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Hey all,

Just wanted to tell you I'm heading back to site the day after tomorrow, so expect another long gap in communication.

I'm now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! Don't forget to write PCV instead of PCT on anythign you send to me starting... well, probably three weeks ago but oh well. We were sworn in at the US Ambassador's house. He used to work for Peace Corps, as did his wife. Now he lives in an amazing beach front house with a swimming pool...

And I went bee keeping last night! We put on big suits and went out in the dark. African bees are a little harder to work with than American/European bees since they haven't been bred to be docile. We smoked them to get them kind of dopey, and then opened up the hives and looked at the honey. My group didn't end up finding any good honey to harvest in the two hives we looked at, but the other group did. It was probably the best thing I have ever eaten in my life.
Looking at the hives was really interesting. We were able to see where fresh and capped honey was, where the brood cells were, and the difference between drones and worker bees. We also saw some comb moths that were infecting one of the hives and the cells where new queen bees were laid. The whole time you could hear the bees buzzing around your ears and bumping into your head piece. When they landed on my gloves I could feel them vibrating. We watched one sting Andy's glove, which was interesting to see.
The main problem with African bees, and why they are deemed "killer," is that when one stings, it releases a pharamone that attracts other bees to sting also. So when you're beekeeping and you get stung, you have to either get the heck out or cover yourself in enough smoke to mask the pharamone. I didn't get stung in the bee suit, but once we took it off and were eating honey I got stung twice. I'm still standing.

My break in the big city (relatively speaking) has been nice, but I'm excited to go back and try to get used to my real life. Please keep up the snail mail, since it's been really nice to get your letters and packages. Lots of people have asked what might be good to send in a package, so here are just a few suggestions:
Dried fruit, magazines, anything just-add-water (soup mix, boiling bags, pasta, powdered sauce mix), any kind of bar (Lara, Cliff, Luna, Chewy, etc.), nuts, granola, juice powder, books, any kind of yummy snack you can think of that won't rot in the mail... Just nice notes from home are also really, really, really nice.

Fo wati do (Until next time).