And...done. As of about 1:00 pm Zambian time on Friday I am officially a Peace Corps volunteer. To say I'm happy is a gross understatement. It was hard to leave my host family, and it was tough to leave all the other trainees/volunteers, but I'm finally able to do what I came here to do. Sort of.
See, what's supposed to happen is that we swear-in and the next day everyone heads off to their provinces to shop and at the beginning of this week they take us all to our villages. Well sometimes, due to any number of reasons, the villages aren't ready when they're supposed to be. In short, I don't have a house right now. Terrible, right? Well, not quite. See since I don't have a house yet they've shipped me to the provincial house in Choma, Southern Province, with all the new volunteers who are being posted there. So we're gonna hang out there until my village is ready for me. It's not bad, but today some of the volunteers had to go meet district counterparts in Livingstone, so we've all come to Livingstone for the day. Livingstone just happens to be where Victoria Falls, one of the biggest waterfalls in the world and one of the 7 natural wonders of the world is. And today we went there. It's absolutely unbelieveable. Niagara Falls is impressive, but even that seems rather tame compared to the sheer size and power of Victoria. There's a bridge that runs across the front of it that you run across and just get completely drenched. It's incredible. I took some pictures and I'll post them at a later date, but they can't come anywhere close to doing it justice.

I've decided that I don't really like doing these posts. It's hard. you sit down at a computer for the first time in a week or two and you have a ton of crap you wanna talk about but if I really wrote all that stuff my head would explode. I'm gonna keep blogging but consider that an apology if these entries sound confusing, forced, trite, etc.
I just got back from second site visit. Last Sunday the two other health volunteers staying in Lusaka province and myself went to stay with Keli, an education volunteer working in the town of Luwimba. We spent three days there and the volunteer who will be working there, Ruben, got to meet his clinic staff and stuff like that. Thursday we went into Lusaka to try to open a bank account (didn't happen) then headed east to the town of Chimusanyu to stay with Eric, another education volunteer in Lusaka province. On Friday I got to visit Lukwipa, the village I'll be working in. It was awesome. It's in a valley in the middle of these gorgeous mountains. I met the staff of my clinic and I was very impressed. The clinic is very well organized and seems to be pretty effective at meeting the health needs of the community. My house is not built yet, but they showed me where it will be, and its in a great spot close to everything I need to be close to, like the clinic, the school, and water. I'm really excited. I've also learned the Zambian art of hitching a ride, which, while it may take a while to get a ride, is still pretty awesome. Nothing like riding through mountains in the back of a pickup truck.
We've entered the home stretch of training. Two more weeks of classes, then tests at the beginning of the next week, and swear-in in three weeks. I'm so ready to be done and get to my village. I miss you all lots and hope you all are doing well. I'm gonna end a lot of emails/posts with that, but its true.