It is winter here in Lesotho and it is cold. Just the other day I woke up and there was snow on the ground! Of course it was also the one day the sun has come out this week and so it was all melted by the end of the day. I have moved into my new place and have been getting to know the people in my village. I still do not have a language tutor yet, but I am working really hard to find one. At least keep pushing my supervisor Ntate Poshli to help me find one. The organization I work for now is called Mpharane Community Support Groups. Up until the other day I thought it only consisted of my supervisor. We do not have an office and majority of our meetings take place our front yard. My supervisor is also my host father. His family consists of 3 children and his wife. One of their sons is their own and the other two are orphans. So far I have been to a few meetings. These groups that my supervisor helps with are called Savings and Loans groups. A selected few from that certain village get together and basically share each other’s money. They get together and they buy “shares” which can range from 1 share=10 rand to 1 share=20 rand. They are allowed up to five shares. Once they have gone through the group and everyone has purchased their share, they move on to paying loans back with interest. If you have borrowed money you can pay the interest only for two months, then on the third month you have to pay the whole loan back in full. Once they have gone through everyone that needs to pay loans, they ask who in the group needs a new loan. They have books to keep track, every person has a number in the group that is associated with their book. Of course these meetings are only in Sesotho. Can last for about 3 hours, so by the end my head is hurting. Some of the groups have a goal, for example one of the groups I went to is saving up to buy egg laying chickens so that they can then sell the eggs to the community. However none of these groups do anything for the community. It is an everyman for themselves mentality here. I am not entirely sure how I am supposed to help these groups. Especially since the majority of the people in these groups are 55 and up. I am supposed to be working with youth from the ages of 10-35. My supervisor says these people need to know about HIV/AIDS too and that is why I am supposed to help teach them, but I am concerned because I have found especially with the older generations that they are very set in their ways, and I am also much younger so why would they listen to me? I will have to figure that out I guess. I have basically decided that I am going rouge. I have meet my counterpart only once and haven’t seen her since. I finally meet with the youth the other day to discuss what kind of groups they want to start. The problem with that those is the younger kids also follow them, so when I ask what they want they just want to play, when I will be doing games and teaching them soccer and net ball etc., but I also have to teach them life skills and that will be difficult if the younger children also follow. Not that I don’t also want to help the younger children, but they are bit young for the concepts I am trying to teach and I will already have to dumb it down so that my students can understand. It is also sad because the differences in education from my rural village to those in the town is absurd. I have a 12 year old girl who is currently in 2nd grade and speaks little to no English from my village, then we had my supervisor’s son and his family come to visit from town and he has a 12 year old daughter who is in 7th grade and speaks very good English. The varying degrees of education is ridiculous. Schools in my area just do not have any basic equipment either, I went to one of the schools I will be working at and meet some of the students and they told me they want to play net ball and soccer, but the principal came up to me and said they do not have the equipment for the students to play these games. My next goal is to figure out ways in which I can get the equipment either borrowed or given to the school so that these students can have these types of sports to play. I definitely have my work cut out for me. I have also started teaching dance at the local youth center in town of Mohales Hoek. We had our first session yesterday and only two people and fellow PCV Taylor showed up. But none the less it was still a fun time, I taught them the basics to Ballet, Jazz, and some contemporary. I am excited to see how this will grow, there is a lot of interest in dance here and especially learning other types of dance. I have had a lot of down time this past week, it has been cold and rainy. Here in Lesotho because most meetings take place outside or in a stone building that has no heat, when it gets cold meetings are cancelled or no one shows up. Even if it is just overcast, not even raining, people still won’t show up. I have read the first Game of Thrones book that past week, which if you know me that is a record. That book is over 700 pages and I am very slow reader. So far I have read 3 books since in country. Two fairly large and one just for fun. The second book at almost 1000 pages so it will be interesting to see how long this one takes me. Life at site is more relaxed than training. It’s nice because now I usually wake up around 8, lounge around and can take my time. Usually make coffee and breakfast. Meetings aren’t usually till about 10am, since most take place in my front yard, I usually do not have to go anywhere. Then those can last for a few hours, and then we can go back to doing whatever. So I have do dishes a lot, washed my underwear and socks the other day, just kind of organized my place a bit better. I am also excited because I no longer have soot falling on me. Peace Corps came out and put this like foil paper on my roof so that it falls on that and no longer on me or my things. My house now looks like the inside of a space ship, but that’s all part of the fun right?