*Oh and on a side note: Tonga Soa means "welcome" in Malagasy :-)
January 25th, 2012
Currently there is no Wi-Fi
available on my loooong flight to Johannesburg so I am writing this is a word
doc and will update it to my blog as soon as I find Wi-Fi. So I am about 11
hours into my 15-hour flight to Johannesburg and boy am I ready to be off of
this plane. Luckily I had some Ambien on hand of which completely knocked me
out. Haha only after I made a slight fool of myself to my neighbor in my high
Ambien state telling her that “I couldn’t figure out how to open the window,
but look at the material it’s made out of- isn’t it fascinating?” Luckily, she
wasn’t a complete stranger, turns out she is good friends with one of my really
good friends from home Kelsey, and they both go to UNH. Sooo weird- what a
small world!
And so my
adventures begin. It started off with my alarm going off at 3:30 this morning
telling me to get a move on to the Burlington Airport. After a long and tearful
goodbye to Mike I was on my way. I hate saying goodbyes though; they are so
hard. Especially to your best best friend who is basically the most important
person in my life right now. We keep telling each other that it will only be “a
few weeks” in the hopes that it will go by quicker so we can see each other
again. Anyways, I love him and I miss him but enough about that- It’s making me
sad
Onto more
exciting news- I land in South Africa in less than four hours! Yayyy! (but by
the time you read this I will have already landed but we can just pretend) I
have never been to South Africa before- I wish I had more time to explore but
we’ve got an itinerary to follow! Before boarding this flight I had the
pleasure of meeting quite a few people from my program- they all seem really
cool and nice and I can’t wait to start traveling with them! Oh and more good
news: I somehow managed to get first class on my next flight- it was like that
when I booked the ticket and was the same price as the non-business class ones.
So I will be riding in style to Atnananarivo!!! Well that’s all I have to say
for now- will update when I have internet and will also update when I have
things to say about being in MADAGASCAR!
View of the sunrise over the Hudson on my way to JFK
After what seemed like an eternity, we finally landed in Johannesburg. The layover was not super long so by the time we found it to our terminal, it was time to hop on the next flight. Now let me tell you something about the next flight- for whatever reason, when I booked it through tripadvisor it automatically put me in business class for this one! And it didn’t even cost more! I was so catered too it was wonderful.
Antananarivo airport- I have been to quite a few small, islandy airports but this by far was the smallest.
Loading up the van to go to our hotel!
Upon
arrival in Madagascar, we were greeted by the program director, Roland along
with some of the Malagasy coordinators for our program. We then loaded our
luggage on top of a van, and were off to a town a little north of the capital,
Antananarivo.
We stayed
in a beautiful, secluded hotel in the town. (see above pic) We had a bit of an orientation debriefing upon arrival at the hotel,
then we went for a walk. Let me tell you, I have never seen anything more
beautiful- these pictures really do not do it justice. The Antananarivo or
“Tana” region of Madagascar is in the central highlands, with a landscape of
mountains and valleys. It is also their summer right now- and rainy season so;
the vegetation is very beautiful and green.
After the walk was dinner! My first
Malagasy meal! It was green beans and sausage with rice (in Madagascar
everything is served with rice) and some weird vegetable or fruit that kind of
resembled a honeydew melon. Everything was delicious! (much better than the
food served in Kenya!) Oh and let me tell you… I have no spice tolerance to
begin with but I had the spiciest thing I had ever tasted!!! I can’t remember what it what called in
Malagasy but it was this green saucey thing with hot peppers- my mouth was
burning for like an hour afterwards. My goal for the end of the program is to
be able to eat it without cringing. We’ll see if that ewill happen. We also had
fresh pineapple for desert- which was obviously delicious as well… as you can
imagine it would be. That night the students from my program and I (there are
14 of us) just hung out and played bananagrams- at about 9:00 we were all ready
to crash.
A Malagasy man that wanted me to take his picture during one of our walks
One of the many beautiful views from our walks- These pictures will never do it justice- I have some other landscape photos that I will upload later today and the moral is: I really wish I had panoramic capabilities because Madagascar is a wonderfully beautiful country!
Another view from the walk- I really love taking pictures of roads... Is that weird? Its basically the reason why I named my blog "The road less traveled"
I love taking picture of children- they love it so much because many have never seen their own photo before. You take the picture and then show them the photo on the digital camera and you can really see the joy that it brings them :-) But this was part of....
Friday January 27, 2012
My first
full day in Madagascar!!!! Breakfast was served at 7:00am, a traditional French
breakfast of baguette and jam. Let me tell you about the coffee and tea though-
yummmm! Probably some of the best coffee and tea I have ever had! It was pretty
incredible. After breakfast brought more walks, bonding and
orientation/housekeeping stuff from our program director.
After
lunch, which was beans, veggies, rice and chicken a traditional Malagasy dance
group came to the hotel to perform for us. It was pretty incredible. I have
really never seen anything like it.
After that
we went on another walk, hung out a bit and had dinner. Dinner for the night
was pasta (not traditional Malagasy), rice, a salad of tomatoes, cheese and
other veggies and some meat. So far the food has been pretty good, not a ton of
flavor, but I guess I just need to adapt to the spicy stuff for that. I also
had some Malagasy wine which was interesting- it was pretty good for a $2.50
glass on wine (can you believe how cheap?!). The night’s events involved
rousing games of hearts, bananagrams, and then crashing.
Hira-Gasy dancers- I wish I could have figured out the video recording on my camera because I would have loved to share the beautiful music and dancing with you. It was so unique!
A Bientôt!!!!
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