Oh yeah i remember this. Been a while, i'll try to update as comprehensively as i can without droning on for too long. I did in fact come back from zanzibar, reluctantly, and returned to life in the village. Since then, things have been going really well. In mid-march i went to chipata in eastern province for a week of hiv/aids training done by peace corps. We all brought community workers from our villages and spent the week doing hiv education and learning ways to teach the people where we live about prevention and positive living. It was a great experience for myself and my counterpart, and since then he has been keeping me busy. We've been working with the hiv positive group in the area, meeting about twice a month and teaching them what we learned. The group is also working to start a chicken coop to raise money for themselves. I'm basically the cheerleader, encouraging them and helping out however i can. They're a great group of people and i'm excited by their enthusiasm. In mid april, having an entire weekend of vacation days over the easter holidays, my friend koh and i headed back to malawi for a short vacation. Our destination this time around was cape maclear, on the south end of the lake (nkhata bay, where i went last time, was on the north west side). There was a little more adventure to it than we had expected, including a bout with malaria (not me this time) two 12 hour trips to get there and back, and a lost reservation that ended with 5 people sharing an empty house with two mattresses and nothing else, but the cape is absolutely beautiful and we still had a pretty great time. The next week i went into lusaka for a night to say goodbye to half of the volunteers in my province, lusaka province consists of 3 education volunteers and 3 health volunteers, the education ones having started a year before us, so last month was the end of their service. It was hard to say goodbye, especially to eric, my closest neighbor. While in peace corps your neighbor becomes a pretty important part of your life. You hang out together a lot, you learn a lot from them, and a lot of times they keep you sane, especially when you're first posted. Their group leaving makes my intake the upperclassmen of peace corps zambia, which is pretty crazy. At the beginning of this month we went into lusaka for our midterm conference, for some training, medical check ups, and a workshop on perma culture gardening. It was good to see everyone again and good to reflect on the last year and prepare for the next 12 months. Since then. Its been village life as usual, minus a quick trip to lusaka this week to get my work permit (only took 15 months). I'll be here another week and a half, then i go to chipata for provincials, then i fly home for brendan's wedding. Well, that's about it for now. Hope you all are well. Miss you all a lot and can't wait to see some of you in a couple weeks.