New stuff!

Its around 630 on saturday night here in sokode. I just woke up from a little nap that I took due to feeling a little sick today. My stomach/intestinal region decided to not be nice to me or something, I was planning on heading back to village today but I'll have to put that off until tomorrow now. It gives me time to sit here and relax/reflect on this past week though, which I can put into written form for all of you guys to read!

My AIDS ride adventure began last friday with my ride up to sokode. I met two other volunteers who live close to me, Tony and Sam, in Tony's village about 18km from my own. We then had a quick egg sandwich breakfast and a calabash of Tchouk (local millet beer, tastes kind of cidery and is delicious) and hit the road. We get up here and spend the rest of the day just relaxing, its a ~60km bike ride from my house to the transit house in Sokode so its a little workout for me. The ride itself was concentrated in the northern part of the region, so the other volunteers from the southern part of the region started to trickle in on Friday. We spent saturday at the market picking up supplies for the upcoming week, for me that consisted of sachets (little plastic bags) of peanut butter and peanuts for snacking on. I kind of live on those two things here for protein, the peanut butter is delicious. Anyway, we spend quality volunteer bonding time here in town, and then Sunday morning take off for Kaboli, a town close to the border of Benin and in the very north of the Centrale region here in Togo. We stopped to pick up volunteers who live on the way there, bringing our little band of bikers up to 11 volunteers and 2 Togolese counterparts, one of which was from my village and another from Kaboli. We get up to town in the mid afternoon and get everything unloaded from our bush taxi that we rented out to follow us biking for the week, as well as carry all our random stuff from big bags full of sachets of water to the straw mats we used to sleep on. One of the volunteers, Angela, lives in Kaboli so we stayed at her house for the first night before we got started. I got to sleep outside under a paillote in a hammock while a thunderstorm went on around me, definitely an amazing experience.

The first night also began my decision to hang out with the Togolese people with us as much as possible during the week just to get a different insight and perspective on the stuff we were doing. As one of the volunteers here, Chris, said to me, “I didn't come to Africa to hang out with Americans.” So I went out to find dinner food with the driver and his apprentice, as well as with Bello and Fredos, the two counterparts with us on the ride. Togolese food is not very nutritious, but definitely filling. The sauces that they make are beyond outstanding though. I have actually drank remaining sauce like soup when all done with my pate or fufu just because it tasted that good. Anyway, I hung out and talked to Bello a lot about the upcoming elections as well as life and the like here in country. He has a satellite dish at his place and gets english MSNBC so he's had some pretty regular updates for any sort of outside news and actually lets me know whats going on in town when I see him. Hes a really knowledgeable guy too, had some good insights and ideas about the American political process.

Monday morning came pretty quickly. We got all prepped and split up into our two groups, Orange and Blue, of which I was of the former. My group stayed in Kaboli for our first formation of the day, while the Blue team went off to another town. We presented to a crowd of about 40 information on HIV/AIDS and how it was transmitted and what it was. Our presentations consisted of a short True/False question session where we posed questions to the crowd, then a game to show what the virus did to the immune system, then how the virus was and is not spread (believe it or not, over half of the villages we talked to believed mosquitos could transmit the HIV virus), the ABCD's of prevention, and then a demonstration on how to properly use a condom. I had the last two parts of the presentation. The condom demonstrations were a crowd favorite, let me tell you that. The first time doing it it was hard keeping a straight face, but I got pretty good at not laughing along with the rest of the people. Plus I can do a flight-attendant style presentation of how to check the condom for expiration date and imperfections, as well as then apply it to a wooden penis. Random sidenote: The condoms that PSI (Population Services International, they fund this tour for us) gives out are Banana Scented. Not flavored, just scented. My hands smelled like bananas all week, the scent that they put in the lubricant was like impervious to soap and scrubbing. I'm still just a little baffled at why they would make a condom just scented. Another African mystery.

After the first presentation finished, which went really well, we hopped on our bikes and took off to meet up with the second team in their village about 18km away. We rode in as they were still working and hung out in the crowd watching. I noticed a building down the street that had white people on the roof, so naturally I headed over to figure out what other yovo's were doing here. Turns out it was a group of German engineers here on a grant to install solar panels on the roof of a brand new library going in and also to wire the building. They let me go up on the roof and see the work they were doing and explained about what was going on. They spoke decent english too. After hanging out on the roof for a little while watching the end of the second groups presentation, I took off back down and met up with the other volunteers and we headed off to the village chief's house for lunch. At lunch, I had the best goat meat that I've had in country. It was so tender it was like falling off the bones. Plus they had actually taken the time to burn the hairs off the skin so it wasnt like eating a furry steak! We got fed until we couldnt eat anymore, and then sat around outside waiting for the heat to die down a little bit so we could bike the ~38km to Tchamba, our village we were staying the night in that next evening. I spent my time hanging out with Bello and explaining to him where oil comes from, and then we discussed how we thought Togo would be different if they found oil here. I explained the concept of non-renewable resources and why that would be bad in the long run for Togo, which mind you I somehow pulled out in French. After that fun little discussion, we hopped on our bikes and took off.

Riding through the African countryside on a mountain bike is something that I don't think I could ever get tired of. Its just so amazingly beautiful. I plan on sending pictures home on a thumb drive to my parents, I'll try and upload some when I'm down in Lome in December too. Tuesday came on, bringing two more sensibilizations to do. The first went without a hitch, and we had an amazing lunch with the chief afterwards also. Beans and rice with fried soy. Thats pretty much my definition of gourmet meal here. We then biked off to our second town of the day. Turns out, we had to ride through the second town to get to the first earlier on in the day, the chief thought that we were going to be coming in the morning so he got the town gathered up, and when we didnt show up they left. We get there in the afternoon when we were supposed to be and the whole town is at another meeting a few kilometers away. So we do a quick presentation to the people available, and take off to interrupt the other meeting to talk to the people there. So we got to do an extra bonus presentation! That turned out to be really good though, one of the village elders told us a story about a group of young girls from that village that was really touching and we retold to every other village we went to afterwards.

There isn't much here in Togo for work, you either have a family who has something going or you spend time in the fields cultivating. There isnt any sort of class distinction, theres poor and then government employees. This leads to a lot of people leaving the country going to find work elsewhere. In this case, the country is Nigeria. A group of 6 girls from this village, Yeliwa, left for Nigeria to try and find work. What they found was forced prostitution. After a year there, two returned back to village. They wanted to get tested for HIV when they got back, but their parents forbid it. So they didnt. They found men there and were married. Each married a man who had two other wives. Life went on, until one of the other wives was around for a free testing session. Her results came back positive. As did all the others involved in that marriage(s), as well as the other set. Due to the stigma of shame that comes with the virus here, the families are unwilling to allow their daughters to know if they were infected. Now 6 more people are living with the death sentence that is AIDS infection. There are amazing anti-retroviral, ARV's, drugs available that make life with HIV manageable, and can even prevent the virus from leading to full blown AIDS. But they're expensive, and not easy to find here in Africa. The continent suffering the most. Really kind of a sobering moment. It only got more so as the time passed.

The next day in the afternoon we got to our village a few hours early, so we grabbed some drinks and hung out under a big tree in the middle of town. Now when white people show up, everyone comes out because they think we have gifts. “Cadeau”, the french word for gift, is shouted by tens of children, arms outstretched, staring wantingly. That gets old to me, I don't like giving out material stuff. I'm here for the gift of knowledge. But anyways, we had over a hundred kids forming a sort of semi-circle around us sitting around. Tony started chasing one of them around, and they all loved it. That turned into us getting a huge circle formed and teaching them the hokey pokey. I then attempted to teach them how to play freeze tag and red light/green light. They didnt understand the concept of not moving. It was still a lot of fun though. Even more kids showed up as I went along, I tried to make the largest conga line then. The older kids were helping me line up the little ones and we had a fun little snake going on, they all wanted to be in the front with me though so it broke down after a little bit. Then I realized that they would copy any motion I made, so I started doing random clapping patterns. That led to a lightbulb going off in my head. I quickly taught them the beat to “We Will Rock You” and started singing the words to it. Well, they started singing the same too. Theres a ~20 second video clip of this that I'll try to get up, its awesome. I love the kids here. Which is another hard part. Standing there feeling like the director of the African production of Stomp and staring out at the hundreds of smiling, laughing little faces and knowing the statistics of how many of them will contract either HIV or be afflicted by Malaria or Tuberculosis just due to the way of life here is heartbreaking. So many little things that could be prevented by government-sponsored vaccination or subsidization of prophylaxis. But no, the government here is too concerned with maintaining a hierarchical society of elderly men who are uninterested in anything but keeping the power they have. Sometimes I lay awake thinking “what can I do for a country that doesn't seem to want to help itself.” Not sure, but I can try.

The ride from our second sensibilization to meet up with the other group involved a game of wooden penis relay handoff. Doing this while riding down a large paved road with people on the sides and the occasional motorcycle driving by was awesome, and one of my personal highlights of the trip. We passed the night in the village of Wassarabo, where another volunteer lives. After we arrived, we were mulling around waiting to take showers and I grabbed a notebook and went outside of the compound across to by the chase car next to a Dispensaire to write underneath a tree there. After a few minutes of writing, I look up and see that I have a line of kids staring at me. I laugh, put down the notebook, and ask them if they want to play a game. Of course they do, so I get them into a circle with the intention of teaching duck duck goose, but there were too many, so I decided to bust out some clapping rhythm stuff. I taught them a few different patterns and how to go from quiet to loud or vice versa. Then I made each kid make up his own pattern and we went around the circle changing from kid to kid with the whole group following one. They loved that. Then, to make things more fun, I told them that as the whole circle was making up a beat, one person had to go in the middle and dance. I went first to break the ice for them. There is something here about a white person dancing that is intrinsically the funniest thing absolutely possible to a Togolese person. Although, as some of you may know, I'm a pretty amazing dancer, unfortunately white boy moves dont translate to tribal african. After flailing around for a little bit, I sat down and hesitantly one of the little boys hopped in the middle and started going. Then everyone wanted to go. It turned in to Togolese “You Got Served” with some kids breaking out moves that I didn't think would be possible for their size. Yet another wonderful memorable moment of the week.

There was no power in that village, so over a lantern-lit dinner that evening we talked about random goings on. Then there was a huge shooting star overhead. Absolutely spectacular orange and white, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in the sky. Then a couple Togolese people by me, I tended to go away from the volunteers while eating just to talk to people around, asked me what a shooting star was. I explained what meteors were and also about the trash up in orbit around the earth and what happens when stuff falls into the atmosphere. Then another volunteer who was talking to a Togolese guy asked me to explain why fireflies lit up. Explaining enzymatic reactions in French turned out to be pretty easy even though I knew maybe half of the necessary vocabulary, I felt really awesome after that. I crashed out soon after, staring up at the stars and talking to Bello about what people in Africa thought about the night sky. Every time a star falls, someone dies according to local legend.

The next day we mounted up and headed off to our second to last village. We arrive and are greeted by the headmaster of the school we are presenting at. He takes us over and sits us down and then brings food ladies over and feeds us as a gift from the village. Pretty awesome, I love food so it was a winning situation for me! That presentation was pretty crazy though, we had over 600 people there. Mostly students. The maturity level was not very high, as evidenced by the headmaster starting our introduction with the announcement that whomever was pooping in the classroom everyday should stop because its not funny anymore. The condom demonstration was pretty funny, as soon as you bust out a wooden penis the crowd goes wild. This crowd more wild than most. But it all went pretty well. We then took off, after lunch there, to our final town of Agoulou. We hung out there Thursday night and slept at the Dispensaire, then prepped for our last presentation in the morning. The Country Director for Peace Corps here decided that she would come by and see our final presentation, so that made me a little more nervous than usual. I mean I'm nervous about my French in front of groups but when my like boss boss is there, I was a little shakey. I did fine though, didn't really have too much to say thanks to the fact that we combined both groups for the last presentation, so we had 12 people working. We did our presentation under two large shade trees, which were full of bats. So the kids climbed up with sticks and knocked them around to make them fly away, or knock them to the ground. I saw bats turned into piñatas by crowds of children. The word for bat in French translates literally into “flying mouse”. Random fact for the day. After our final sensibilization, we all piled into the car and headed back into Sokode.

In all, an awesome week. As I look at how much I've managed to write here, I guess you can probably tell that I found what we accomplished was something worthwhile. I head back to village tomorrow, excited to get back to doing something in my community. I find myself missing walking around talking to the people I know there and seeing what they are up to. I'll be spending most of my time there now I think, I've seen parts of the country and the like but I want to do what I came here to do now. I do plan on coming up here to Sokode for election day coverage though, the director of one of the schools here said we could watch it on the TV at the school, so a few of us volunteers are going to. Thats pretty much my life at this point. I'm still working on coping with the loss of a few close volunteers from my stage who left for home already, thats been kinda tough. Plus the loss of a close family friend this past week has been kind of a downer. But fortunately I've got great friends, both in country and back in the states, giving me comfort and words of wisdom. So life goes on, one day at a time.

Until I decide to write another mini-novel, hope that life is going great for all of you guys!

Love,
Marcus

Life is fun sometimes

Can't post what I want to here due to administrative reasons. My latest email should say everything ;)

Its been a long time...

So I'm just going to copy and paste my latest email update.


So its now Sunday the 7th and I've officially been in country for 3 months on the day. It doesn't feel like that long really, I guess Ive kind of just gotten used to things. My ability to write in English has decreased a bit, but I can think and kind of speak in French a lot more. I no longer find it weird to have to go to buy things to eat on a daily basis. I also no longer find it weird to see naked people all the time, that's kind of a normal thing. Im still without electricity which really doesn't affect me too much, I barely use my computer at home anyway. I like reading by lantern light, and also going to sleep at like 830 makes waking up with the chickens at 5ish not too bad. I've been talking to other volunteers who are having kind of the same problem as I: how to remember what sort of stories to tell to people back home. Most of the stuff here really doesn't strike me as different anymore!
I can walk down the road and see ~18 people crammed into a 5 seat car and think "I bet they can fit another person in". I can watch naked kids squat in the middle of the road and pee while not breaking their cadence of "ansai buhbye" which is the salutation that whities like myself get in my town. Ive grown used to not having meat…ever. Although Ive picked up some tinned stuff here in Sokode where Im currently at. I realize that I use a lot of city names in my emails but don't explain much, its kind of one of those things that doesn't seem like anything to me. Id say just google image search a map of Togo and check it out if you want to get a feel for the places, they only really list the big cities but that's about the only places I end up at for extended periods of time. Travelling is an experience in itself, and Ill take the time to write up about that some other time.
As for the continuation of life here: I spent the last few days travelling northward to visit my buddy Rayan in the northern part of the country, and then headed over to the city of Bassar for the yearly Yam party. Yea, we celebrate some cool stuff here. I got to see a lot of the people I haven't been able to since we all left Lome together 2 weeks ago. It was pretty fun, there were fire dancers who walked on flaming logs and the like, but mainly it was just nice to see people. I bought furniture from a volunteer who was leaving too so now I actually have things for the inside of my house! I picked up a bed and mattress, three tables, two chairs, two bookshelves and a fan for a really good price so Im pretty happy with that. They only difficult part is transporting all the stuff. I brought it halfway home to Sokode in a car yesterday, and have to make the rest of the trip today. It can be a pain to get a car to the place you actually want to go, then getting a car that also will haul stuff for you is even more exciting. Then you get to negotiate a price and try not to get ripped off. It's a pretty tiring process, and I expect to make it home today and just want to relax.
That's another thing Ive gotten used to over the past three months, the pace of life. I know Ive mentioned this before, but stuff here just doesn't get done quickly, or at all if its raining. Ive sent for an electrician in the morning, and he came 3 days later in the afternoon. That's just life here. Ive stopped trying to get a lot of stuff done in only one day. Im happy if I get a third of my laundry done in the morning, a decent bike ride in, and then have time to find lunch and other foodstuffs in a 6 hour period. Once I get actual electricity then things can be better for Ill have a fridge to store things in so food can last longer than one day. Plus im going to get a gas stove from a girl who left early if I can make it up to Kara to do it. That should make it easier to cook for myself! On a random side note: if you want to send me stuff, send spices and anything that is edible that is "just add water". Water is about the only thing available that can be found easily and readily. Also drink mixes, like the single serving Gatorade or crystal light type stuff.
I cant really think of too much else to add that is entertaining, im a little tired because of being a little sick as well as staying up til about 10 pm the last few nights and then being woken up early by a combination of a few things. Mainly having to use the bathroom (one of the signs of Giardia is having a big morning bowel movement…which for me is my alarm clock!) as well as Ramadan being in full swing now and the region that I live in is heavily Muslim. So I get woken up pretty early by calls to prayer. Plus food vendors aren't as prevalent due to the fasting. Its all good though, I get to get back to village today and relax so Im looking forward to that. Feel free to write back with questions for me and Ill write like a big response email with answers to everyone.

Hope life is great, school is fun, and work doesn't suck too bad for everyone!
~Marcus

PS If you know someone who wants to get emails from me feel free to forward them, Im at the max amount of autoforwarding by Gmail so I cant add anymore to the list. Ill work on this when I get a solid connection, but that could be a long way off.

One More Things

Another quick post before I forget:

If you want to send letters/packages, I added my address to the side panel. Its PCT after my name until August 21st when I swear in, then I'm a PCV. Other than that, here is a short list of things that would be awesome to have:

DVDs of anything, TV series are usually the best
Beef Jerky
Trail Mix
Bandanas
Pictures
USB Thumb Drives
American Candies (sour patch kids please)
Anything else that you think would be useful in the middle of nowhere in Africa!

Thanks~!

The saga continues...

And an update for today!

Me and my buddy Matt are here in Lome (the capital) due to our amazing ability to be ill for extended periods of time! I've been fighting some sort of bug for the past week, and now it decided to be a sinus infection and resulted in me getting a 104 degree fever this morning. Matt had the same fun fever, so we got to be shipped out for the day. We ended up getting Malaria tests, which neither of us happened to have, and then got Z-Packs for our infections with the instructions to rest.

...so we went to the grocery store here in Lome and bought cookies/candy for our buddies back at the training site. We get to head back tomorrow, so they better be appreciative...I don't doubt that they will be.

Other than todays med fun, its been kind of the same here. I've gotten into a routine and have just been enjoying the time here in training. We find out our post assignments this week, so I get to learn where I will be spending the next 2 years of my life starting in August! I already have an idea of where, but I'm not sure yet. I've also got my hands full with figuring out what to do for the 4th of July here. We get the day off from class, so we're organizing something fun to do.

Sorry about the lack of updates, we don't have much internet access during stage; the only reason I'm posting this is because I'm at the med unit. I'll keep stuff going as much as I can, feel free to keep emails coming!

6-10-08

Today continued! I am currently sitting in the second floor of the hostel and talking to people right now. I spent the evening out at one of the local establishments watching the Greece vs. Sweden match for football and seeing Sweden won was awesome. Today was another exciting day full of shots, per usual...I'll be vaccinated for almost anything before I leave I feel like. After shots and learning how to take a stool sample, we came back to the hostel and then got cultural training! Anyone who has seen The Office's diversity day episode will appreciate what we did...it was almost as bad. Following that, Joe and I went for a run. I have a feeling that I am going to be in ridiculous shape by the time I leave...there is a marathon being held in Ghana here in September, and I plan on entering. Yay for running for fun!

So far, Togo has been absolutely amazing. I know I may sound like kind of a broken record right now, but this country is awesome. I can't wait until tomorrow when we get to go to our host families and then start our actual training! I won't be able to mooch wireless from the hostel anymore, so updates may be quite few and far between, however I'll continue to write when I have free time. I hope that all is well, and you guys continue to keep in touch!

6-8-08
Day #2 in Africa! Its currently 12:30 and I'm sitting out on the ledge of the hostel with a group of volunteers. I tried to get onto a few open wireless connections but I think I may have broken a few in the process. As of now, theres no internet and its kind of a weird feeling. The power works in the hostel though, so I can at least charge my laptop and the like.

Yesterday was the arrival into country. We took a flight from philadelphia to paris, and then paris to Lome, the capital of Togo. We made it without any sort of hitch, the Air France was actually pretty fun. Getting into Togo was fun, we got to wait in the airport in a small room and sweat for a bit before getting all our luggage into the vehicles and driving to our hostel/hotels. We were greeted by current volunteers and there was a ton of food and drinks waiting for us, which was awesome. The food is incredible, there are some amazing sauces that make anything edible. After eating and greeting, a few of us went out with some of the current volunteers to learn about what goes on here. It was an enlightening experience to say the least...I need to work on my French, thats for sure.

Today has been a day of wandering around as well as getting shots and more malaria medication. We get to eat lunch soon, and then get to get our bikes!

6-9-08

It is now almost 9pm here in Lome and I'm trying to stay awake to write this real quick and post it online via the wifi signal I've managed to hijack while in the hostel. Last night the current volunteers threw us a huge fete (party) at a local bar, whereat the most amazing band I have ever seen live played. We danced and had an awesome time, and I got to meet more of the current in country group as well as learn even more about the wonderful country that I get to live in for the next 2 years.

Going along with said fete, I got about an hour of sleep last night and about 40 minutes of nap at lunch after getting tons of shots at the med center as well as learning about malaria and other fun things here. In the afternoon, we had orientation for “stage” (say stage with a french accent, stahge). It was quite informative about the fun stuff we will get to encounter while having to poop into a hole in the ground. I'll finish relating the rest of today tomorrow, for I'm feeling pretty tired and am gonna head to bed. Bon nuit!

6-10-08
Getting a full nights sleep is probably the best feeling in the entire world. For breakfast we got to eat something that was kind of like a mix of oatmeal and grits...after adding sugar and strawberry jelly it was outstanding. The food here so far has been amazing, there are so many different sauces that anything can taste good if you just add enough.

Last night was pretty sweet. We got to go to the Country Director's house and have dinner there with most of the in-country staff as well as with the Ambassador to the country from the US. I totally seized the moment and used the opportunity to snag a photo with him (as my current facebook pic will show). He was a really down to earth and nice guy too.

Today is our last full day here at the staging house in Lome. Another 4 hours of clinic await, as well as more shots! My arms are still sore from yesterday, so this should be quite fun. Hope all is going well back in the US, I don't know when I'll be able to update again after tomorrow morning but I'll try as soon as I can!

Abiento!

The Start...

6- 6-08

Done with staging! The past 3 days have been crazy. Wednesday was an event unto itself, leaving the family behind and taking off to Philadelphia for the start of this wonderful West African adventure I am now a part of. After arriving in Philadelphia and finding a cab to the hotel, I got to check in and meet my roommate Andrew for about 30 seconds before we had to go downstairs to the conference room for the start of the staging seminars. That night was a bunch of introductions, I met all the other brave (or crazy) volunteers who I'll be spending the next 3 months with. The group consists of 31 people, out of which 16 are CHAP, which is Community Health & AIDS Prevention, and the remaining 15 are SED, which is Small Enterprise Development. I fall into the latter category along with another 2 brave individuals, with which none of us have any IT-related degree.

Following the introduction and information session, which lasted about 4 hours, a large group of us left to go get food. When in Philadelphia, the first thing that comes to mind for a dinner is totally a cheesesteak, with which we all destroyed quite quickly upon finding a suitable place. After that, a few brave souls decided to check out one of the local bars. The next few hours were spent getting to know one another more so that was discussed at the hotel, and also the other staging group going to Cameroon showed up to hang out. Realizing that almost all of the volunteers are pretty much just like me made me feel great, since I know that I'll have a ton of new friends that will be going through the same hardships and trials.

The second day of staging involved an entire day devoted solely to sessions and making the most beautiful flip-charts possible. I'd like to think that my designation of the Hearts team as “Team Love” was a way of spreading the love to as many as possible, which is totally my style. After long hours of learning how to synergistically integrate into the host culture, as well as writing a song about coping with unwanted attention with the most beautiful lyrics one has ever heard, we were finished. 12 hours total of information and that was it. A summation of the day, for those reading this who weren't actually there:

One group thought exercise after another, usually involving a large piece of paper known as a flip chart upon which we got to either draw or write our thoughts.

It was a lot of fun and also really informative, I learned a lot about Togo that I didn't know. The fact that our coordinator, Abi, was from Burkina-Faso helped a bit for she knows West African culture. After taking a group picture, we dispersed for the evening for dinner and also with the plan to hang out at the pool later that evening.

Andrew and I decided to go to dinner at this Italian place with outdoor seating so we could sit outside and enjoy the city. This led to our party of 2 becoming a party of 5 as Emily, Kristina, and Krysta showed up. Then Reid came. And then Rose. I think our waitress was getting a little flustered, but we had a good time.

That night, we hung out at the pool for a while, but the water was ridiculously cold so I didn't get in. After the staff closed up at 10, we headed back inside to Mitch and Eli's room and continued our fun there. Good times were had, and pictures were taken. That is sufficient enough to say for here...

Friday morning began with a shower and the attempt to repack my bags for the upcoming flight to Paris. Following that, we headed to Starbucks for coffee and a quick breakfast snack. Returning to the hotel, we checked out of our rooms and then headed to the clinic to get our Yellow Fever vaccines and take our first anti-malarial drug! I get to be on the weekly Mefloquin, which is supposed to give you crazy dreams (so I'm pretty pumped...I'll update when I actually sleep to say if anything happens). After that, Mike, Matt, Rayan, Andrew, Mark, Nikhil and myself went to lunch for the last time in the US. I decided to go with the All-American meal of hot wings and chili fries. Delicious. Even better was the fact that the place where we ate had Smithwicks on draft...I will definitely miss that...

After lunch, it was back to the hotel to load up on the bus to head to the airport. We got there really early and got to sit around for a few hours and wait. I managed to kill the time by wandering around with Krissy, Mike and Andrew, as well as hanging out and helping Kristina with her blog and also teaching Krissy to play Euchre. I'm glad there are a few volunteers besides myself who know how to play, I'm pumped to bring the single exciting thing about the midwest to Togo. I made a few final phone calls to people; specifically my dad, Ellie, Kat, and Haley (I was threatened that care packages would not be sent if I failed to call). Then began the boarding process. Walking down the ramp to the plane it slowly began to hit me. This is the last time I will be in America for 27 months. I hesitated on the entrance of the plane, felt the butterflies in my stomach, and then smiled and stepped in.

That brings me to the present time. I just got finished eating a surprisingly decent airline meal, which is probably due to it being an Air France flight. Now I sit here with the cabin lights out, laptop lid half open due to the awesome guy in front of me leaning forward and back repeatedly as he attempts to sleep on the plane...I don't think that sleep is gonna happen for me on here, but who knows.

Hope that this was insightful for a look into what I've been doing for the past few days! I'll update as much as I can, but feel free to write me emails. Au revoir!

Ninja Edit: Sitting in the Paris airport taking pictures with sleeping people is totally my newest hobby...

First Day of Training...

Bonjour! I had my fun day of flying around and then getting to Philly for staging! The first step to getting to Togo. Its currently 12:40ish and I'm laying in my bed watching "That 70s show" with my hotel roommate Andrew. So far, its been absolutely amazing. Everyone in the Togo group is awesome, and I feel like that we are going to have an amazing time both learning and working together. I really feel like that we will make a difference as a whole.

I may enjoy all of the company here, but I still miss all of you back home. This site will be where I can post updates and also pictures so that anyone who wants to see can have fun and keep track of my outlandish adventures. Tomorrow brings an entire day of classroom work and also karaoke in the evening with my amazing volunteer friends. Much love to all of you!

~Marcus