And My Site Is...

Hello all!

It's been a minute and so much has happened in the last two weeks! I apologize for keeping my fans waiting. I know you all wake up every day and the first thing you think of is, "Did Alexandra publish a new blog post yet? I miss her so much and she is my favorite person ever and I must hear what she is doing right now." Well wait no longer - here we go ;)

I received my site placement! Starting in December, I will be living in the Butha-Buthe district of Lesotho (on the north side of the country) in a rural village in the mountains. The day after we received site placements, all of us education volunteers headed to the city of TY for a workshop conference to meet our supervisors and host families. We stayed in a hotel which was lovely to have plumbing for a weekend :). My supervisor is the principal of the school I'll be teaching at and I just loved her! My host family is pretty much just my host sister who is around thirty, is so kind, and speaks some English which is lucky for me because the rest of my community simply does not. Sesotho fluency here I come (fingers-crossed).

my backyard!

After the weekend, all of us volunteers headed to our sites for the week. I love my site. It is beautiful, tucked into the mountains, and full of kind people. Over the site visit, I went to school each day and did class observations, taught a few lessons, and spent time with my co-teachers and my family. It was fun to see where I'll be for the next two years but hard to be the only American/English speaker in an hour radius. I got a killer welcome ceremony by the school - the kids all prepared songs and dances to show me and a few even made speeches. I almost cried it was so sweet and I felt so welcomed. The kids are awesome and I can not wait to work in this school and have the honor of being their teacher!

My site:

- Nestled in the mountains means so many exploring opportunities! Yay! It also means I need to be careful of initiation schools which run until January so no exploring until those are done (Mom, don't google this.)

- The river right next to my site means easier laundry doing and potential swimming spots and just a fun place to hang!

- 200 students (At least 20 of which walk home with me every day. If you were in Lesotho last week and saw a white girl and a horde of Basotho students playing follow the leader down the road, that was me.)

- 8 teachers (Primary school is Kindergarten through 7th grade! There is a teacher for each grade, but not enough classrooms, so 1st and 2nd grade share a classroom and teacher)

- New rondavel! It's cute. It's big. It has yellow walls. There are peach trees in the back and I love it. My rondavel is next to my host sister's home and across the street from a market stand. I have about a 10 minute walk to school each day.

- My camp town (the bigger town in each district) is the town of Butha-Buthe. It has a decently big grocery store, a KFC (which sadly is closed because of bird flu but as soon as it opens, you know where I'll be), clothing stores, lots of produce and market stands, and a whole bunch of other things! Every district in Lesotho (there are 10!) has a Volunteer Resource Center which in my case is an office space in a hotel with electricity, wifi, and other resources and tools for volunteers to use.

Transport:

Traveling back from site was a mix of solo public transportation and meeting up with friends to travel back to our training village. These taxis are wild. For one thing, they don't leave anywhere until they are packed full - and by that I mean a sprinter van that holds 15 people needs at least 18 plus two chickens to leave anywhere. And you think I'm exaggerating. This was a whole feat and deserves its own blog post, so more to come on transportation in Lesotho later!

Up Next...

I'm back at my training village and will be here completing PST (Pre-Service Training). I'm done the second week of December and then will be sworn in. All of us volunteers are celebrating Thanksgiving together next week which will be sweet and will no doubt make me miss home just a bit. I continue to have random experiences like chasing a frog out of my hut and having an embarrasing level of investment in a Sesotho soap opera I've been watching with my host fam each week. There is so much information and stories I want to share, so more posts to come soon!

DISCLAIMER: My thoughts/opinions/and content of this blog are my own and does not reflect the views of the Peace Corps or U.S. Government.