Corie follows mom as Elementary School Teacher

Dad here, with update from a call last night: Corie talked to the elementary school principle and they agreed that Corie will start teaching an environmental class once a week in the school. She also said that this school has no toilet and Corie wants to help procure the funds (under $200) to build one. She'll start working w/ PC to get funding and said it shouldn't take too long because under $200 gets funded automatically. She says that the villagers are motivated and she see lots of potential here. That could be because of the extra time villagers have due to the short rice season on this side of the island. It starts to rain in December and weather allows a 3-month growing season, then the harvest. Very different than her previous village where they grew rice the entire year. She's also involved with the village's Eco-Tourism group that meets every Tuesday. They have built two primitive bungalows about 100 yards from Corie's house. They hope to do more, add signage and develop a brochure which Corie is excited about helping them create it. She has met with the Cuban and French man who are developing the upscale resort about 2km from her village. Eventually they hope to do a tour that will allow guests 2 nites in the posh resort and 2 nites in her village bungalows. They also want to buy a cart and a cow to pull it and set up tours in the village, seeing the women's craft work and generally experience the village life. They told Corie that European tourists are very interested in this aspect. Corie is acting as the liason between these 2 guys and the village to get some projects started. She is meeting lots of people and went to church last week which helped her meet even more. People are generally friendly, more used to having foreigners around and less skeptical of white people than she's experienced in the past. Probably because of the adjacent Ankarana Reserve Park and the foriegn tourists that it draws. It seems to her like there are many more varieties of people and tribes represented in her village. She's taking lots of pictures and will try to post them when she goes to Diego (banking town) over Christmas. The PC house that she will stay in Diego has a dvd player and computer, but no Internet so she'll find a web cafe to post photos. We asked her about her food and said she's been eating dried shrimp, tomatoes, beans, onions and of course...rice. She's not sure if she'll be called to Tana, the capital to assist in training for the 35 Environment PCV's that were recently evacuated from Niger and placed in Mad. To sum up her experience so far, she said she feels INSPIRED. "It seems like the Feb. Mad PC evacuation was almost supposed to happen so that I could get relocated in a place that I could do more with the people."