My first week or so in Malawi has been incredible.  The scenery is breathtaking- full of mountains, green plants, red dirt and a sky that seems more blue than anywhere else.  In contrast to Houston, the night sky is full of stars and the weather is cool and breezy.  We have gone to the market for fresh fruit and we eat traditional Malawian food for lunch on weekdays at the Polytechnic.  Nsima (pictured below) is an exceptionally filling traditional food made from maize flour.

 

Our first week at the Poly, we met several professors who are all very friendly and extremely willing to help.  Our supervisor Matthew Petney, who runs the Polytechnic design kitchen and teaches design courses, has generously offered  to teach us more LabView and Arduino, among other skills.  We have also learned a lot about the culture and living in Malawi from Matthew, who has been here since last August.  [Like the Malawi Polytechnic Design Studio on Facebook! (: https://www.facebook.com/PolyDesignCenter/ ]

This week, the Malawian interns who are working with us this summer arrived.  There are now eight of us in total, and we are living together in the Polytechnic guest house.  So far has been wonderful getting to know them, and our adventures in learning to cook have brought us together as a community (Fun fact: apparently cooking times and temperatures increase at high altitudes and we are 3000ft above sea level).  They also taught us a card game similar to Uno, which was really fun.  Leah, Christine and I decided to do Insanity workout videos to improve our poor hiking abilities and Kate, one of the Poly interns, is going to join us tonight after seeing that we didn’t pass out during the first workout yesterday.

I’m looking forward to work picking up, but I’m also glad that we took the time to slow down, adjust, and absorb the environment.  It’s even better than I imagined.