….. but my favorite color purple
I haven’t updated in a while, and in a way don’t find it necessary due to my new site in Moramanga being so different than village life in Nosiarina. More on this later, but I thought I’d leave a list of new things:
1) I let a malagasy mpanety (barber?) shave the side of my head in Ambato
2) I got Giardia 24 hours before I had to take the GREs, which is tomorrow morning (I’m also applying to grad school FROM Madagascar which is a headache on its own…)
3) It’s mango season, that’s a thing that happens every year, like, right about now
4) It’s fall THERE and spring HERE
5) I’m vegan, not for animal rights though, I’d still kill a rabbit with a big dull knife anyday
6) New beer on the island: Libertalia…. something I might even drink in America
7) V-Nasty is still my enigmatic role model
8) I’m worried that my friends will be afraid of me when I come home
9) Sundai visits in a little over a month! Mobbin’ the red island
10) There are too many vazaha (white people) in my town these days, tourist season needs to end. It’s messing with my sanity
Oh yea, and Madagascar is still amazing. I’ve met some of the most amazing people , and seen the “real” 7 wonders of the world on this island. But I miss the groves and vineyards, I’m a daughter of California, and I’ll be back in April.
leave everywhere : laissez partout 
So you traveled 100 miles (Moramanga-Ambato) to get an haircut.
I never understood in terms of finances for the ETS to have a GRE Test Center in Madagascar since very few Malagasy students apply for grad school in US (compared to France). It starts making sense to me after I read blogs of PCV Madagascar that most PCVs apply for grad school during their mid-service.
ETS doesn’t actually have their own testing center, its at the English Learning Center in Ambohidahy only a few times a year…I would like to argue the PCVs don’t start grad applications until a few months before they COS. It takes a while to get our American lives back together. In my stage, I only know a few other applying at the moment and we are next on the list to COS.
You’re right! TOEFL and GRE (administered by ETS) have been run by the English Learning Center in Madagascar. When I took GRE few years ago, the director of ETP (English Teaching Program) at the American Cultural Center (in Antanimena back then) was the test administrator. All of the test takers were American except me. I didn’t know they were PCVs Madagascar.