Same!

Pronounced Sa-may, will be our new home and where you can find us for the next two years. Our APCDs, our bosses, were very excited about it. By the way, they had us all draw numbers to see who would find out where they were going in what order yesterday, and we were first. Yes, they suprised us yesterday by telling us. Great people here.

This map from lonelyplanet.com has Same on it. It's south of Dili. We'll have to go over the mountains to get to it. There will be 5 or 6 other volunteers within a few hours of us, so that's good for all of us. This area is new for Peace Corps, so we're real pioneers. Yee-haw!

We talked to a current volunteer who said it was beautiful and sports were popular there. My counterpart, the person I should be working with in the community, is the Minister of Education for the district and Bekah will be with a high-ranking official in the health field. Big jobs. We'll know a lot more tomorrow.

I mentioned in the last entry that the children were from our aldeia. An aldeia is a little village. Ours is called Tankai. It's a bit off the road, a bit secluded and loud with all of the children and animals around and parents yelling for their children who should be watching the animals. The kids halimar all day. To halimar is to play. We ask them, "Halo saida? What are you doing?" and they say, "Halimar."

We went to Arte Moris this morning. It's an artist community in Dili. The people live there and make art. We may work with them in some way in the future because one of their goals now is to send out good messages through art, theater and tv. Oh, and our camera stopped working. So, we'll see what happens next. We may have to get a new one.

Here are a few more photos. The first is the three-year-old twin girls in our family. Cute as can be, but they usually shy away from us. The second is a glimpse of life in Timor. I'm shaving with lemon-lime smelling shaving cream, looking into a tiny cosmetic mirror.