Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Let's Get This Party Started!

Alright, Peace Corps blog! Time to start this baby up.

So, to catch up those of you who may not know what's going on in my life right now, I got my invitation to serve in Peace Corps on June 3, 2010. As you can probably guess from the title of this blog, I'll be going to Madagascar, famed home of lemurs and a myriad of other talking animals if the Disney movie is to be believed. We'll see about that...Anyway! I'll be working as a community health educator with a focus on women, mothers, children under 5, and teens 12-17. I truly could not be more thrilled with this assignment, and if I had been given the opportunity to choose where I could go and what I would be doing, this would probably be it. Sometimes I just get too lucky for my own good!

I'll be kicking off this adventure on July 19, when I'll be going to Washington D.C. for the two day event called "staging". During this time, Peace Corps will explain to me and everyone else in my Madagascar training class who they are, what they expect from us, and what we should expect from them and our experience. Then on July 20, we'll all board a plane and head to Madagascar! Once we get there, we'll start our three months of intensive training before getting dispersed to cities and villages around the country.

Well that's the super-duper condensed version of my next few months. It's been a long process to get to this point (I turned in my initial application LAST JULY), and I'm really excited to finally get started on this journey. I'll be updating this more before I leave, but I wanted to at least get an initial post out here so I could start giving the link to people. Also, I have an address where mail can be sent to me while I'm in training, which will be for 3 months starting July 22, 2010. Here it is:

Brianna Janz, PCT Peace Corps
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 12091
Poste Zoom Ankorondrano
101 Antananarivo
Madagascar

Mail takes a minimum of 2-3 weeks to get to me there, so response times may be sloooow. Peace Corps also advises people sending mail to write "Air Mail" or "Par Avion" on letters, and to number them so I can know if one didn't make it. I've heard that telephone/internet access can be slow, unreliable, non-existent, etc. so letters may be the best method of communication until I figure out if there's a better way.

Well that's the business for now, but I'll keep updating before I leave. I'm at the lake for a few days, so between watching World Cup matches and being out on the water, I'll be keeping pretty busy.

Au revoir for now!

3 comments:

  1. bonne chance! c'est le pays du plus vanille!

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  2. Hello Brianna!

    I'm glad you found my blog. I'm doing TEFL. My e-mail is joshtwisselman@gmail.com. Good luck with preparation (I have hardly begun to look at the Malagasy lessons, and it's not like any language I've ever seen before!). Have you found anyone else in our training class?

    -Josh

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  3. Keep up the great work. You will be making a difference while you are there. That was great that you sang the U.S. National Anthem for your host family.
    Grandpa Tom

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