i am here

hey everyone. sorry this is going to be horribly typed. i am in a computer lab on a french keyboard that looks 100 years old

i made it safely and thus far love everything my host dad is a farmer so i live in a round hut on a farm we have goats donkeys and these chickens that wake me up at five every morning i eat millet and sauce or rice and sauce every lunch and dinner my host family is great but i am still trying to figure out the number of wives my dad has i sleep outside my hut that my roommate and i share my language classes are at my house in the yard and our baby donkey always eats my teachers papers i named her sally i will post pictures later

the people are amazing and so patient the kids think i am the most interesting thing ever and carry your stuff everywhere and they are so adorable i have so much more to tell but my time is running up

i miss you all and please write letters

hope to update more soon

The Final Days In America

I have made it safely to Philadelphia and somehow managed to get all 80lbs to the hotel. Now it's strewn about in hopes of being repacked in a more efficient way. My hopes aren't too high of achieving that goal.



Before I leave I wanted everyone to know that if you want to send a letter or something small but you don't want to pay a ton of money to get it to me you can send it to my dad's house and he will throw it in my monthly package that my step mom is hopefully sending. The address is:

5113 E Kings Ave

Scottsdale, Arizona 85254

Thanks again for all the thoughts and prayers. I leave tomorrow for Niger and will arrive Thursday evening. In the meantime I'll be eating all the American food I can get my hands on!

My Last Breakfast Burrito

Here we go, the day is here. I can't believe how quickly it came. After many weigh ins I have hit the official 80 lb limit with food and supplies and just a few clothes. Now my bags just sit by the front door awaiting their departure. Thankfully my dad and step mom are preparing my last breakfast for me...BREAKFAST BURRITOS!!!!

Before I go I wanted to say thank you one more time to everyone and provide the mailing address everyone has been asking for. So here we go:

THANK YOU!!!!!

Stephanie Chance, PCV
Corps de la Paix
B. P. 10537
Niamey, Niger

I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with all of you and can't wait until these blogs are more interestingly filled with stories of camels and language mistakes. :)

Until then....au revoir.

...But I Really Love Breakfast Burritios

The past few weeks have been to say the least difficult. It's consisted of a lot of goodbyes and a ton of packing. Luckily I have the world's greatest little sister and she has been helping me get out of my apartment. Unfortunately, she can't help me with the say goodbye to your friends and family for two years part.



The goodbyes kicked off across the country in South Carolina. I lucked out and my family moved our annual family trip up a few months and I got to say goodbye to most of my South Carolina Chance family in person. We rented a beach house in Charleston and I got a lot of good family bonding time in. Also, a special friend from NC drove down and spent a day at the beach with me. The week went really quickly as most vacations do but I'm so happy I got to go.

I got back worked three days and then before I knew it, it was my last day as an auditor. It was definitely a bittersweet goodbye as I really adore a lot of my coworkers and clients (I'm going to use this time to make the shout out to Jamie at Kona that I promised..but I don't want Steve to feel left out either so hi Steve) but being funemployed has been pretty great too. After work I drove out to California to say goodbye to my mom, car, and dog. Time went very quickly, I enjoyed one last wonderful Southern meal of chicken and dumplings and then I was on my way to the airport after a tearful goodbye with my mom, step dad, dog, and step sisters.

Since I accepted my invitation I have been saying I will not be having a goodbye party but after realizing how little time was left and how many people there were to see I gave in and had a see ya later party on Saturday night. It only made me realize more than I already had how wonderful my friends are as many of them have made trips from Tucson and across the valley to wish me well. At the end of the night a few of us headed over to Super Burrito for my last late night breakfast burrito. For anyone that doesn't know I LOVE BREAKFAST BURRITOS! Sadly, I think this may be something I miss the most as far as food goes. (I still haven't given up on figuring out a way to introduce the breakfast burrito to my village.)



So with only four days left before I leave for Philly I'm trying to somehow pack only 80 lbs and trying to pull myself together long enough to say goodbye to everyone else.



I leave for Philly on Monday and spend a couple days there getting shots and meeting my future best friends then we all board a plane to Niger. I'll blog one more time before I go to leave my mailing address etc. In the meantime, thank you to everyone that has helped me get to this point. I'm so grateful for the support I have received. Please know I love each of you.