Finals Week

11/28 - WOW, I am back from finals week on the East Coast. It was an incredible week that was very productive and a lot of fun. We took a Taxi-Brousse, which is a city-to-city bus system here out to Tamatave. After 7 or so hours, upon arriving in Tamatave, we catch a taxi to our hotel and our taxi driver tells us that the hotel is too dangerous and brings us to a different one. Not a terrible place and Tamatave seemed like a cool city but we didn't really explore much because we were going to Foulpointe beach the next morning.

Last Monday we got another Taxi Brousse that was overly crowded but the ride was only a couple hours. We settled into our villa bungalow that was literally right on the beach and relaxed for the rest of the day. The remainder of my 'finals' week was spent with a similar routine. I would wake up relatively early, although an alarm was never set, and work on my ISP paper for a while. Everyone would get up; we would go get 40-cent soup at a hotely (picture coming) and some bread or possible a fried banana that costs 5 cents. Then get back to work for a little bit. Every morning, our study break would be tanning on the beach and swimming!!! Foulpointe is on the East Coast like Vatomandry (where we went early in the semester, with the big waves) but the difference is that there is a huge coral reef that surrounds the beach and keeps the water calm. Afternoon would be more work and usually a beer or two for me with a possible nap. We also had a plethora of fresh fruit ranging from litchis that are just coming into season to pineapple, coconuts, papaya and more. This process was repeated for the week with a few days that were special but that is coming in the next post.

On the last night, a bunch of South African miners who were working in Madagascar moved into our hotel and were celebrating the end of their term here. We ended up talking to some of them and drank for a while; they had some tips for my trip to South Africa coming up. Also met some Peace Corp volunteers, which was interesting. Next morning we caught a couple Taxis back to Tana, and in case you were wondering, 9 hours of travel on a crowded bus and a very windy road, after only a 3 hour drunken nap, while very hung-over, is not as much fun as you think.

Overall, it was a pretty amazing week and a great way to finish up a stellar month of November.