Wah

I have to admit, I'm a little bit miserable right now, but I know that it'll pass. Surprisingly, I'm finding Villanova's pre-departure study abroad talk to be incredibly helpful at this point in time. During the talk, one of the advisors described the "culture shock 'W'" which basically is a W-shaped graph that represents that stages of culture shock. It seems that I have passed the "honeymoon stage" pretty quickly and have moved into the downward slope of adjusting to my new surroundings.

I just moved into my host family's home and it's lovely. They're wonderful and kind, but speak very quick and strangly accented French that is difficult for me to understand. My bedroom is a dining room by day and a bedroom by night, which isn't a problem, but means I will have to always have my things in order. The downward part of this "W" comes from the fact that I'm currently sick, staying in a house with a hardly flushing toilet and didn't have access to water that was safe for me to drink until several minutes ago. Of course this water is scalding hot because it was just boiled, but it is a slight improvement in my situation. I'm already breaking into my stash of Ciproflaxin and health-wise, feeling generally miserable. I'm suspicious of everything I eat, because it could be the culprit of future stomach bouts, but at the same time, I don't have much choice because the entire host family watches my every move during dinner and continuously offers me food. Tonight they seemed utterly shocked that I didn't go for second helpings, but none of them did either... so it's a strange standard to be held to. Another current issue in my Madagascar life is how I'm getting to school in the morning. My home stay house is one of the furthest from the school, which means that I have to ride the bus into town. Here's a few things that I've learned about the bus system in my time here:

                1. The bus begins to move before you have fully entered it

                2. You enter the bus from the rear door

                3. Thieves will take my valuables when I ride the bus, or so says my home stay family

                4. Pretty much everyone here speaks Malagasy over French if they have the choice. I do not speak Malagasy. This is a problem.

                5. I have no idea which bus to get on. When I ask my home stay family this question, they will explain it to me in quick French and I will still not know which bus to ride.

                6. I have to begin my commute at 6:30 AM... it takes an hour and thirty minutes to get               there.

(interjection - my drinking water is literally steaming, this house is about 70 degrees, and ice cubes are a no-no. This sucks.)

Another interjection... we just lost power. 10 seconds ago. I am now in an unfamiliar house, without power and a bug just flew into my head. Great. This is the second time tonight that we've lost power because there's a wicked storm over Tana that involves pelting rain, brilliant lighting and minimal thunder. We ate dinner by candle light and somewhere in the middle of dinner the power came back on. Apparently this is normal as my host-sister said "This is Madagascar..." so I guess I'll get used to it. Luckily I have my handy flashlight (thanks dad!).

                Back to the buses, they're terrifying and tomorrow's going to be quite the experience.

On an optimistic note, the structure of this program has been very cool so far. SIT has the philosophy that you should learn things through experience (experiential learning) so a lot of our learning about Madagascar and Malagasy culture has been hands on. During the first week we went to two markets in what SIT calls "Drop offs," In a drop off, you are split into groups and given a task to complete in the new environment. In order to practice our newly learned Malagasy words of "Manaohna" (hello), "Ochine ty" (How much does it cost), "Tsy mety" (not OK) and some others and to learn how to use Malagasy money, which is completely different from the dollar, we went to a market and were instructed to buy a "gouter" or snack. The experience was difficult and overwhelming, but eventually rewarding. It was difficult to determine the relative cost of items, especially because the prices could be given in "Ariary" (Madagascar currency) or "Francs" (a remnant of colonialism) and they could be overcharging us because we're vahsa. But, I eventually bought some lemon wafers, called "les biscuits citron" here for 600 Ariary.

                To give you an idea of the exchange rate here, you can think of 2000 Ariary as $1, but relative to the Malagasy, 200 Ariary is thought of as a dollar, or basic unit of currency. So yeah, everything's incredibly cheap for us.

                Today we had a drop-off at a Chinese restaurant and had to find our way back to the classroom, which was about a 15 minute walk through cobblestone-esque streets that are wide enough for one and a half cars and crawling with pedestrians. It will be a miracle if no one on this trip gets hit by a car. You pretty much just weave in and out of traffic to get around here because the sidewalks are blocked my parked cars, holes and cell phone credit vendors.

                Coming up this week, we have a drop off near a Taxi circle and we have to take a cab somewhere; that should also be interesting.

I feel better at the end of this spiel than I did at the beginning. It's good to vent. I think things might get a little worse before they get better, but it's all in the process of adjusting. Fortunately, there is a member of my home stay family, he doesn't live here but visits, who speaks pretty proficient English and is eager to improve his speaking skills. Hopefully, I'll be able to turn to him for clarification and overall assistance. Other than that, the family is great. I just walked into the hallway to discover my host-dad without any pants on just wandering around in a tee shirt and my host-mom popped out of her room in a skimpy nightgown. I guess that's OK... at least they wont judge me for wearing shorts to sleep since anything above the knee during the day is slightly taboo in this culture. I'm going to go enjoy my steaming hot water and Cipro. What a night. Bon soir.