Malawi.... No, not Maui... It is in Africa.

This past week I was in beautiful Saugatuck on lake Michigan for the MacDonell family reunion. It was awesome, one of my cousins bought a giant party island (shout out to Gracie) that we all nearly died on in the waves, I covered my left arm in temporary tattoos, ate a lot of food, drank a lot of micro brews (because if you're drinking a micro brew, you aren't drinking to get drunk, you're just a conniseaur... who gets drunk) hmm... what else? Oh yeah,

I GOT MY PEACE CORPS INVITATION!

Yesterday afternoon, I was lazing around on the front porch of our rental (which incidentally smelled like cat pee... just sayin') when I got a phone call from DC. I didn't know who it could be at first, but when the caller introduced herself as so-and-so from the Peace Corps, I missed a step and almost face planted on the deck, Mike was there, he saw.

After a few questions about my application (how do your parents feel... are you still available... etc) the woman from Peace Corps told me she would e-mail me later that night if I got my invitation. So what did I do in a town with next to no cell reception or wi-fi? I skittered around making everyone in my family nervous, that's what I did.

Finally, my aunt MB must have gotten sick of me running around like a caffeniated squirrell, sat me down with her phone, and told me to work it out. I found out I would be moving to Malawi on her cell phone, and we promptly went out to celebrate.

I spent about three hours on the phone talking to friends and family having different variations on this conversation:

"Malawi... no, Malawi... because we don't need Peace Corps in Maui... It is in Africa..."

'Aint family grand?

I should give credit where it is due though, Megan and Thom know where Malawi is, and have promised to be my first visitors, because Thom's mom actually grew up there- how cool is that?

You know what else is cool? The fact that Malawi and Michigan both have Great Lakes named after them.

Lake Malawi & Lake Michigan