Getting to know Orealla

Hi all... we're having troubles getting all the pics we wanted to load online, but this will at least give you a flavor of what our town and the tarantulas inside our house look like. :)

We're heading into the rainforest!

Hi all! Our orientation is complete and now we're headed to our site. We're still not sure what house we're living in, so our address remains: Orealla Village, Guyana, South America. :) We'll update the blog/newsletters whenever we get internet access again (maybe a month?) If you're curious, head over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/54808715@N00/ to check out a photo collection! Enjoy the rest of your summer!

We have an address!

Hi All!
We've arrived in Guyana! The pics above give you a snapshot of the past few days... our moving truck across country, the types of boats around here, and a few of the students we've met. (We start practice teaching this week!)

We still have some unknowns about where exactly we will be living but if you mail stuff to our village, it will get to us. Our address is as follows:

Thomas Brand/Carrie Vander Zwaag
Orealla Village
Corentyne River, Region 6
Guyana, South America

We are currently writing this from a small town called Bartica, and we arrived here as a group a few days ago via a crazy ferry ride. It was completely packed and we had to haul luggage up over the side and then scramble up the side of the boat as it was starting to move away. There was essentially no room to stand or sit, and some of us had to sit on top of luggage with feet hanging over the side of the ferry. Did I mention it was 5 and a half hours long?? :) We made it anyway and now we are relaxing a bit. We spent the last week at a college dorm in Georgetown (the capital of Guyana) where even there the electricity was sporadic and the water even more so. Bucket "showers" were quite common. The humidity is quite extreme and we are all constantly sweating. That being said, it is more mild than most midwest or east coast summers (just no airconditioning).

It has been quite an experience so far. The food has tasted great (although portions are small), and our accomodations have actually been much better than we thought they would be. However, our ultimate location of Orealla will be quite different. These first three weeks are primarily training for our teaching positions that will start on Sept. 4. We have heard many speeches from various officials from the Ministry of Education as well as from security officials, the U.S. Embassy, as well as others. Bartica will start to give us a glimpse of what it will be like in the interior. Bartica is known as "the gateway to the interior" though it still has somewhat of a "city" or town feel. Hey, they have internet!! (sort of--doesn't work so well, but hopefully you all get this).

We are staying healthy aside from numerous bug bites and a bit of heat rash. Don't worry, we are taking our malaria medication and sleeping under mosquito nets!

We should have access to e-mail for the next two weeks, but when we get to Orealla, we have been informed that we have no internet, no phone, and can only communicate with the Field Director in Georgetown via radio. We will be 4 to 8 hours (by boat) to the nearest town with better communication facilities. There may be a speed boat that can do it in 2 hours, but we will need to look into that. We will try to send another update (at least one) before we head out to our site in the interior. For map buffs, Orealla is on the eastern border of Guyana with Suriname and about 50 miles south of the coast, but it doesn't show up on most maps. Google search is probably best.

Take care, and we will keep in touch as best we can!