Dannielle's Post

Before I cover today, I have to mention something pretty awesome that happened yesterday that Paige failed to tell you all. It was the first night the boys decided to cook for us girls. It was quite the experience. We were all very impressed! Not only was the food really yummy, but they ventured out and cooked something none of us had ever consumed before. We had garlic mashed potatoes! We have all had that…but I was just really excited about those. So good! Good job, Kai. Matt took on the sautéed vegetables. Also very good. But the best part of the whole meal was the entrée. The boys made us shark! It was really good! Cooked to perfection, as far as I know anyway. Good job, boys!

Okay, now on to today…

It was a fairly eventful day here in Manakara, Madagascar. I have to say it was my favorite day thus far. The day began with our last day of language training. Mika, our language teacher, stayed for lunch. We cooked rice and beef with coconut curry. It tastes better than it sounds. Well…it was okay. Mika liked it though, so that’s what counts. We also tried to make him his favorite dish, cassava leaves. That didn’t go quite as well. It’s a good thing we looked up cassava leaves on Google before hand, because apparently they’re toxic if eaten raw. We were all in the kitchen with the bag of raw cassava leaves, not sure what to do with them. We decided that the best course of action would be to ask the expert. So we asked Mika to help us out. We boiled them until the water was completely gone, leaving this stuff that looked like freshly cut grass in the bottom of the pan. The taste was what I would imagine freshly cut grass to taste like too. We asked Mika if he enjoyed our cassava leaves. He said “no.” We all laughed. He said it was okay though, because it was our first attempt. But we ended the lunch with his favorite American snack, chocolate chip cookies.   I think that helped remedy the situation.

After lunch we went on our “field trip” that we had been planning on all week.  And the planning went as far as “we’re going somewhere Friday, and we’re going to call it a ‘field trip.’” So we decided to head to the beach, and we walked. And walked. We ended up walking roughly 6 miles.  It was beautiful. On our way back we walked on a red dirt road that runs parallel to the beach. Along the way, we walked through a few villages. It was such an interesting experience. Honestly, it’s really hard to describe what I saw. So just go with the mental image you have in your head, and know what I experienced was ten times better!

I’m not sure anyone has mentioned the coffee here in Manakara in our blog. It’s definitely worth mentioning. There’s a restaurant here called “Om Snack.” We’ve been a few times. There’s a woman who works there, who seems to be there every time we go. Tonight we learned her name is Fonjy (Fon-zee). Laura and I, the ones who truly appreciate this coffee, have been planning to ask Mika to ask Fonjy what kind of magical coffee this is. So we remembered to ask Mika on our last day of training and were able to ask Fonjy tonight. Instead of just giving us the name of the coffee, she offered to take us to the market herself, buy the coffee, and then bring us back to the restaurant to make the coffee with us! So we ALL look forward to that tomorrow. 

That's all for now. Veloma!