Megan Key, PCV (Officially)

Hello!

First, the browser on my phone has stopped working so sorry for the lack of updates, but my phone has been less than cooperative these past few weeks. I am hoping to get that fixed tomorrow. But I figured out how to use my phone’s internet on my computer through Bluetooth, so that should make up for it. Much more expensive, but oh well.

Second, I am now officially a Peace Corps volunteer!! : ) We had our Swearing-In ceremony yesterday in Pigg’s Peak. It was very fun, most of us dressed in the traditional Swazi attire and the Ambassador to the United States and the Prime Minister himself came to our ceremony. We had to take an oath, raising our right hand and everything, swearing to protect and defend the constitution of the United States so help us God. Um, okay. Ha ha. We even got an article written about us in both the Swazi Times and the Swazi Observer, with pictures too! I bought the Observer today and I hope to send it home so everyone can see it and see the type of news that the great nation of Swaziland chooses to report on…

We are now in Mbabane for the next few days before heading to our permanent sites on Thursday! Today we just walked around the city and had lunch at an Applebee’s type restaurant with ice cream dessert at KFC and coffee at a café that served REAL coffee! One of the best mochas I’ve had in a long time. Then tomorrow we are walking around some more, heading to the Peace Corps office, the post office, and grocery store. I am going to try to go to an Internet Café tomorrow and maybe upload some pictures, but don’t get your hopes up because the way the internet works here, it probably won’t work.

That’s all I can think of for now, sorry it’s a short update but that’s all I’ve got. ; ) Hope everything is great at home! Miss you all and love you!

Love, Megan

PCTs Day Off

Hey friends! Hope everyone had a good weekend... We had our first day off in a few weeks today and it was so nice! I slept over at stephs hut next door with shauna and we had a nice gulash dinner. It was nice to be around other people after six and not in my hut eating alone! :) then, although it was our day off, we were all up by six. Oh well. We did fry up some fat cakes then and rolled them in cinnamon sugar. Oh my goodness. I didnt think fat cakes could get better... But they did!! Then at eight, eric and i headed to the hotel near us and walked down to the falls and spent the morning waking around and taking im the beautiful forest and falls. We then headed to the craft centre next door and had some delicious chicken nuggets and french fries. Then, after a stop at the store for groceries and a scrumptous doughnut, we went and made hamburgers, fries and guac at his hut. We shared half a burger with his gogo and she loved it! She also gave me all the credit for it as well as a head of lettuce from the garden! Sorry Eric. It was honestly one of the best food days ive ever had! After two months of maize, maize and more maize, chicken nuggets and a hamburger were heavenly. We only have language class in the morning tomorrow, so we are making chicken pot pies tomorrow and also bought things for s'mores so im pretty excited for that. The s'mores might be interesting because there are no graham crackers here so we are using Tennis biscuits (biscuits or emabiscuit in siswati = cookies) and the best chocolate we could find was mint chocolate (and by mint they mean there are flakes of peppermint candy within the chocolate bar and the marshmellows we found are pink. So this should be interesting. Weve also become emabiscuit connisuers and have found new flavors like cherry fizz, in a pick 'n pay near you! :) But the day off is over and i have language and technical homework to do tonight... I am excited for this week because we are learning about the life skills and hiv education classes to teach in the schools which i am very interested in doing, as well as epidemiology on thursday which i am also very interested in. Then this weekend we have host family appreciation party because two weeks from today is swearing in! In two weeks i will officially be a peace corps volunteer! Hopefully. I have to pass my final language exam first. But it seems like it is going to rain, meaning my electricity is probably going to go out soon. Meaning i should do my assignments while i still have light! Miss you all and hope youre doing well. Shoot of an fbook message if you get bored. Thats probably the best way to get a hold of me now. That and twitter. My email and viewing my blog and its comments are too expensive on my phone. But fbook, twitter, 4square and posting a blog entry have mobile views so it is less expensive. Keep of posted on life back home!! Love, Megan

Blogging from my hut. Pretty sweet.

I just wrote a pretty decent sized update on my phone with t9 on my abc keyboard and then proceeded to accidentally hit the close browser button. Needless to say i was a bit upset because this was not the first time it had happened... In the last half hour. Anyway, i finally discovered blogger has a mobile site so it wont be too expensive to open this browser on my phone and update. Just a bit of a pain cuz itll be like texting. So the updates will be shorter but hopefully more frequent now! But it is 815 now and past my bedtime so this will be all for this one. I have a longer update on my computer if we ever get power back and i figure out how to link my computer to my phones internet. I almost have it figured out so hopefully that will be soon. Hope all is well at home! Miss you all! Megan.