First two weeks- a few Accomplishments

I did not burn down my house with candles/stove.
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I left my house everyday and talked to people.
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"Mahay" is a word in Gasy that is really really useful. It means either to know, as in "do you know how to cook?" "are you mahay cooking?" or to be good at something, as in "he speaks Gasy really well" "he is really mahay Malagasy". Also kind of can mean to understand, as in "mahay Gasy culture".

This isn't all it is used for, but it's a start. So, this week I have been declared mahay at the following things:
Fetching water
Playing soccer
Dancing
Saying helllo (in the local dialect)


This last one is probably what surprises people most - as in I'm walking down the road and say "hello/how are you/I'm good" properly and then here them say to each other as I walk away "wow! did you hear that? she is mahay hello!"

However, I'm guessing what would surprise you is not that I am able to carry water or say hello but that I am supposedly good at dancing and playing soccer. Well, me too! It helps that dancing here often looks like having a seizure while standing up. As for soccer, I was playing with the women/girls and I think my best attribute is that I'm so huge they are all scared to get near me if I am near the ball. The coach/husband of one of the women yelled "don't be scared!" quite a few times. I'm still not sure if he was suggesting that the ball isn't scary or that I am not scary, but either way I get the ball often.
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I learned that the man I had remembered (mentally and written down in notes to myself) as "few teeth/smells" is important in the local hierarchy. I have since been to his house and he has a really nice house (clean/organized/and doesn't smell!), is really quite smart and kind, and also an excellent, hardworking farmer. Don't judge a book by its cover.
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I ran into a bit of a block when trying to explain the source of earthquakes to a neighbor. He thought that maybe extreme deforestation would lead to earthquakes. Continental plates are still far out of my vocab and weren't a part of his education, so I left it as a topic to be revisited at a later date.
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I walked through/around/up/over/down to a different village with a different person as a guide Mon-Thurs this week. This made me sore. But also made me mahay a bunch of different villages, so that is good.
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By 7:30pm it seemed late to me, and by 8 I was out. Awake by 5am, actually getting up when my need to pee outweighed my desire to stay warm.
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Through a miscommunication, I ended up being given about 2kg of bananas and then accidentally buying about 3kg more from the same person, for a total of a full little backpack of bananas, one of which was over-ripe and over-squished and got all over/in my phone. It didn't work for 24hrs but seems to be back in action now. I also made friends with my neighbors dog by feeding him all the slightly mushy/bad bananas.
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I only really "showered" twice this week (once this morning at the hotel) - it was too cold! And I'm becoming paranoid about wasting fuel (long way to move a heavy thing to refill it) so I don't want to heat water for showers.
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On 3 occasions my presence caused moms to have to take their hysterically screaming children from the room.
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I made friends with a little girl who wouldn't talk to me/look at me at first. Now she just calls my name obsessively and then hides when I look at her, occasionally running up to touch my leg and then sprint away. Nice to have a friend.