Something New!

Hello Everyone. Hope I haven't lost your attention completely as I have failed to write a decent entry in a long time. This past two and a half weeks I have been "on holiday" as they say here a.k.a. "vacation." I spent most of my time in Lilongwe and was able to visit the sites of two of my fellow volunteers. The first, Jeannine, http://artisticvent.blogspot.com (her blogspot that is much better than mine!) an incredibly creative, talented, engineer who dazzled me with her roped contraptions, storage ideas, and homemade drop ceiling. People do drop ceilings to trap heat and I am thinking of copying the idea. One of the biggest draws to visiting other people's sites for me is that you get to see what people do with their homes and how they use their available resources to live as comfortably as possible. Jeannine had also done some painting as her original pale blue walls reminded her of a hospital room. She also painted her water filter "Starry Night" themed and I would have never thought to paint it nor be able to pull it off! I have to mention that to get to her house I had to ride a bike taxi. These are Malawian bikes (strong BUT no bells or whistles) with a padded seat added on the back. Jeannine's site was very mountainous and thus, I had to unsaddle and resaddle 3 different times because the taxi man couldn't take the incline. Everytime I got off I deducted money off his price (jokingly). I have seen other people stay on the bike while the bike taxi person pushes them up the hill...what service. The ride was about an hour as she is 6miles off the main road. Soon after I arrived Jeannine and I had a nice dinner: potato curry with couscous; not quite starving here in Malawi. We stayed up chatting for a bit and she offered me her bed to sleep in! Jeannine brought a duvet cover and I felt as I was a guest of the Comfort Inn! The next morning I went to watch her teach and was introduced by her Headmaster (principal) as his "second daughter," of course after Jeannine. She teaches Math and I brushed up on the 5 ways to solve quadratic equations; she was great! The next morning I was able to get a ride in the back of a truck all the way into town where I needed to be for next to nothing!