Making New Friends

Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm an extrovert. To me, that means I get energy from being around a lot of people. But when I arrived at my placement, there was a lot of alone time, or one-on-one time in the first couple weeks. Not saying that I don't love "me time" but it started getting a bit lonely. I realized I needed to make friends.

At first I just wanted to sit on a street corner with a sign that said
"Help needed! Does anyone want to be my friend? I don't speak French, but I can help you practice English." I figured that wouldn't be the most productive way of making friends... and I didn't have any cardboard.

So I decided to take initiative and introduce myself to people-starting in my "back yard". There's a family who lives at Ilofav (the women's center where I live) and they have a son named Fetra who likes to practice guitar outside on their balcony, which is just an ear shot away from my window. He doesn't know, but his "practicing" was very comforting and soothing, especially in my first few days here. So finally I got up the nerve to introduce myself. I asked if I could play with him and he said yes. After showing him the little guitar I knew, I said:

"Could you teach me guitar and I teach you English?"
"I think that is a good idea" he said.

Guitar lessons AND a new friend! Win!!!

I also found great peace and rejuvination while going for walks in the community. Although I live in the capitol of Madagascar, I'm in an area that isn't to busy and allows for some stress-free exploring. On these walks, I've found it helpful to make firends with the kids (ankizi). This is for several reasons - because they (the kids) and me most likely have the same maturity level and they are not afraid to speak slowly and even "yell" words at me when I don't understand what they're saying. But I also like making friends with them beacuse they're just ADORABLE! And sometimes when I'm out walking, they'll yell my name just to say hello and golly gee I get so excited to see them!

"Namana kely vaovao!" My new little friends! We don't speak the same lanugage but I try theirs and they try mine. But it doesn't really matter what we're saying anyways, we're just happy to know each other.

I look forward to growing in relationship and making even more friends with the beautiful people of Madagascar. Here's hopin...