2011/01/02 tratra ny taona
I have been away from site for around a month now which has been a nice change but I’m ready to unpack my suitcase and be a loner again. I started out December at my in service training, where I think the overall purpose was to make sure we haven’t gone insane, cleverly disguised by a number of different seminars. So I got to spend some time in Tana and go to culturally significant places like the American Cookie Shop to get tuna melts. For Christmas, Hilary, Brianna and I rode one of the only functioning (barely) train to Manakara on the east coast. The train goes from Fianar to Manakara. While we were in Fianar waiting for the day to ride the train (it goes down every other day and comes back on the other days, and doesn’t run on Monday…) we met a South African tourist who said he would pray for us once he learned we would be here another 21 months or so. We also met a German couple that ended up joining up with us and riding the train with us and hanging out for Christmas. 
So we spent most of our time at the beach, eating shrimp and drinking coconuts with rum. And working on tans. Oh and our hotel was air conditioned.
We took a taxi-brousse back to Fianar because it is much cheaper and actually quicker. BUT there was a French tourist that did not understand how to sit four people to a row and took up way more space than necessary and elbowed me often. At one point he had his legs crossed and was reading the paper. I took Hilary and Brianna out to my site for a bit and we had taco fiesta night and walked around my market on market day which is pretty big.
New Years was calm, safe, drama free. One of the few times I’ve ever said that in my life. A group of us in Fianar started the day out getting pizzas for lunch. We also hiked up to the Old Town of Fianar (which I think is a world historical site, but I could be completely making this up) where they opened the coffee shop just for us and watched the sunset while having iced tea, brownies, sandwiches etc. I myself got a sprite that cost about 6 times the normal epicerie price, it about gave me a heart attack. Then we went out for the evening and had brochettes and samosas and drinks for late night at the brothel conveniently located across the street from the PC house. Speaking of the brothel. There are two. Right next door to each other. This is often confusing so we call the lower one the ambany (lower) brothel, and the one next to it, higher up on the hill is, you guessed it, the ambony (upper) brothel. Prostitution is not too uncommon in this country and there are a number of obvious issues (STIs, trafficking, child abuse etc).
So now I am going to be heading back to site, where I will probably have to spend a few days cleaning up after whatever creatures decided to move in while I was gone and will get ready for the second quarter of school to start.
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