Happy 1 year anniversary of arriving in Malawi! And welcome to Malawi for the new folks!

That's right.  One year in Malawi.  And that means what?  Only 13.5 months to go!!!  Ok... I'm not really counting down the months... or days... but its kind of nice to realize that in another year I'll be back home annoying family and friends for the first time in 2 years!

Currently still on Med hold till Wednesday.  Advantages: good medical care, Evelyn's hug, free internet, hanging out with people I never see!  Disadvantages: missing out on meetings back at site, Lilongwe's expensive... and there are so many tempting places to eat, no personal space.

Particularly of concern is that this week I was demonstrating how to construct fuel efficient mud stoves for two of my groups.  Now I'm not going to be able to do this till next week... maybe... if I have time.  Argh.  I miss site so much!  But, my skin rash thingy, while no longer septic, is spreading.  So, leaving now is not a good plan.  Currently sporting a blue circle around it to see if the prednasone helps or if it gets worse.  Max will take a look tomorrow...  I absolutely love the med staff here.  They are amazing and really look out for us...

Yesterday, to break up the monotony of just working at my computer for 8 hours, went with a bunch of volunteers to see the arrival of the new environment and health trainees!  It was awesome.  We have 45 new volunteers total.  We've been following their pre-arrival funness on Facebook and I can't wait to actually chat with everyone in a few weeks (like 2).  A good sign: plane arrived on time, and no luggage was lost!  Current volunteers were on best behavior unlike when I arrived, so overall a success I think.  We did the introductions and pictures and off they went to Dedza to hopefully get a good night's sleep!

So... going to spend the next few days working on a Food Security Taskforce assignment with Jackie and then getting started on Tilipo updates and revisions with Chloe.  At least I won't be bored!  If any folks want to Skype, I'll be able to if the internet here cooperates.  FB message me or email me to let me know.

Tilipo....

The thing I hate about Lilongwe is that its ridiculously stressful to get here, and when I do arrive, I feel like all I do is run around getting even more stressed out and yet not actually getting anything done.  At all.  Arrived Wednesday night after getting a ridiculously wonderful hitch a little north of Blantyre.  I'm staying at Mufasa's and the last few days have been training for Volunteers Supporting Volunteers.  Its been pretty interesting for the most part and people in VSV have some cool ideas for things the group can do here to welcome new volunteers to their regions and stuff. I'm really excited anyways to be a part of the group.

Even more fun is I have a skin infection on my foot!  Its pretty awesome... And by that I mean gross...  :)  Apparently it was infected so now I'm on med hold until Monday in case it takes a turn for the worse!  Right now it seems to be getting less infected, but the rashy part seems to be spreading... And its ITCHY.  Ridiculously so.  And those of you who know me realize that itchy is a huge problem... Not scratching is a constant struggle.

Work is busy now.  I should be doing stuff for VSV, like edits for the volunteer directory thing, or getting stuff written up for the food security task force thingy I'm on (did actually do some of that), but the lure of free internet is so much easier to accept.  So instead, I've been spending my afternoon on facebook, looking up graduate programs (hey... only 14 months left), and random other things.  Oh well.. I'll be back to business soon enough.  Like tomorrow.