Thursday May 24, 2007

Kim says-Hi everybody. Today I went into town with Crystal, Crystal is 28 and from Juno, Alaska. We needed to pick up some supplies for our trip to the caves with Rich and everybody. (BTW, when I say our trip to the caves- it will be the Baergs and the 2 volunteers and Rich- and a couple of flashlights. Now I know some of you are drooling and some of you are gasping. It will be awesome...and yes, we will be careful :)
Anyway, it was quite a trip. First we walked about a mile to the bus "stop". An old BMer van slows down long enough for us to squeeze in the back, and really squeeze. Imagine fitting about 30 people in the church van. (Some of you might not have to imagine- maybe that's already been done!) It was pretty exciting to just remain standing without falling on the lady next to me. (Though it would have been a pretty short fall) We got into town and walked to the market to get some mandarins and carrots. Then we went to the ATM machine (yes, they do have them) but Crystal's money got sucked back into the machine. She went into the bank and left me hanging out "guarding" the machine. I'm glad no one came by, because I have no clue how to say "out of order" in Malagasy or French. She came back after about 10 minutes and said she would have to talk to her bank when she got home. Then, we went to the "SCORE", which is kind of like the grocery store in Waterville- except they don't have as much stuff. We got a couple liters of Coke (in glass bottles) and some other stuff for the trip on Saturday. Got back home fine, and now we will prepare to give our testimonies to the students tomorrow.

Jasmine says- "I saw some geckos. Then can be called lizards, too. And I hope to see some lemurs, especially baby ones. I caught a baby lizard. He was really little, but he was cute and fast. Also, there are really nice people here and I like it. Did I say that we are going to a cave? Also, we are going to go swimming, and I can't wait. I was sleeping when Zakary saw the lemur, because I slept in, but it was okay because I probably will see another one. And I will take some more pictures for you to see, and I will probably take lots of pictures so you can see all the different colors "

Zakary says -"I called one of the lizards Zakary. I saw a lemur but I didn't get to hold it. It was alive. And I saw one, too, and I really liked it, so maybe I smiled. And I know it was a lemur, too.
I saw the airplanes, too."

Brad says - It's been an interesting day again. We started out the day observing the basic and intermediate English classes. Everyone said their name and how old they were. Most everyone was 18 or older. Some of the guys that help out in the computer lab expressed an interest in learning more about Visual Basic. The copy they have is VB6 in French no less. Most of them can read and speak French as well as Malagasy. English is still not very easy for them. Let's just say our forrey into VB has gone rather slowly due to the language barier and the fact that it is hard for me to remember back to the VB6 IDE. Hopefully tomorow we will be able to get the MSDN documentation installed so that they will be able to do more reaserch on each of the VB functions available to them when I am not here. I had to come up with a project for them to do so they are working on a project to keep track of the books in the library. The lemur was cute as well it was a baby so it was really tame. Zakary thought it was really cool. Last night I was able to get connected to the internet over here. Connections are a little diffferent here than at home. Land lines are not being repaired here so the most reliable connections are of the cellular kind. The missionary has a cellular phone that looks like a regular desk phone but it also a cellular modem built into it. This allows it to be used for data connections up to about 230 kps (almost broadband speed :) The funky thing about buying internet is that you buy it in the form of prepaid cards kind of like a phone card. When the card runs out you buy another. It's different. Not the first not the last :)