Under the Milky Way

January 18 Update on our current “evacuation” situation— So, we have been moved to a lodge in Blantyre which is much better for us because not only is it a nicer place, but we are also able to go into the city during the day to keep us entertained. Peace Corps obviously pays for our lodging and also for breakfast/dinner at our lodge. Thankfully they just pre-reimbursed us for lunch, so each day we get to venture out into the real world for one meal. The only major issue is the lack of water in most of Blantyre! So yeah, we have toilets and showers now, but nothing works! We can’t even wash our clothes which are dirty at this point since we didn’t bring enough to be out of site for this long! The electricity is also in and out, but it’s not been too big of a problem for us since almost all of us are used to living without it anyway. We have our battery packs, and we know how to conserve our laptop and phone batteries. We have definitely been watching lots of movies though! I kn...

It’s been a whirlwind of a week. A giant tropical storm slammed the southern region of Malawi a few days ago with multiple feet of rainfall in 2-3 days. Considering homes and buildings are made of sandy mud bricks around here, lots of rain can weaken these walls and cause walls and entire structures to collapse. Thankfully I was not in my village when the storm hit (I was staying with a friend who knew the storm was on its way), so I was safe. I watched the storm bend palm trees and flop big branches from the safely of a large front porch that overlooked the tea estates. The rain came in waves usually of ridiculously hard rapping on the roof to light drizzling, and we had phases of thunder and lightning. One thing was for sure though—it didn’t stop raining for three days straight. The only discomfort I experienced though was temperamental electricity (which didn’t bother me since I’m used to not having it anyway). Besides that, I spent four days working on lesson plans for programs in...

Hello again! I've been on a few month hiatus from posting on my blog; sorry y'all! There's just been too much happening and not enough electricity to keep my laptop charged ;) Where to begin? I visited South Africa with two of my best friends in November, and we had a blast! Some of the things we did: explored Cape Town, took a 16 hour bus, cage dived with sharks, a wine tour, bungee jumped, rode ostriches, saw penguins at Boulder Beach, took surfing lessons, I got a tattoo, drove along the garden route, ate sushi and other great seafood, played frisbee on the beach, stayed in cool hostels, drove the garden route, went paragliding, walked a cheetah, enjoyed LOTS of south african wine, hiked beautiful mountains at sunset, and overall just experienced so many adventures in 9 days. I began typing up a more specific blog post about the things that we did, but I never finished it of course...maybe someday. After the trip, Abby came back to Malawi and spent 3 weeks here! We a...