It's Official!
I have been promoted from Peace Corps Trainee to Peace Corps Volunteer. We started with a groups of 21 people in Zambia and we graduated with 18. We had a nationally (in Zambia) televised swear-in ceremony. It was a lovely event. I have moved from Kitwe and am now in Choma buying things I need for my house in the village. Iwill be moving in sometime during the middle of this week. I am very excited and ready to go.
Here's a picture of me signing two years of my life away at swear in.
I think the challenge might be to be totally immersed in a new culture. For the last 60 days or so, I've been in Zambia among Americans, seeing American everyday in training. So although I experienced the cross-cultural things seeing Zambians everyday as well I always had people to speak English to and talk about my feelings. Now I will move into a village where very few people speak English and there are NO Americans. In some ways it's exciting in other ways it's a bit scary, this might be the real culture shock. I can speak a bit of Tonga but I can't express all my feelings in the local language so I'll probably be writing a lotmore until I become fluent (if I become fluent). I'll make sure and take pictures and work on uploading the many that I have sitting in my camera onto the computer. It's quite the challenging task because sometimes the connections are slow so uploading pictures are often next to impossible.
Anyway, please have me in your prayers as I begin Community Entryand become acclimated to my new home and environment.
Hugs,
Natalie
p.s. Maybe I exaggerated with ants in the thousands, it could havebeen hundreds maybe only one or two thousand. I've received more responses than usual to the Impashi story so I just want to let youknow, not to worry. It's just a thing that happens on occassion andthe only way you can be killed is if you are in a druken stupor and don't have the coordination to get up and out of the ants way. That being said hakuna matata (no worries).
Here's a picture of me signing two years of my life away at swear in.
I think the challenge might be to be totally immersed in a new culture. For the last 60 days or so, I've been in Zambia among Americans, seeing American everyday in training. So although I experienced the cross-cultural things seeing Zambians everyday as well I always had people to speak English to and talk about my feelings. Now I will move into a village where very few people speak English and there are NO Americans. In some ways it's exciting in other ways it's a bit scary, this might be the real culture shock. I can speak a bit of Tonga but I can't express all my feelings in the local language so I'll probably be writing a lotmore until I become fluent (if I become fluent). I'll make sure and take pictures and work on uploading the many that I have sitting in my camera onto the computer. It's quite the challenging task because sometimes the connections are slow so uploading pictures are often next to impossible.
Anyway, please have me in your prayers as I begin Community Entryand become acclimated to my new home and environment.
Hugs,
Natalie
p.s. Maybe I exaggerated with ants in the thousands, it could havebeen hundreds maybe only one or two thousand. I've received more responses than usual to the Impashi story so I just want to let youknow, not to worry. It's just a thing that happens on occassion andthe only way you can be killed is if you are in a druken stupor and don't have the coordination to get up and out of the ants way. That being said hakuna matata (no worries).
posted by Natalie | 11:18 PM
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