Salama everybody! Long time, no post. Sorry for that. We’ve been very busy and tired.
We have now been on Madagascar for three weeks! A lot has happened during these three weeks and I’ll try to summarize it in to a fairly short post. Sorry if it actually turns out to be a bit long. If you don’t feel like reading it all, then just scroll down to the bottom and you can see al the pictures instead.
Excited to finally being on our way!
The first few days here in Madagascar, we stayed in Antananarivo, which is a really long name so we just say Tana instead. We stayed at FKTLM’s youth center where Emil, one of the other connect students, is going to stay. After a few crash courses in culture and safety, and exploring Tana we left for Antsirabe where we’re having our language course. We are still here at this moment, by the way. We have now had language course four hours a day, five times a week for almost three weeks. We’re finishing our last course on Friday and we’ll have had 60 hours of language course by then!
We're ready to explore Sabnam!
Playing "Slå på ring" with some adorable kids in Sabam. That was a lot of fun, both for them and for us!
The Malagasy courses have been very intense and at times we’re totally lost on what’s going on. We have learned a lot of useful things and some not so useful things like "nororaiko ianao" which means “I spit on you”
We’ve been to the market a few times and tried out our bargaining skills in Malagasy. That didn’t turn out so well… We usually end up paying the full price because we either didn’t understand what they’re saying or because we just gave up.
Bargaining isn't easy, and it certainly isn't easier in Malagasy!
We had a visit from some of the other Hald students who are living in Tana. They came for a short visit which was very nice. The last night they were here we went out to eat. This was an interesting and tedious but yet fun experience. And speaking of food, we have been terrible at cooking dinner here. We usually end up just eating instant noodles or cereal for dinner, or we go out and by something. The few times we have made dinner it has been rice with vegetables or spaghetti with vegetables. We haven’t gotten in to the Malagasy cuisine yet, but hopefully that will change.
A classical dinner; rice and vegetables
One of our Malagasy teachers Nina, have invited us to many different things. She invited us to her home where we met her husband and four wonderful kids. We played games, talked and had a lot of fun! We also got the opportunity to visit her English class. We met some of here students and we got to tell them about Norway and they told us about Madagascar.
First time we took a local bus was when we went to a village with Nina. We got to see how they live there and it was very fascinating. We were only 30 minutes from centrum and still it was so different.
Nina and her wonderful kids! We were trying to take a group photo but the camera tipped over...
This last weekend there was a big celebration of NMS and FLM. They celebrated NMS’ 150-year jubilee on Madagascar. There was a big celebration that we were so lucky to be able to attend. In the fashion of big celebrations, there were a lot of fancy food and a lot of speeches. There weren't enough places for everybody, so they had to make a new table in the back, behind everybody else. That was actually quite nice because we got our own little tent and we had a great view and a lot of space.
We also experienced Malagasy church for the first time, or at least half Malagasy. The service was held by NMS and FLM together so the service was a mixture of the Norwegian and Malagasy language.
As you can see, we had a great view from our "VIP" seats
This is it for now, and hopefully it won't be too long before the next post.
Mandrapihaona!
