Safely in Mali

Hello all! I made it safely to Mali, via staging in Philly and a layover in Paris. We (all 81 of us) got here on Friday, July 20th. We're in our own little Peace Corps village outside the capital, Bamako. It's the rainy season here, and we just had our first huge thunderstorm last night, perhaps the loudest thunder I've ever heard! We're living in little mud huts, three to a hut. Our training starts each day at 8 and goes until approximately 7. Training includes health, safety, cross-cultural, and Bambara, and is mostly conducted by Malians in english. We will split up and move on Thursday to a homestay village, where we will complete the next 8 weeks of training. I don't know where I'm going yet or what language, and I won't know where my final site is for at least a few weeks. In the first homestay village, a group of 5-11 of us will be placed in the same village, but different families to ease us into village life. We'll be taking about 7 hours a day of language class, and combined with immersion, we should become stable enough in our respective languages by the time we go out to site. We had a nice cultural festival here today where jewelry and clothes were sold and made. I got some henna tatooing on my feet and hands, and picked out a nice fabric and had a pagne and shirt made. It was quite the experience. Anyhow, things are wonderful, and I look forward to hearing from you! Sorry for the lack of visuals, I'm pretty sure it would take forever to upload!