Moving In

Hi Everyone!
We spent the last week trying to get settled into our new house. I wish I was able to post pictures of it, but we've had a hard time uploading them, so let me describe it. We are about 30km from Salima, our closest city. Although we are only 2km off of a paved road that runs North-South on the lake shore, we are in a rural area. Our school campus is actually on a CCAP Mission (Central Church of African Presbyterian). As teachers hold a higher status in the community, we are in a teacher's house which means it is brick with a tin roof. Other villagers around the campus live in mud huts with straw roofs. The irony is that the brick houses with tin roofs actually work like ovens which is not exactly what we are looking for when we are living in extreme heat and humidity. Oh well, it will only make us appreciate MN winters more I suppose. Anyway, our house has 4 rooms- two that are kind of like bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. Our furniture is minimal, but more than some other volunteers. We have a bed (actually two twins pushed together to make a king!), two tables and 4 chairs. A lot of stuff is on the floor right now. Our backyard has a brick fence around it. Enclosed in the fence are our chim (pit latrine), bafa (place to bath) and real kitchen (for fires). We also planted a garden in the back with some seeds that Amber gave us- sweet corn, green beans, carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, watermelon and a Malawian variety of Maize. We also hired someone to start building a bin for our compost.
Our other news is that we got a kitten. He is orange and white and we named him Moto, which means "fire" in Chichewa. Hopefully he will help with keeping away unwanted pests. By the way, some of the wildlife that we share our home with include: mice, bats, lizards, spiders and scorpions. I was actually bit by a little scorpion that crawled into our mosquito net the other night!
We also hired just hired a girl to carry water for us. We don't have running water, so we need to get it from the borehole which is about 100 meters from our house. Drawing water and carrying it on my head is probably my least favorite job in Malawi. Brian doesn't really like it much either, but more than me. Typically carrying water is considered women's work so it looked weird when Brian was carrying it this last week. All of the kids were laughing and chanting "Brian is carrying water!" in Chichewa. Although this may be good for the villagers to see gender equality, it actually reflects poorly on me because "I'm not taking care of my husband." The solution is to hire someone. Plus it will help her pay her school fees. We only hired her to carry water, but so far she has insisted on mopping our entire house and sweeping our entire yard (Malawians sweep dirt yards all the time).
As we've had nothing but time on our hands we have been able to cook some interesting meals. We cook on a paraffin stove. At first we made some guacamole and rice because we had avocados from Lilongwe. Then we tried some Italian pasta. We've had pancakes, eggs, fish (fresh from the lake), bean, popcorn, and curry. We'll probably be eating eggs or beans and rice most of the time though. Bananas and mangoes are readily available as well.
Well, that is about it for now.
We love and miss everybody! Please leave comments, emails, letters, etc...

PCT to PCV

Well, we did it! We were officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers this morning. A year and half after we started the Peace Corps process, we are finally able to call ourselves Peace Corps Volunteers. The ceremony took place at the ambassador's house and was followed by lots of fried foods, beverages and a chocolate cake with the Peace Corps logo on it.
Now we have a quick break before we are off to shopping for our site. We need to buy all of our buckets and basins (to store water in), pots and pans, dishes, etc... This evening we will enjoy another nice dinner at our country director's house.
We will be headed off to our site tomorrow morning with a vehicle full of our stuff and another friend, Danny, who will be somewhat close to us. Just imagine a jeep with 3 mattresses, 3 bikes, all the luggage we came with, large quantities of food and us! I'll try to take a picture. Speaking of pictures, sorry for the delay. It takes forever to upload them. Our profile picture is of us on top of a mountain near the college we stayed at in Dedza. There are also a couple more on Facebook if you have an account.
We are sad to say good-bye to all of our new Peace Corps friends, but anxious to get to our site and be settled in. We have been living out of suitcases since we moved out of our house in September. I have to admit that I am a little bit nervous for the heat though. I believe it has started raining in Salima since we went for our visit so that should at least provide some temporary relief.
Also, we have made our Christmas plans. We are going north to our friend, Angela's, in Nkhotakota. There are 10 or so of us who will be there. It should be fun as she is really close to the lake and a pottery place I want to check out. After Christmas we will go further north to Nkata Bay and possibly to Mzuzu (3rd largest city) for New Year's. Technically we are not supposed to leave our sites except for a monthly restock visit for the first 3 months. Peace Corps stresses this so that volunteers integrated themselves into their communities. However, since Christmas and New Year's falls in our first three months they make an exception.
Well, that is about all! Keep the news coming. We love to hear from everyone at home.