Madagascar Classic Camping Antananarivo

I woke up early due to a loud car outside in the street making a lot of noise. Got up and shut the door to the balcony... We met Benjamin outside the hotel at 9am. He had a car and driver and guide (Luke) to take us on a tour of Antananarivo (Tana). This is a very big city with some ugly parts and some very pretty parts. We first drove up the hill to the queen's palace which was under ...

... in search of lemurs. The day was almost a bust until one of the guys on tour turned around near the end of the day and spotted a Verreaux Sifaka (known for the way it dances across the ground). We got back to the "bus" seconds before a huge lightning storm hit. We were impressed our driver got us out without getting stuck. We camped three nights in the same campground in Isalo. The second day's trek was a ...

... The other guy sits down and gets up a loser even faster than the first! They are laughing/crying at this point and we have a crowd as the first guy goes down in flames again. At this point, I decide that I actually feel bad as they have been extremely nice and fun to play with and talk to. I take the money I've won and give it back to them and then take the two families that have been on looking (presumably theirs) to the corner and ...

... the whole way to the hotel, working hard for her tip. My first look out of the window in the morning makes me conclude: Anta is a purple city. We look out over a square with purple trees, full of people hanging around. The people are black. Of course, the people are black, Marina, you are almost in Africa. The breakkie is very nice. It is great to have a choice of everything you can imagine, sitting on a cozy terrace. I am a woman with a mission: our ...

... not a gurantee for an instant friend, but it is nice having an American to talk to and laugh with over the cultural differences. Especially when we each have our own rooms to sleep in. There is also still a need for a volunteer at both middle schools, which is probably more important than my need for commiserating. I keep reminding myself to be thankful that at least there is somewhere for us to stay since there are ...

... dumb. I kept thinking "So this is why curiosity killed the cat." Finally, on Friday morning, more than 24 hours later, we could safely walk out of the house. The town was water logged and so many houses were pulled apart. We went back to our house, to salvage what we could and take pictures of the wreckage. There was still a pack of crackers and a beer intact, we enjoyed those as we walked through pieces of glass, broken ...

... traditional dress; men with a tri-cornered hat and a blanket wrapped over their shoulders and most likely a wooden stick for herding their zebu (cattle), the ladies have some kind of dress with a sarong on top, and their hair in two braids pinned up heidi style and a little basket for a hat and more than likely they are carrying something really heavy on their head; alot of sticks for the fire, dirt, leaves ...

Hello all, I am briefly stopping back in the capital before I go back to my site. We had a great training and I have a ba-zillion ideas that I want to do at site!!! I love teacher meetings because you feel both completely inspired and totally overwhelmed with all that you have to do. I will be back in a couple of weeks because I have to give an overview of the ed. program here in M-car to the Health ...

... the rainy season. My first class was two hours and I had plenty of time to go over the Classroom rules, which I wrote in Malagasy as well to make sure there was no confusion. Not that the kids were intimidated by it, they kept getting distracted by the crowd of students that would gather outside my classroom. I tried to shoo the kids away, but withing 10 minutes another crowd would be there. I also had to give some menacing glares to the boys who ...

... carrots, tomatoes, squash, onions, garlic, ginger and fruits- bananas, lithchis, oranges (.05 cents a pound!). The prices of things is incredible- I think rice is also 5 cents a pound and our hotel in our banking town is 5 dollars a night with hot shower and toilet! We work with a counterpart organization and are receiving grants through them to do various work in our community. We are still unsure of the exact projects that we will be doing. We are ...