kids would. The river was gorgeous! It was the first time we really saw the river we kept hearing about. While everyone was swimming I washed my clothes in the river. A little girl watched me wash my clothes and she definitely had a face on her that said she disapproved of the way I was washing them.

Some of the other highlights from the week include seeing a monkey jump from one tree to the next, seeing a HUGE iguana chilling at the top of a tree, seeing an Anaconda eat a bird, realizing I know more of the language than I thought, quietly washing dishes with my mom, my mom bringing me popsicles, watching movies with my little sister (piki sisa), talking with little old ladies in the village, going grocery shopping with my mom in the city, figuring out how to pee in a chamber pot, getting the hang of bucket bathing, going to the Suriname River dam, having conversations with women that are not wearing anything to cover their boobs (in the interior women hardly cover their chest so old saggy boobs are everywhere!), learning more about sewing from my host mom, watching her sew a traditional koosu (sarong type skirt that women wear), washing with HOT water (my mom brought me hot water and it was amazing! It was the first hot water I’ve had in over a month!), I sprained my ankle after falling – not exactly a highlight but definitely something I’ll remember, and comparing home stay stories with other trainees.

The day we left Home Stay we had to have more safety training so it was time for life vest training! All 23 of us hopped on a long boat and went out the middle of the river and jumped into the water. We had to prove that we could swim with a life vest on in the event that a boat should flip. It was a super hard swim thanks to the stinking life vest and a super strong current in the middle of the river. We all did it though! Yea! Funny thing was that the part of the river we were swimming in was the same spot where I saw the Anaconda the day before.  But luckily we didn’t see any snakes or piranhas while swimming. After swimming we drove back to NAKS in Lelydorp. I miss my little family and I’m looking forward to going back there in a few weeks. We are at NAKS for two days then we head out to visit a current volunteer’s site then we go visit our future site! I find out where my site will be in 2 days!!!!! I can’t wait!

So I moved to Suriname!

Suriname is pretty awesome. Good thing I love it since i'll be here for awhile. A quick recap for those who are unaware I have joined the Peace Corps and moved to Suriname. Suriname is a tiny little country in South America. Google it!

There are 23 people in my training group. They are awesome and from all over the United States. We have a great mix of personalities and backgrounds so it's been awesome getting to know each other.

Training is busy. We begin our language classes on Monday (monde) mornings from 8am to 12pm. I'm learning a language called Saramaccan. It's tricky but I like it. Here's a little taste:

U de no?
Me de oo.

Thats the way you ask someone how they are doing in the afternoon. Here's thank you:
Gaantangi fii.

Nice Huh?

So after language class we have a nice long lunch break where we can eat and wash some clothes. Hand washing clothes in a bucket is just not fun but i'm getting the hang of it. After lunch we start our "core sessions". These involve health training, safety training, culture training and personal development stuff. I love the culture training. The women who teach it are amazing. Especially my language teacher!

At some point during the day you run as fast as you can out to grab your laundry off the racks/line because it has all of a sudden started pouring down rain. It rains A LOT here but thats because it's the "big rainy" season. I love it though. It cools down a lot once it starts to rain.

I'll work on posting more. :)

I love it here and am having a blast!!! I'm looking forward to finding out where my village is going to be! I'll let yall know soon!