Hey Everyone,

As I'm sure most of you know I will be coming home soon. Yay! The past month or so has been pretty crazy with finishing things up at school, going away parties, packing, and whatnot. I left my village for the last time yesterday, and will be leaving South Africa on Thurday. I'm pretty stoked. It's been an interesting two years. Some things have been super awesome while many other things have been terrible, but overall I've enjoyed the time I spent in South Africa and am glad I did Peace Corps.

My host family threw a going away party for me two weeks ago. It was pretty awesome. They invited people from the village and there was an official ceremony with an itinerary and everything. There was singing, dancing, speeches, more singing, and then lots of food, which is all typical of any South African event. And oh, my host mom bought me a traditional South African dress to wear at the party. It's not the most attractive dress (lime green and red), but everyone loved that I wore it.

Last week I passed out teddy bears to all 200 students at the lower primary school. I got the bears donated from the organization www.motherbearproject.org. It's a US organization that sends knitted teddy bears to organizations or schools all over the world that work with kids that are affected by HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately most of the kids that live in rural villages in South Africa are affected by HIV in some way. We have a lot of orphans who usually live with their grandmothers after their parents die from AIDS, and there are even some kids in the village that were infected with the virus at birth by their mothers. So all the kids got a bear, and they loved them. It was really fun handing them out to the kids. I will post some pictures later. The bears are knitted by people all ove the country who send them to the organization, so if you knit and would be interested in making a few bears that would be awesome and there is information on the website.

Ok, I'll see you all soon!

Later,
Maggie