A Different School Culture

            Madagascar has a different school culture, like many other things, than the U.S.  Having spent the year before coming to Madagascar teaching high school history, not to mention having spent most of my life in an American school, I thought I was prepared for a teachers life in Madagascar.  Looking at the school culture now, two years later, it seems easy and chill but that was far from the case when I first arrived.  For about the first six months it was confusing; infuriating at times.  I learned over my first year the “schedule” when things would happen or not happen and now I have adjusted and just roll with it. 

            The school schedule has to be the one thing that gave me the most trouble in the beginning.  There are many holidays in the Malagasy school calendar but what is not there, at least in my school

Walk Down Memory Lane

             As I walk down the streets of Farafangana I am reminded of my first time arriving in this town.  I sometimes see the dark empty streets of the Farafangana as they were when I was first came through here during my installation.  So much has changed during these last two years. 

            When I first arrived two years ago it was my first time in the Sud Est.  I had just sworn in as a new Peace Corps Volunteer and spent the last two days traveling with three other volunteers in a Peace Corps car from Antananarivo to Farafangana, our banking town and what would act as the staging point for our installations.  As we had made our way down we stopped at all of the volunteers