slow saturday and small world story #2

i thought would take some time on a slow saturday to try to get some pictures up to make this blog more exciting. things are going well in tana-- i've made good progress on working on my visa, i'm teaching some little kids english tonight, hopefully seeing some lemurs with two americans who are staying at the hotel tomorrow and i've been improving my french a lot. (oui oui!) overall i can't complain (except about the speed of the internet here, each picture is almost taking a half hour to upload!!!)



anyway, the picture below is of one of the hillsides near the lake by my hotel. if you look, you can see that tana has taken hollywood to a whole new level. on top of the hill is the presidential palace which is under construction after damage from a fire. i haven't been up there yet but i hope to soon.



while i'm waiting for the next picture to upload i have small world story #2 already. i was in my hotel yesterday and 4 or 5 girls came from the island of réuion (they teach english there) on vacation and i started talking to them. the majority of them were british, but one girl was american and started telling me how great it was to hear an american accent. anyway, turns out she's from NYC area and i told her i graduated from harvard and her face brightened and she starts telling me people she knows from harvard, turns out she went to high school with my friend camille from the rugby team. so again, here i am in antananarivo, madagascar running into far too many circumstances where the world feels like it's the size of a soccer ball.

and here's the last picture i have time to upload today- this is from last week when domoina (girl who works at my hotel) had me and another american from the hotel to her house for lunch with her and her boyfriend. this was taken with the automatic timer, but i think it came out pretty good. so there you can see one of my first malagasy friends! she really has been so helpful to me and has helped me feel at home here.


well hopefully this blog entry is a bit more colorful atleast. i have so many more pictures i want to share but i guess it won't happen this time! off to teach some kids!!