HEEEEYYYYYYYY HEY...

So i know it has been almost a month! Crazy! I feel like it has been almost a year...the plane ride took many many hours but i could watch a lot of movies whenever i wanted!! all trips should be so awesome. anyway, we were picked up at the airport and driven to the peace corps training center in the capital city of maseru. my first cultural experience occured when i tried to get into the "passenger side" of the car. the driver looked at me and laughed. apparently they drive on the left side of the road. welcome to lesotho. for the next two weeks or so we were locked tight in the training center because the crime in maseru is a bit high and we had no language training at that point. it felt a lot like summer camp because we had many activities planned showing up cultural norms, language classes, how to teach, etc. we stayed in bunk beds and ate in a mess hall. a few of us got up early some mornings and went for a mile loop that was preapproved as safe. the dogs here are not like the dogs in america, they are used mainly for protection. many times running up a hill a group of dogs would charge at us barking. we had to act like we would throw rocks at them to scare them off. the third weekend or so we went on a site visit to a volunteer already in country. it was a totally different place, a much smaller village and the mountains! woah boy! it is gorgeous in this country. we also had to take public transportation. the bus stop is an overwhelming place with multiple "terminals" or groups of buses and taxis and people everywhere all looking at you because we look deer in headlights. there are stands every few feet of people selling everything from phone minutes to chicken feet to soccer jerseys. the next part of the training is taking place in a village half an hour from the capital city. i am living with a host family and teaching at a high school near by. there are 14 trainees in the same village. the village is also very pretty as i live almost half way up the mountain. one of my favorite activities was climbing the mountain and seeing all the way to south africa! my host family and community are soooo nice. my me (mother) talks sesotho very fast to me and i give her a lot of blank looks sometimes because i cannot keep up with her. my language skills are getting better, but very slowly. i really enjoy hanging out with my host sister who is going into 5th grade. she is very sweet and we play lots of crazy eights. the school system is quite different here...kids are taught more to memorize things rather than apply them. i will be here for two more weeks (cooking for myself! up to today my host family has been feeding me mountians of food). at that point we will return to the training site until the first week of january when we will be shipped off to our permanent sites. i have a cell phone and it has internet (maybe i can blog from it? im not sure i havent figured it all out yet) but i cant get on gmail because the phones security isnt good enough or something like that. i can get on facebook however!!!! please send me facebook messages! i can respond to them! w00t! i miss and love you all and think about you all the time. until next time...

Adam or
Teboho (tay boo ho) Mojaki (My Sesotho Name)

(The kids I have been teaching love it when i use my sesotho name haha)

Setting things up...

So I am gearing up to start a two year adventure/teaching excursion in Lesotho. So if you are like me, you may have to wikipedia Lesotho (pronounced La Soo Too(hopefully the blog title makes sense now) ). I'll save you the trouble by saying it's that small country that is landlocked on all sides by South Africa, it's in the mountains, and it exports lots of water. Anywho, I'll be updating the blog as often as I can obtain internet access with thoughts and experiences. Email may be slow, but feel free to send me emails and I will try to return them as soon as I can (I probably won't have frequent internet access). Or if you want to communicate via newman and send me a letter or even a package, you can mail me things at

Adam Santos, PCV

U.S. Peace Corps

P.O. Box 554

Maseru, 100

LESOTHO

Thanks to all for love and support!