Happy New Year! Christmas vacation was lots o’ fun, and now I’m just trying to get back into the swing of things at site. This weekend I’m in Fianarantsoa for the Volunteer Advisory Committee meeting.

Here’s a little highlights reel of my vacay:

First, took the train from Manakara to Andrambovato, a tiny town about two hours before Fianar, only accessible by railroad, where 2 volunteers (a married couple) live. Andrambovato is beautiful, but it has absolutely nothing; no cell phone service, no electricity, no roads, no food, etc. but it’s beautiful. It’s right on the side of a mountain and this big beautiful cliff face juts out right above the town. There house is extremely cool too. It’s a tiny little cabin, sort of away from the rest of the town, and it just has a really cozy feel to it. Being there was nice… until the rats came out at night. The town seems really Appalachian to me. Like somewhere in the Smokey mountains. We also took a hike through the forest to an incredible waterfall a couple of kilometers away. At the waterfall we saw some mongoose, which was quite exciting. I believe that mongoose are one of only two predatory animals that live in Madagcascar. At first I saw them and said, “look, squirrels.” I then of course realized that squirrels don’t exist in this country. So, I stayed in Andrambovato for one night and then we attempted to catch the train to Fianar the next day. The train is supposed to come to Andrambovato around 3:00. So we got to the station at 2:30. We waited… and waited and waited. At 11:30 PM the train pulled up and it was like anarchy on board. A lot of these people had been on the train since Manakara, which means 7 in the morning. So, basically, people were just sprawled out like animals all over the train. We could barely even fit inside and we ended up having to stand right next to the open door. I had to talk non-stop to my friend so that she wouldn’t fall asleep and fall out of the open door of the moving train. Finally got to Fianar at 3 in the morning. We were starving and the only place that was open is the place that we’ve cleverly nicknamed “the brothel” because… it’s a brothel. So we ate there and promptly went to sleep. The next morning I headed out to visit my friend at his site which is about 33 km from F ianar. His town isn’t as remote as Andrambovato, but it also doesn’t have cell service or electricity. His town is predominantly Betsileo, which means, in a nutshell, that there are a lot of really pretty two story houses painted a lot of bright colors. I love the betsileo architecture, and the Betsileo people dress really brightly too, they’re fun to see. So, just spent one day there, then back to Fianar for a night and then to Tana. After a long brousse ride we met up with 5 other people who were going to be traveling with us to Nosy Be, at the PC transit house. It was great to see everyone after a couple of months, and we all went out and had a fancy vazaha dinner together.

The next day the taxi brousse that we had rented out for the 7 of us only came to the PC house to pick us up. We loaded up and headed off…. By this time we had been alerted that a cyclone was heading directly for Nosy Be, but we had gotten clearance to head there anyway because the cyclone wasn’t too huge. The brousse ride is kind of a drowsy blur… we all were in and briefly out of consciousness on and off throughout the night. We finally got to Ambanja at about 9 am, where we were meeting up with another one of our friends who was coming along, after18 hours in the brousse. Ambanja is only an hour away from Ankify, the place where you get the boat to go to Nosy Be. So we decided to spend one night in Ambanja and head to Ankify the next day. Ambanja was fun. It’s a larger town. That evening the 5 guys in the group had a men’s evening of drinking and a little bit of gambling at the local casino sans the women… unfortunately we didn’t tell the women that we were planning on hanging out without them, so they were a little annoyed. Sorry ladies.

The next morning (Christmas eve) we caught the taxi to Ankify. The weather was already starting to get bad because of the cyclone. When we got to the port the boat people wanted to take us, but we called the PC office and they said the cyclone was close and we would be really stupid to get on a boat. So we found a hotel in Ankify and waited. That part of the trip was really fun. We were the only people staying at the hotel and we were right on the beach. We got a little bit of swimming in before the weather got really bad, then we just got to hang out and watch the cyclone and drink beer and play cards. And the women who owns the hotel cooked us some really good meals. The next morning was distinctly un-Christmas like, but really nice anyway. The parents of one of the people in our group sent her a bunch of those Christmas popper things that you pull and little toys come out. They all had the British paper Christmas crowns in them, so we all got to wear those.

By that afternoon the weather had cleared up enough that the boats were running, so we hurried over to the port and got a speed boat. It was a tiny little boat barely big enough for the 8 of us and our luggage, and the ride, for me, was terrifying. Other people in the boat say they weren’t scared, but I don’t believe it. The waves were huge, and every time we went over one the boat jumped like 10 feet in the air. It was awful. I felt like crying. We got to Nosy Be in about an hour and our friend who lives there was at the port to greet us. She took us immediately to the coolest bar in Hellville (that’s the unfortunate name of the big town in Nosy be). The bar was great, and drinks were great. We were all really happy to be there. So we had some cocktails and then headed to our hotel which was on the beach about 10 km outside of town. We all stayed in little bungalows.

The next day, once we all got our act together, we headed over to the port and caught a boat to Nosy Komba, one of the smaller islands close to Nosy Be. Once there we brought bananas to Lemurs and they jumped on our backs and an orgy of photos and giddy yelps ensued. The day after that we were hanging out on the beach at our hotel and a tour guide approached us and asked if we wanted to take a trip to Nosy Tanikely which is another really small island close by that has some really good snorkeling. We decided to take him up on his offer and he took us straight from our beach over to the island. Actually, on the way we stopped in Ambatoloka which is the really trendy part of nosy be. It was nice, lots of cute, windy cobblestone streets, and little bars and restaurants and shops. Very quaint. Then we headed to Tanikely. The snorkeling was awesome. I love snorkeling, and the tour guide cooked us an amazing lunch which he kept saying was traditional Malagasy food, but tasted nothing like any Malagasy food I’ve ever eaten. It was a huge, grilled king fish, coconut rice, shish kabobs, crabs and pineapple. So good. But, like I said, definitely not traditional Malagasy. Coconuts can be found in Madagascar and rice is eaten at every meal, but coconut rice? Our guide was funny. He was a rasta and we called him Bob Marley. You could tell that he had worked with a lot of American tourists and you could tell that he knew how to tell tourists what they wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t true. All of us, having been in Madagascar for about 7 months now, and knowing a lot of Malagasy people, were just kind of annoyed by the guy. One of the girls in our group got a sea urchin needle stuck in her foot while we were snorkeling. She showed it to the guide and he said that he would have to pound it with a rock and then dump papaya juice on it. Considering everything else that he had said that day, we were a little hesitant to let him do that, thinking he was just creating some quaint sounding home remedy on the spot.. but we took his advice anyway, and he did, in fact, pound her foot with a rock and dump papaya juice on it.. and surprisingly it worked… so I guess Bob Marley wasn’t all bad after all.

So, lots of laying around on the beach later, we got back in a boat, headed back to Ankify and caught our brousse back to Tana… but not before the girl with the sea urchin in her foot came down with malaria. Yeah, that was a bummer… and she had to get med-evac’ed on a plane back to Tana. She’s all better now though. On a side note, I’ve been really surprised to see how often PC volunteers come down with Malaria here. We all are on the meds. Of course they’re not 100% effective, but I’ve known like 4 people already who have gotten it. It’s easily treatable, but it gets bad really fast, and if you don’t do something, you pretty much die.

Anyway, once back in Tana it was down to just 6 of us. The first couple days that we were there we just appreciated the fact that there was a tv and dvd player available to us and we just watched lots and lots of movies. We also needed a while to recover from the taxi brousse hellishness. For New years eve we went to a karaoke bar in Tana. Among other things, we were treated to a Malagasy man doing a perfect Louis Armstrong impression on “It’s a Wonderful World.” It was crazy. We also got to see the Tana fireworks out the window of the bar. Quite pleasant.

Anyway, those are the vacay highlights. Back at site all is well. I’m teaching and also working on my English clubs. I have one English club for the CEG students that I started before Thanksgiving, and then at the end of January I’m starting one for adults and one for lycee students. So, I’m staying busy. I’m also hoping to get work lined up for the summer. I want to teach English at Ranomafana national park, which is close to Fianarantsoa, with a couple of other volunteers… so we shall see how that works out.

As much as I’m loving it here, I’ve been missing home a lot lately. I think I’ve been gone just the right amount of time to start idealizing everything at home. Just like I was idealizing Peace Corps before it started. Anyway, sushi sounds really good right now as well as does skiing in Tahoe, going to Borders, seeing a play, going to a movie theatre, having an after work drink, eating a burrito, doing nothing except watching VH1 on a Sunday, looking at the internet whenever I want, and at a reasonable speed, walking in Golden Gate Park, talking on the phone, taking public transportation, buying clothes, going for a run in the city after work… you get the gist. Miss everyone!