Where the Streets Have No Name

Today is judgment day and thus the real training and experience will begin. We will be told which village we will each be moving to for training (six to eight PVCTs per village), have a few hours to pack up our stuff, and will move out into true Africa to begin our culture and language immersion. Living at the training compound has been nice, and it seems as though that right when we've finally begun to get adjusted they change everything on us again. But that's how it works; and that's the point. I'll be out of contact with everyone for most of the time from now on, with the occasional blog post every few weeks signifying that I've returned to Tubaniso for a night or two for sector training and whatnot.

While living with our family we take language class in our village for seven hours a day, six days a week. These families will not speak any English, or possibly any french, and thus we will be forced to learn our Bambara very quickly and on the fly. It should be the best and hardest language training any of us have ever done. Awesome.

When we return every few weeks to Tubaniso for a night or two we only come with one other sector of our stage class, meaning some people we won't be seeing until our final week of testing when we all leave our host families at the same time. While it is awesome that the true experience is finally getting ready to begin, it is a bit bumming that some of these people that have quickly become my friends will now be gone as well. Living here these past few days has been like college all over again, except everyone is more willing to be friendly and put things such as popularity aside. We've all chosen to make such great changes in every aspect of our lives, and it has truly unified all of us into one big family. Hopefully the other PCVTs and I that are in our village together will bond even closer over the next two months, and I look forward to seeing how we will have all grown by the end of our training experience.

That is all for now, friends. The real experience and challenge begins today, you'll be updated in a few weeks when I return to more established and developed surroundings. Be safe.