And so it begins...

Ola todos...

boa tarde ( good afternoon )

the last week or so has been an interesting experience... we started our session in philly where i had the opportunity to meet the other 57 people i would be training with. surprisingly there are 6 people from wisconsin and 4 from minnesota... id say a good half of the trainees are from the upper midwest. After spending a couple days in philly, enjoying an amazing cheesesteak... we hopped on plane at jfk and headed to africa. on the plane i sat next to anthony, another trainee from new york, who has quickly become one of my favorite people (which im sure originated from about 17 plus hours of delirious conversation on the plane)... anyway, we arrived in south africa where we stayed in a posh hotel, very unrealistic of the country itself. then we flew to maputo, mozambique where our acutal in country training began. I moved in with a host family, after living in a hotel for 3 nights... where we got shots, training and just simply adjusted to the time change (it is 7 hours ahead of central time). right now it is 435 here and surprisingly we ended our session early for the day. my host family is awesome... i live in a cement house with a tin roof.. and a sweet tiled bathroom with all amenities... unlike many of my fellow trainees. i have a little host brother (11) whose name is vito (vee two), a host mae (mom) a 19 year old sorta sister and another girl that hangs out at my house. i live in a really cool neighborhood where 5 other trainees live within 5 mins of me... for real.

if you wanna picture where i live, picture a lot of red clay dirt... it is everywhere... oh, and another interesting daily event is bathing... since there is a water shortage in the city.. they turned off all the running water, which my family fortunately has, so we use a bucket to bathe twice a day. its really not as bad as it may sound... youd be amazed.

other than that, all is well. i have very little time or chance to write emails since we walk everywhere and there is always a line. i live about 25 mins walking from almost everything and there are 57 of us trying to stay in contact... so please bear with me. i will keep my mom posted and if necessary, i will have her send out an email or whatever....

peace yo!!!

oh and my portuguese is coming along... thank goodness for the spanish engrained in my brain!
te extrano a todos!! (spanish: i miss you all)