yes, i paint my nails in peace corps.

I held my first workshops in the village! They were for 2 hours (but usually ended up being 3) from 10am - noon, Monday - Friday. They were a bit of a mess, but not everything is a raging success in PC, right? The workshops were for the kids since they are on school break now. We talked about water, trash and the mangroves. Those may seem like random topics to put together, but those are all the projects for the adults that are happening here. So I wanted to include the kids.

I'm not sure how effective they were, but we had fun. I did have about 10 kids over to my house every night talking about these issues and preparing flipcharts for the next day, though. That was a lot of fun--making up activities, and one of the girls had some incredible ideas like making a drama about pollution in the river.

Each morning we sang a new song to get us pumped and excited. We learned lots of mekes and american action songs like the hokey pokey and this song I learned in PC called "making melody in my heart". Let's just say the kids love making melody. They make it all day long. I no longer have melody in my heart for this song.

But it's a fun one. You sing Making Melody in my Heart (x3)/Melody in my Heart. Then you put your thumbs up and have your arms straight out. Then sing again. Eventually you end up with your thumbs up, elbows out, feet apart, knees together, chin up and tongue out. You look and sound ridiculous! Just the kind of thing kids dig.

Speaking of digging, the best part of the week was Friday. We trudged through the mangroves to find seedlings to plant in the nursery. We got dirty. One of the little boys tripped and fell face first in the mud! He looked like he just had a $400 mud bath. Lucky him, it was free.

It was a pretty stressful week, but it was fun. I'm definitely closer to all the kids and even the other members of the village. It's taken me awhile (4 months or so...) but I'm warming up. And there are some people here that I would call friends. I've also got some more ideas like starting a reading club to help the kids learn English. English is a compulsory subject in school and school is taught mostly in English. Many kids don't learn the language as quickly and therefore do poorly in school--one of the major reasons for dropouts. I also want to start a girl's night where all the girls come over and just chat about life and boys and paint our nails and do crafts. But we would also talk about puberty and HIV/AIDS and sex and how to get a job and all the tough stuff that girls should be talking about but aren't.

My PCV friend, Sarah aka Swaz is coming to visit for a couple days and I'm totally stoked. She's one of my fave volunteers and my village is excited to host her too. They've already got the grog bowl out! Once she leaves, Mike will be here for 16 dayz! I can't believe it. It's been 7 months since I've seen (excluding skype) any of my loved ones. I also sort of need a vacation. I love my village, but it'll be good to have some time away.

P.S. I'll try to post pictures soon. These verbose blogs are getting on my nerves.