Holidays are over...almost

Well, after a very long Christmas break—Swaziland has a holiday called incwala immediately following their Christmas and New Years. It is a ceremony where the men of the country come together and celebrate. There is dancing. Every public building closes. You know how it is almost nice to start back to work after the Thanksgiving, Christmas, then New Years holidays? Incwala lasts a few weeks past these holidays, and so it is a long stretch where not much is open. Well, school is about to start back, along with government offices. Reid will be working with a local theater group who wants to compete in a Peace Corps Theater Competition. We will both be continuing to work on getting funds raised here for the library, as well as working with our community center to get the library ready for books.

Basically, it will be a pretty busy few months! Although the last month has been a bit slow, it is crazy to think that we have been here seven months already. We recently went and visited another volunteer, and she has a 45 minute walk from the public transport drop off in her community to her house, and it is up the steepest hill I think can be made without the gravel falling down the hill. We realized how lucky we are to have our drop off station literally a few steps from our homestead.

We also hope to start a pen pal program with one of the schools in our community and Joaquin school, since Reid is involved with World Wise schools and we got many wonderful letters from the kids in his school to give to kids in our community. We hope that this will be a great opportunity for both the children in America and the children here to practice their English, writing, and cultural awareness skills.