Pictures and Site Announcements!

November 17th, 2012

It was an exciting week to be a PCT in Mozambique because this week we got site placements.  I found out that I will be going to a town called Messica in the Manica province of Mozambique.   I will be living with another PCT, Sarah, and will be teaching math at the secondary school (8th through 12th grade) in Messica.  We will be opening a site in Messica,  meaning that the Peace Corps has not yet had a volunteer in this town.  Apparently the town has wanted a PCV for a long time, but they never had the means to provide housing for a volunteer.  I am told that our house is "very nice," but I have absolutely no idea what that means.  I am also told that Messica is about an hour from Chimoio, which is the provincial capital of Manica, and also home to one of the three Peace Corps offices in Mozambique (which has air conditioning and wi-fi).  All of the volunteers that visited Chimoio for site visits only have great things to say about the city including that it's a lot more safe than Maputo and has two large grocery stores, which is quite reassuring.  I really have no idea what to expect living  or community-wise, considering we have gotten no information about Messica, but I am just so excited to get there and see what it's like.   

On Monday we start model school which is an opportunity to get in front of Mozambican students that volunteer to attend our lessons.  I will be teaching 4 classes of 8th grade math and giving 2 different lessons.  My first lesson isn't until Wednesday of next week, so I get a couple of days to watch some other lessons and make sure I have mine well planned out.  I probably should be more nervous than I'm feeling right now, but I've already practiced giving my lesson twice now in language class so I'm have a decent grasp on the Portuguese I need to deliver it.

Speaking of Portuguese, I found out that I scored an Intermediate-High level on my LPI practice,  which is good enough for me.  Intermediate-Mid and lower have language class every day from 1:30-5:30.  I'm a little sad that I missed out on extra language help, but I'm glad that my language is progressing.

We leave for swearing in to the Peace Corps on December 3rd.  Whoa, that's coming up really fast.  My host sister, Nucha, says she's going to come visit when I get to site and I really hope she does (even though my site is probably at least 20 hours of travel from Namaacha).  I really want to be the one to cook for her, heat her water for the bath, and do all of the things that she does for me now that she probably thinks I don't appreciate.  I love living here, but I'm ready to have some independence and do things my own way.

Tomorrow I'm going to church with some other PCT's, and then we're going to head to the cascadas (waterfalls) in Namaacha.  Time is flying by here,  but I feel like these next two weeks might be sluggish since I'm anticipating what comes next.

My house!

A chapa.  We fit at least 20 people in this thing.  4 people per row, 4 rows of people, and many times even more.

My host sister, Nucha, killing a chicken.  The other one my mae already killed.

My host nephew, Walmer.  Sorry, I can't figure out how to turn the picture, but you get the idea, he's freaking cute.

The beach at Xai Xai.  First time at the Indian Ocean.

The waterfalls of Namaacha!

 

Chongoene

November 8th, 2012

My site visit was freaking awesome.  I left Saturday for Chongoene.  We boarded a chapa from Namaacha to Maputo at 5 am, and when we got to Maputo it was a little crazy.  We were dropped off at Junta, which is basically an insane chapa terminal with chapas departing for many different cities and people EVERYWHERE trying to sell you things, shoving things in your face, etc.  Luckily, the volunteer that I was staying with (Michelle) was visiting training for the week, so she was traveling back to her site with us.  That made me a little less nervous about the whole traveling around Mozambique thing.  In Junta, she led us to the chapa that was headed to Xai Xai, the provincial capital of Gaza.  We had to wait about 45 minutes for the chapa to be stuffed full of 20 people, and then we headed out.  Let me stress again how uncomfortable chapa seating is.  Luckily, our ride was only about 3 hours to Xai Xai.  Some other volunteers had rides that were up to 14 hours long. No thank you. 

After arriving in Xai Xai, we did some shopping and ate lunch (I had pizza -- it was delicious).  Then we boarded yet another chapa to get from Xai Xai to Chongoene, which only took about 45 minutes.  Michelle lives right on the school's property in a little house, which is both good and bad.  Good because the school is so close, bad because you have next to no privacy.  We were like a tourist attraction for the week.  All  the kids of the town were not shy about coming onto the porch and gawking into the house, checking out the white people in town.  It was cute at first but got old really fast.   Another thing to mention about the house is that it had an outdoor pit latrine/bathroom.  This was not particularly interesting to the other trainees there, but I have been spoiled with my indoor bathroom and toilet, so it was a new experience for me.  When taking a bath my first night in Chongoene by candlelight, I accidentally put the candle too close to the toilet paper and ended up starting a little fire.  Whoops.  I put it out, but it was definitely a memorable experience of tomar banho-ing for the first time outside at night.

On Sunday, we went to the beach at Xai Xai, so we took a chapa into the city and then had to catch another chapa to the beach.  The chapa to Xai Xai was fine, but on the chapa to the beach, there were so many people trying to get there that we ended up standing for over 20 minutes on the chapa.  That was an experience.  I was all up on people I'd never met, and that's completely normal in a standing chapa situation.  It's just something to get used to.

The rest of the week, we stayed in Chongoene.  We met the director of the high school,  some students, and many other community members.  One thing I love about Mozambique is that whenever you meet someone here or whenever you go to someone's house, it is customary to serve your guests tea or a snack/meal of some sort. Even though Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, they want to give what they have to their guests and treat them well.  It is the most important thing to them.  Sometimes it can be a little much, especially when you've just finished a big meal or you just want to quickly stop by, but overall the gesture is one that means a lot and should be appreciated.  We were definitely shown much hospitality in Chongoene and I absolutely loved it.

The past week has been a great break from training.  I got to cook some American food, get out and see more of Mozambique, and get some travel experience without the guidance of the Peace Corps.  I missed my host family, but so far the site visit might have been my favorite part of training.  Just seeing how Michelle interacts with her community and how much she knows about Mozambique makes me so excited to jump in and get my hands dirty.

So now that I've seen a volunteer's actual site, I have a much clearer picture of things I might want for my own site.  We have interviews with Associate Peace Corps Directors on Monday, and then we find out where we are placed on Wednesday.  Training has seriously flown by, but I am so anxious to know where I'll be spending the next 2 years!

:)

Quick Update

There are some exciting things going on over here, so I thought I'd write a quick blog to keep everyone informed.  First, we have site visits this week!  I leave tomorrow morning at 4:30 am to travel to Gaza province to a place called Chongoene to stay with a current volunteer and two other trainees for 5 days.  The idea is to get a feel for the site that the current volunteer lives and be able to have a better idea of what we might want/prefer at our own site.  This is super exciting for many reasons, but the biggest ones are the fact that we get to eat whatever we want for 5 days, hang out and see what being a PCV is really like, and get to see what other parts of Mozambique actually look like.

Also, today we had our LPI, which is a language proficiency test, and we also had our round robin test of the technical/safety/medical/cultural information we have been learning since we got here.  I have to say that my LPI went surprisingly well, and my round robin left a little to be desired.  Overall, I don't think I'll have any problems.  This was a practice round, and we take the tests again at the end of training.  From the results of this test, they will probably change around language groups to make sure everyone is still  matched up with people at compatible learning levels. 

This week we also had our practical activities test, making sure we know how to do things like shred coconut, grind peanuts by hand, light a charcoal stove, etc.  I am the only girl in my current language group, so all the guys thought it was super amusing to tease me about the fact that it is most important for me to know how to do all of these things because it's "women's work".  The worst offender was my actual language instructor, because he actually lives in Mozambique and those are his personal beliefs.  He doesn't know how to do the things that we had to do, and he doesn't see anything wrong with that.  I am lucky because in my house, my host nephew Nando does these things with no problem, and in no way thinks that he is losing his masculinity because of it.  That day was certainly a learning experience.

Also, yesterday I got my first letter from the US, which is super exciting.  I was starting to get super frustrated with the mail system, but know I know that it IS possible to receive mail.  So that's exciting.  I just have to learn to have patience with it, which is difficult.  Mozambican time is all out of whack though, so the mail system shouldn't surprise me at all.

That's about all I have to say for now.  I'll be sure to update when I get home from site visits and tell you all about Chongoene. :)

Killing chickens and improving Portuguese

October 24, 2012

It's been about a week and a half since I last wrote a blog, so obviously there's been some major things happening here.  Let me try to recap...

Last week the PCT's and their mae's had a cultural cooking exchange.  My language group and I cooked an American meal for our mae's, and our mae's cooked a traditional Mozambican dish for us (not that we haven't been eating traditional Mozambican food for weeks, but still).  My language group decided to make burritos, because it seemed like the easiest/most  practical thing we could make.  What I didn't realize when I got here was how difficult it would be to cook here.  There are no boxes in a grocery store that you just add water to and have an immediate meal.  If you want to eat well, you have to put time into  it.  We started cooking at 7:30 am to have lunch ready by 12. Freaking nuts.  Anyway, our mae's went to the market and bought us everything on our list of ingredients that they could find.  We had homemade tortillas (we used the wrong type of flour, so they kind of fell apart), chicken, beans, onions, rice, tomatoes, piri piri (hot sauce here...clearly I didn't partake), and probably a few other things I can't remember.  I don't know if you guys have thought of this, but chicken doesn't come in a bag here like we're used to in the states.  If you want to have chicken, you go to the market and buy a live chicken.  Then it's up to you to bring it home, kill it, defeather it, and cook it.

My first experience with this was the day that we cooked with our mae's.  At about 9 am, they brought out two live chickens.  The chickens didn't run, they just sat in the yard waiting for their imminent death.  Everyone asked me if I wanted to be the one to kill the chicken, and I just responded with, "NO! I'm going to cry!" So everyone laughed at me, but I was serious.  Tears didn't come, but they were close.  My friend Ryan did actually decide to kill one, though.  So you have to put a foot on top of the chicken's body/wings and literally saw at its neck until you cut it off or just leave it dangling  from the body.  And then the chicken will like bounce around for a little bit until it actually dies.  Pretty sick nasty.  Anyway, then you take the feathers off by dipping the body into boiling water and scraping them off.  They actually come off pretty easily.  Then of course you have to cut open the chicken and take out the insides.  I didn't get a close up visual of that part when I cooked with the mae's, but two days later I could say that I'd witnessed that up close and personal as well.  Then the chicken is cut up and put in this little grate-type thingy that you put on top of a charcoal stove.  You keep flipping the grate until all of the chicken is well-done.

By the time we were eating lunch, I had kind of forgotten about the whole killing process because it was such a long morning.  I didn't even feel bad when I was eating it, so I guess I don't have to be a vegetarian or anything crazy.  Two days later my family killed two  more chickens to have for the next couple of weeks for meals.  They also asked me if i wanted to kill one of them, but I declined.  I will probably end up doing it by the end of PST, just for the experience of it.  The Anna that got here 4 weeks ago would be disgusted with me, but when in Mozambique I have to do as the Mozambicans do.

In other news, my Portuguese is improving every day.  I can finally have conversations with members of my family that don't involve long, awkward pauses and other equally embarrassing situations.  Using the correct tenses is a problem, but I have a basis of verbs and vocabulary that I can definitely work with.  I still confuse Spanish and Portuguese at times, but I'm doing the best I can and my improvement in the past month has been pretty incredible.  Today I gave my first mini-lesson in Portuguese about the slope of linear functions, and I actually thought it went decently well.  I didn't stumble too much with my speech, so I actually think this whole teaching in Portuguese thing is possible.   It might be far-off still, but I know that eventually it will come.

At the end of next week, all of us PCT's get to go on site visits and stay with currently serving volunteers for 5-6 days.  I am so excited to see where I'll be going  and see a real site; to see what my life might look like in a month and a half.  We find out our actual site placement in week 7, and right now it's week 4, so I have about 3 weeks until I find out.  So that's super exciting.

Hmm...what else?  Having whatsapp has been great to communicate with my family and friends back at home.  Also, I now have email access, so feel free to email me if you have questions/comments/anything to say (brandt.169@gmail.com).  I haven't been able to get any pictures on here yet because the computer that I have to use to post blogs is like from the 1990's.  It has a slot for a floppy disk, no joke.  So that doesn't work very well, but my mom posted some pictures on my facebook  wall so you can look at those to see my house and other things I think have been picture-worthy here in Moz.  If you want any specific pictures, let me know and I can try to take some.

That's all for now! :)

First Three Blogs

September 29th, 2012

This is my first blog post from Mozambique, and I won't be able to post  it until I have internet, but I wanted to write the entry while the days are fresh.  Um what just happened?  Five long days ago, I was in Cincinnati.  The past five days have been the longest and most exciting of my life.  Here's how it went:

Got up at 4:30 am on Tuesday morning.  Went to the airport.  Cried a lot.  Flew to Philly.  Met lots of awesome people at staging.  Hung out with lots of awesome people after staging.  Took an hour nap.  Got up at 1:30 am. Packed up my stuff and got on a bus with all the other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers). Bussed to JFK airport.   Got there at  5:15 am.  The check in counter  didn't open until 7:30, so just sat there for a few hours in the  airport.  Departed for Johannesburg at 11:15 am.  Arrived in Johannesburg at 8:30 am, their time (6 hours ahead), with feet swollen to twice the size that they originally were and a wicked cold that I didn't have when I left.   At 9:45 boarded a plane to  Maputo, Moambique and by 11 o'clock, I was officially in Mozambique.  After getting through customs and claiming our baggage, all  the PCVs piled into cars and were driven to Hotel Cordano, where we would spend two full days living in luxury.

Hotel Cordano was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at, hands down.   The view was beautiful, the food was incredible, the staff was super nice.   It was great.  And they had wi-fi.  I wasn't expecting the wi-fi, but I have to say I didn't mind being able to check in with my family and friends and let them know that  I had arrived safely.  Staying at the hotel helped me get rid of the jet  lag and get to know more of my fellow  trainees.  It was a  great way to start the PC adventure.

Now we get to the fun part: My host family.  Today we made the 80 km (1 1/2 hour) journey to Namaacha to meet our host families.  When we arrived in Namaacha, all the host families were waiting for us  and sang us a beautiful song as we  walked in.   It nearly brought me to tears.  Then each host mother/father  held up the name of their volunteer and we just wandered around to find them.  It took  me a few minutes to locate my name, but when I did, my mae (pronouced my, meaning mom) and I locked eyes and I knew I'd found my family.  We don't speak the same language, and today has made me really wish that I had studied more Portuguese during my last few months in the states.  We communicated pretty well, regardless of the fact that I didn't know what she was saying more than half of the time.  We walked back to my new casa together after she found me.  We walked with most of the other math teacher volunteers because we are arranged throughout Namaacha according to what we're teaching. 

I have to admit that I was nervous to see what conditions I would be living in for the next 10  weeks.  I couldn't have been more impressed or excited to live in this casa.  The house is beautiful.   My room is big.  It has a full sized bed, wardrobe, side table, and plenty of extra room for all of my crap.  The casa has electricity, but no running  water.  Water is easily accessible and doesn't take too long to get.  The bathroom is indoor, and the bath situation is interesting.  Mozambicans take baths at least 3 times per day.    Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night.   Tonight, my host sister came to get me and told me it was time for me to take a bath.  I undressed and went to the bathroom in my towel with all of my things.  Luckily, they have a lock on the door, so I didn't have to worry about anyone coming in while I was attempting my first Mozambican bath.  There was a bucket of boiling  water, and a bucket of freezing cold water.  In attempts to make warm water, I would dip some out of the hot water, then cold water, and then rinse my body.  Evidently, that was a fail because I burnt the whole side of my arm with the water. Whoops.   When I finished my bath and got dressed, my mae asked me why I bathed with cold water.   In my broken Portuguese/Spanish/English, I tried to explain what happened.  I  got my point across, I think, but it took far too long.

There is so much it seems that I want to say to my mae and the rest of my host family, but I don't know how and I don't want to just speak Spanish to them because that isn't their language.  When I learn some Portuguese, I think I will absolutely love it here.

So let me tell you about the rest of my host family.  I have two host sisters (Didinya, 19 and Nucha, 23), and a host baby, Walmer  (technically my host nephew). :)  My host sisters are wonderful and they are patient with me when I don't know what they're saying, which is almost always.   They have taught me a lot so far, and there is so much more to  come. Walmer is almost 1.  He is legitimately the cutest thing ever. God knows me well enough to know that to make me happy a  baby better be around.  I just love him.  I brought a little nerf football and gave it to him and he happily just throws it and chases it and giggles to himself. It's adorable.

I'll try to write some more in another week or so when I know more.   Thanks for your prayers! Keep them coming!

October 7th, 2012

I can't believe that I've only been in Namaacha for a week.  It's felt like at least a month, and it's been an interesting one at that.  Let me try to recollect what has happened over the past days that I have gone without blogging.

Last Sunday, my mae taught me how to do laundry by hand, which is just about as fun as it sounds.  Actually yesterday I also did laundry and have a huge rash on my wrist/hand from scrubbing my clothes on my skin.  So word to the wise, don't take the washing machine  for granted like I have for the past 21 years.  You are very priveleged to put your clothes in a machine and come back a half hour later with the work done for you, believe me.

Anyway PST (Pre-Service Training) started on Monday, and not gonna lie, these days are forever long.  Some days are HUB days, where the whole group meets, other days are just within small language groups, and some days we will have technical  training within our disciplines  (starting this coming week).  My Portuguese is progressing pretty well, but I'm still not able to communicate nearly as well as I'd like.  My family here has been very good at interpreting my broken sentences and repeating things to me a million times until I just pretend to understand what they're saying.  It works out pretty well most of the time. :) 

I've gotten used  to tomar banho-ing twice a day, and it's not too bad.  Also, my body naturally wakes up at 6 now.  Super exciting stuff there.

I haven't really had my holy-crap-I'm-in-Africa moment yet, but I know that it's coming.

On another note, I went to mass this morning and let me tell you, American's need to see how Mozambican's praise.  Man, they have passion and excitement and everything good.  Some aspects of mass were different, but some were exactly the same.  Their accompaniment was a drum and another instrument that I didn't recognize, but their voices alone were enough to do what we were there for.  It was just awesome.  The mass was in Portuguese/Changana, so I got some exposure to each and actually understood most of the homily.  I always get excited when I can understand things.

I can't think of anything else that's super exciting that you all need to know so far.  I've just been studying, learning about life here (cooking, cleaning, etc.), and living as a local.  It's been a great experience so far.  God knows what He's doing.

October 13th, 2012

Today all the PCVs took chapas into Maputo to explore the city and (presumably) take care  of  things that can't be done in Namaacha, such as phone issues, purchase certain items, etc.  We traveled in to Maputo in two groups, one leaving Namaacha at 7 and the other leaving at 8.  Then once in Maputo, we split up into our language groups to explore the city with our language teacher as our guide.

So my day started at 5:30 am when I woke up and tomar banho-ed like usual.  Then I ate breakfast and met my language group at 6:30 to make the trek from Vila Pouca to the chapa station.   It was raining so that made the walk extra fun, but the chapa picked us up closer than we thought so we ended up only having to walk about 20 minutes instead of the 30-35 we were expecting.  For those of you that don't know, chapas are basically mini-buses that are stuffed full of people.  As a point of reference, imagine any normal mini-van with four benches in the back expected to seat 4 people per row.  Yeah, that's a chapa.  Suuuuuper comfortable transportation.

On our way to Maputo, we had a bigger chapa that was wayyyy more comfortable than the one I just described.  It was a comfortable ride, and I sat next to one of the visiting PCVs for the week, so I got to ask him lots of questions and get some tips about Moz travel and life.  It was super helpful.  When we got to Maputo we got out of the chapa and went to the cell phone store first.  I'd been having problems getting internet on my blackberry, so I had to ask how to get it.  After waiting about a half hour in line, I was told that I'd have to go to a different store because they didn't have the software update that I needed in the store that we were in.   Then we walked to the second store, and after about a 2 hour struggle, I was told that there is some hold on the blackberry that is keeping it from being able to access  the internet, even though I had already paid the 550 Mets (28 Metacais = 1 dollar) to activate the blackberry service.

This was about the time that I had a little tiny meltdown in the middle of the Votacom store.  I tried not to make it too obvious, but after two weeks of hardly any communication with family and friends from home, it's making me a little crazy. 

Not gonna lie, after leaving Votacom I had a pretty crappy attitude about Maputo and just the day in general.  After walking around a little bit, I found a beautiful capulana (piece of fabric that everyone hear uses for just about everything you could think of...a skirt, towel, wall covering, something to hold your baby in, etc.) for 130 Mets.  Then the day started to take a turn for the better.   We went to a cute cafe for lunch, and then had a small history lesson while touring a famous fort in Maputo.  The chapa on the way home was the first that I described, small and crowded.   It was a long 80 km trip.

I just had dinner with my host sister and discussed my phone problems with her.  She is planning on going to Maputo next week sometime, so if I don't get the whole blackberry thing figured out by then, I have enough money that I can give her so she can buy me an internet phone when she goes.  This whole internet thing just doesn't want  to happen for me right now, so I'm just going to the one computer in Namaacha that has the internet which is where I'll be posting this tomorrow (if it all works out). 

So today was one of the rough ones, but through it all it helped me realize that I am not in control.  I'm here for the Mozambicans and my head and heart should also be here.

Lots of love from Mozambique to you all.

Packing

Whoa, what a task.  Packing for two years doesn't sound like it would be easy, and let me assure you, it's not.

Let me explain the bag situation for the Peace Corps.  We get two checked bags with the length/width/height dimensions of both bags summing 107 inches or less.  Each bag can weigh up to 50 lbs, so we get 100 lbs total.   Most volunteers choose to take a rolling duffle and travel pack for hiking, but since I'm not such a hiker myself, I'm going to take a small duffle bag and large rolling suitcase.

Next, I need to explain how the bag situation works.  So we have training for 10 weeks after arriving in Mozambique, in which time we will be doing a homestay program and living with Mozambican families.  This is called Pre-Service Training (PST).  During PST, we only have access to one of our two checked bags. (The other will be locked in the Peace Corps office in Maputo.  Then when we are assigned to the location for the 2 years of service, we will have both of our bags for the remainder of service.

The problem with this is that the majority of my things I will need throughout PST such as my clothes, host family gifts, shoes, toiletries, etc.  Clearly, I need to pack my big suitcase for PST.  This was the daunting task I set out to do today.

I decided to roll my clothes, which overall I think was a good decision.  I have to admit, I did a fabulous packing job.  Everything fit perfectly into the suitcase when it was expanded the extra two inches or whatever that little zipper thing adds. Then it was weighing time.   With most of my shoes and a few other things still out of the bag, the weight was 60.5 lbs.  How.  Upsetting.

Luckily, one of the people in the Mozambique 19 facebook group let us in on the little secret that we can put things in different bags to make weight for the plane rides, but then switch things around once we get to Moz, before we leave for Namaacha (where our homestay will be).  This will be my saving grace.

I got my bag down to 51.5 lbs by taking some things out, but the moment of truth will be tomorrow when I pack my duffle and see how much it weighs... I'm already nervous.

So that's just a little inside info on the packing situation going on at the Brandt house.  Not gonna lie, it looked like my dresser threw up on my bed a few hours ago.  Also, good thing I have a sister that everyone thinks is my twin because I'm going to need some clothes to borrow over the next 5 days. :)

If you're interested, Namaacha is located 80km west of Maputo, right on the border of Mozambique and Swaziland.

Thank you's

So I was under no illusion that the next 2 weeks were going to be easy, but I guess I just didn't realize how unbelievably difficult they would be.  Saying goodbye to my friends in Columbus shattered my heart into a million pieces, and I realize that the goodbyes aren't going to get any easier as my departure gets closer.  This is getting real, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.   Any time someone says "Don't go!"  or "Don't leave me!" I'm tempted to be like, "Alright, I'm staying."  But anyone who knows me knows that I can't just back down on what I've made a commitment to do.  It would be a heck of a lot easier to back out and not go, but if I made that choice I'd be letting myself down and most importantly not doing what I know I was meant to do.  So before I burst into tears again at the thought of not seeing some of my closest friends again for a few years, I'm going to take this opportunity to thank some of the people that have gotten me here.

Okay, let's start with my friends from the Newman Center.  Holy moly, you people are awesome.  You all have such a heart for God and have inspired me to follow my heart and trust in God's plan.  I don't think I'll ever be able to thank you for that.  Without Buckeye Awakening and the Awakening community, I can guarantee that I would not be in this place today.  Your love and support means the world to me.  All of you that prayed over me last night brought me to tears.  God was truly in that place with us.  Keep the faith.  I love you all. Oh and pleaseeee keep me in your prayers because I need to feel the presence of that MBOC when I'm half a world away.

Moving on to my math friends.  Looking forward to seeing you guys was the only thing that got me to class on more than one occasion.  At times we wanted to give up, but we got each other through.  Some of my fondest memories of Ohio State are from our crazy math parties.   Thanks for showing me a good time and being fellow math lovers.  I wouldn't have gotten through if I didn't surround myself with goofballs like you all.

Then we get to my best friends:  Mary, Lauren, and Stephanie.  The fact that we've only known each other for 3 years blows my mind, but I thank God every day for you guys.  You've always been there and I know you'll continue to be there.  There is not a doubt in my mind about our plans for when I get back and I'm eagerly awaiting the day we're all roommates again.  I love you more than I know how to express.  Thank you for the unwavering support, it means everything.

And to everyone else that doesn't fit in a specific category, thank you.  Your love and support mean the world to me.

Please keep me in your prayers over the next two weeks as I get ready to leave.  I have a feeling it's only going to get harder, which is pretty hard for me to fathom.  Thanks again to all!  

♥