Onde È Internet???

After two long, full days of sweaty, greasy, exhausting travel I am officially in Praia, Cabo Verde!! I am ridiculously excited, thankfully joined by other ridiculously excited American foreigners who altogether make quite the scene speaking virtually no Portuguese. I´m muddling through, though and hey at least it got me to the Internet! Of which I have only 5 minutes, so this will be a quick tease for you all.

Let me just say, for lack of time and eloquence, that Cabo Verde is beautiful, fun, and everything I expected, so far. It has a very Latin American feel to it for all its tropical beaches and gorgeous plants, but with a more African landscape--drier, browner, and a little less mountainous. The people are very nice and with my clumsy Portuguese I was able to let a woman know I needed Internet and a bank, to which she walked the full several blocks with me. I made myself eat all the fish I was given last night on the plane before I could eat my dessert because I´m determined to get used to it so that I don´t ever have to turn down the food I´m given. I think I´ll be alright...eventually. :) This morning after breakfast we walked the five minutes to the beach where a team of Cape Verdeans was practicing soccer, right on the surf! Don´t worry I took pictures, but I haven´t yet loaded them onto my jump drive, so look for them in the next day or two.

The climate is nice and hot, humid (for us pansy northwesterners), and a bit dusty, but overall so beautiful. I´m in love already, I know I won´t want to leave. The whole group of us that came together and will do our training together is about 32 people, all as wide-eyed, young, and idealistic as myself, so we all get along great! There are two older women, which is great because they provide great life experience that some of us fresh-out-of-college kids can´t. Upon meeting them all I felt a lot better about my packing decisions--I definitley didn´t overpack. My luggage is almost exactly 80 pounds and pretty easy to lug around, while a few girls have had issues with too many bags and too many pounds. It all works out, righ? We have two more days in the main city (Praia), and then we meet our host families on Sunday--yikes! I´m very excited, but so scared that we won´t be able to communicate for quite awhile...I was remembering this morning how I felt meeting my Costa Rican family for the first time, not knowing what to say, stumbling over phrases, clinging to my dictionary, and even then I knew three year´s worth of Spanish. So it will be humbling and challenging, and so worth every minute.

Traveling these past few days has been exhausting, and we are still waiting for the other half of our group to get to Praia (only 17 of us came last night, the rest stayed in Senegal). As we stepped off the fun little Cape Verdean airplane in Praia, we were greeted by a group of excited, cheering, picture-snapping current Volunteers, who have been helpful in showing us the ropes in a place they now love to call their home. It seems that everyone who has served here is so thankful to be in this country. It is and will be such a unique experience, different from mainland Africa, different from Latin America, and different on each island, a world all its own that we have yet to explore and be able to truly define. I will have the time of my life trying.

Look for more updates and pictures soon!