I'm in the East Province!!!!!

I'm going to the East Province! My official post is in a large city. Email me if you want the name of the city, for security reasons im not allowed to post my location. Most likely I'll have running water and electricity, one of the few places in the East Province were you can say that. It's a hard core province, it's the jungle. There's even a facebook group called "The forgoten volunteers of the east" LOL. Awesome. I'm in the city though so it's pretty nice, translation: there's a grocery store. But I'm not quite in the 'posh core'.There are 2 other education volunteers who have been there for a year and one has been there for 3 years. I'm the 3rd small business volunteer to be placed there.. the previous two didn't complete the 2 years though. 3rd time's the charm? I'm extremely excited. I'll be visiting my city and the Microfinance Bank that I'll be working with next week. It will be the first time traveling without the Peace Corps entourage, so that will be interesting. Last people knew, the road there still wasn't finished. I'm lucky enough to be living next to Trevor and Nik, both of them are a couple hours away from me in opposite directions. If there's anyone to have around you when you need a good laugh, i'd be those two.

I'm happy to say that there are still 38 of us. Including the trooper who got Malaria and Typhoid fever. Being sick here is not easy. No guarentee of running water, electricity and certainly not a clean bathroom. But relatively speaking, it's not the worst thing that can happen. Getting sick is phyiscally hard. It's the mental and emotional stuff that's the hardest. I'm happy to say that I haven't had to seriously deal with either of those things, not yet at least.

I made banana pancakes for my family last night. Maple syrup is like nothing they've ever had and watching them eating it and trying to describe it was pretty great. Unfortunately, halfway through the batter I decided to double the recipe, using the family's flour this time though because the flour I bought ran out. What I thought was flour was actually finely processed corn. So corn pancakes it was. Anything I do is either strange or funny, so when this happened, Patou and Maggie just laughed and laughed. I told them it was a good excuse to use more syrup.

I'll tell you next week about my adventures in the rainforest.. wish me bon voyage!