AIDS highway

As of right now, September 11th, I'm in Antananarivo the capitol of Madagascar. I just finished a week long training seminar at the Peace Corps training site and I now have the day to spend before headed back to my site tomorrow. That last few weeks have been full of random adventures and I think I've probably forgot about most of them. On September 2nd we had a bike and rickshaw race in Tamatave to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS. Therefore, the two preceding weekends a group of us road half of the 100km stretch each weekend to stop at all the towns and talk about HIV, techniques to prevent, as well as encourage people to get tested. It was both great and exhausting. Getting little towns to gather large amounts of people to come listen to us was exhilarating. This is all good and all, but after we arrived at our hotel room for the night (right on the beach by the way), we decided (myself and 3 other PCVs) to buy 90 Mr. Boom gum packets. This little gum things come with a little sticker tattoo. We had the brilliant idea to put all ninety on the chest and back of a fellow PCV. It was some good homemade entertainment, but if you are at all curious, I can hold 25 pieces of gum in my mouth at one time. Though I don't encourage it, it's rather disgusting but quite worth the end result.

Come the bike race, after helping set it all up by doing whatever was asked of me (I even helped hand sew briefly these bag thingies--can you imagine it, me sewing by hand? No worries though, I still have all 9 digits).

I'm sorry my time is almost dead, I'll be back to update this, and to keep you hanging on the edge of you seat, myself and another volunteer were helping with the rickshaw race and I can't even start to describe my outfit in adequate detail. I hope to finish this soon as well as post a sweet picture of me in the outfit of a lifetime.