helloooo again ya im writing two blogs in two days can you tell im bored? well lets see today i got up a few minutes after 6 and i thought i had overslept my alarm until i remembered its sunday. i couldnt fall back asleep after that though so i just hung out in bed till 7:30 then i got up and ate what remained of breakfast with the delicious yummy coffee creamer i got from the states (thank you!!) then everyone was out doing things and im officially out of underwear and i had a small mountain of it under my table in my room and the thing about underwear here is youre not allowed to wash it in front of people cause they freak out so youre supposed to wash it when you take your bucket bath but i had so much this morning that when everyone was gone i just filled up two buckets of water, brought them to my room and washed my underwear there and hung everything up on my misquito net. there was a lot of laundry though and it took a long time to wash and then immediately after i came outside my mom told me to do my laundry. ssooo i brought all my non-underwear laundry outside and started scrubbing that but by that time my hands were getting raw and red from all the water and scrubbing and half way through they started to bleed so i told my mom i cut myself on something and the bond finished the laundry for me so that was nice. after that i finished cleaning my room and swept it for the first time in five weeks. this is after a dozen or so sandstorms. lets just say there was a very large pile of dirt at the end. after that i worked on my lesson plan until lunch and then i came here. so i feel very ackomplished today and i have to say fairly confident in my ability to teach a whole lesson tomorrow. i practiced a few sentences in front of my mom and later im going to recite the whole thing to make sure it is understandable. for lunch my mom made tamarin juice with filtered water and it was good but its messing with my stomach right now. eating and drinking here can be tricky. americans get sick very easily off of this stuff i have been lucky so far my family does a good job preparing everything so as to not make me sick and im very grateful for that.
well not much else to report since yesterday.
okay well hope everything is going well in the states. if anyone is so inclined you can send me stuff to cook with like spice packets so i never have to eat to again! okay bye!

random blog
heeey its me again. i have been coming here alot since i re-discovered the internet! anyway, so model school has officially begun; i co-taught on friday and it went pretty well, the kids understood me at least to the extent that i got all of the right answers out of them when i asked the questions at the end. sooo much better than the micro-teach where i got only blank stares and i panicked and my french completely went away and i felt like an idiot. on friday i had a pcvf almost write my whole lesson for me but this time i ran out of time and couldnt do that so it will be interesting to see if it goes as well when i actually have to write the lesson myself, or if it will end up more like the micro-teach.

anyway, only a few more weeks of training and then i am living at my site. its actually a really scary thought. i dont want to leave the trainees and the lcfs i have spent everyday with for months theyre the only thing i know about this country so its going to be sooo much different after stag.

aaahhhh okay im sick of having to delete stag and stageires, its french and people here speak french and i speak french or usually franglais now not english and these are two words i dont even ever think about in english anymore unless im writing a blog or an email so im just going to teach you the words now so i can use them and not have to keep changing them back to english: stag means training, stageires means trainees. stag, stageires... got it? okay good... moving on...

so its like you could totally hate stag and love your site or love stag and be miserable at site cause everythings really so different. at site i wont have electricity or other stagieres or the lcfs (trainers) that i have been spending all of everyday with since day one so im real nervous about moving to site but i didnt join the peace corps for the training i joined to move to a village so thats what im going to do its just going to have to be weird for a while i guess.

thank you for everyone who has sent packages and letters!! thank you thank you!! i have received four packages so far and a lot of letters and thats more than almost everyone and people hate me for it and that makes me very happy so thank you!! thanks to you i now eat granola bars every day and drink delicious creamy goodness in my coffee every morning instead of disguisting instant watered down nescafe crap! so thank you! the letters and packages really do make me very very happy everyday :)

anyway dont know what to say.. kinda like in the states, im completely out of underwear so i guess im going to have to faire my lessives (do the laundry) today when i get back. a stagiere explained why we have to say faire my lessives in franglais and we never say were doing the laundry because here fairing your lessives means putting omo in a bucket of water and scrubbing the lessives and rinsing them in another bucket, doing laundry means throwing dirty clothes in a machine and pushing a button then throwing the wet clean clothes in another machine and pushing a button. theyre two very different processes and so they have different names even though they technically translate as the same thing.

aaanyway only eight minutes left so im going to roll. enjoy america for me!!

elcome back to the world of burkina faso!! so i just got back from site visit. it was a pretty awesome experience. it started in ouaga where i was in heaven eating nothing but pizza and ice cream and milkshakes and hamburgers and french fries and creme brulee and chimichangas and chili cheese fries and i was sssooooo happy for my three days of food heaven. we also hung out at the american embassy and met a couple of other americans who werent peace corps which was first for me. i played pool and watched american tv on a big screen tv and ate more good american food and milkshakes. we also went to a wine bar which was the nicest place ive seen in burkina. it had air conditioning and big cushiony leather couches and big flat screen tvs and expensive bottles of wine and cheese platters. i think for a while we all forgot we were in africa. oh ya and we also had a counterparts workshop where i met the person im going to be working with at site and hes actually my director and hes the best english speaker of all of the counterparts. after that they tore me kicking and screaming from ouaga up to my site. its pretty north and the landscape is pretty dry and sparse and lacking in any kind of folliage or color which is why i was shocked to show up to a lake at my village! its like an oasis it has greenery and big trees and a ton of baobobs and its really beautiful there, theres even this big rock mountain-esque thing in the distance which pretty to look at. its like living in a park where you would go to have a picnic except its in my backyard right below the sahel desert and i wasnt expecting that at all it makes me very happy :)
another thing that makes me happy: my house is stocked! i expected an empty or sparsely furnished house but its seriously stocked with everything i will need it even has a spice cabinet filled with spices and theres vinager and soy sauce and onions in a bowl hanging above the double burner propane stove and im seriously going to have to learn how to cook! there are also three or four storage trunks and theyre all filled with stuff the previous volunteer left including everything from cooking things to a ton of teaching supplies and everyday things i will need theres even two solar panels and two shortwave radios and a tape player and tapes and a power adaptor and a cot for sleeping outside and a frying pan and a desk for working and three matresses for the bed so i almost feels like one real matress, she even put up a calendar of kittens and opened it up to august and wrote "welcome to bourzanga" in the last week. do you get the picture? im completely set up and ready to go im sooo excited about living in my awesome house!
the house is in the courtyard of a family im going to be living with there are three girls and two boys i think and i think one lives next door for some reason. my parents are awesome and the dad gave me the african name which is a tradition here and my name is awa. i love my name :)
anyway, after the site i went to the bus station and threw up for the first time since i was about ten, then took a VERY bumpy ride up to djibo and watched family guy on a volunteers laptop. the next morning we biked 25 km north through the sahel desert to get to a village with no transport. we were supposed to bike 30km but the wind was pounding the entire time in the wrong direction so that down hill felt like uphill and uphill felt like dieing might be easier and the thought of ever moving again made me want to cry and mac got sick and started halucinating (seriously) so we stopped at a volunteers village who lived a little closer to "take a break for a couple hours" but mac was still sick and i still wanted to destroy my bycicle and all people who suggest ever biking anywhere ever so we ended up staying the night. he lives in a teeny village in a mud and straw hut it was pretty cool checking out the life and site of a real peace corps volunteer. it rained right before the ride back the next day which cools everything down and gets rid of the wind. it was sssooooo much easier with no wind and because we pretty much went separatly so i could go my own slow speed. i have to tell you, when it comes to seeing africa, biking alone is the way to go. i passed baobob trees growing out of lakes with communal birds nesting in the branches, and straw huts and mud huts and people riding camels and big rock mountain-esque formations and women carrying things on their heads through the bush and beautiful bright almost neon blue birds with super long tails it was awesome. the ride back was just awesome, almost made the hell getting there worth it.
anyway when we got back me and another volunteer took a bush taxi back to ouahigouya which was interesting. i had to hold my bags on my lap the whole time which made my whole body hurt except for one time when we all got out of the car to walk across a river that had taken over the road because of the rains. so now im back in ouahigouya and its kinda sad for the vacation to be over but it had to happen and at least the site visit went well and i have something to look foreward to in my village. my time is almost up and im starving so im going to go get bagettes and dip them in the nutella and honey i bought in ouaga :)

heeey so ive officially been here for a month! thats exciting... Hmmmm... i smell fried chicken... how is this possible? you have to understand ive been spending the last month eating nothing but rice spaghetti macaroni and yams and every house and restaurant ive ever been to has ever only had those things so this is actually the first time i have smelled fried chicken in a month and it smells sooooooo good i want to know where she got that chicken!!
heeey ray just got here thats cool. now im one of two white people in the cyber cafe horray.
anyway its hard to believe its been a month it seems not that long to me. but at the same time everything seems very normal to me here. my routine is, get up around 6:30, take a bath out of a bucket which is actually amazingly refreshing, stumble over to the breakfast table, say a few greetings in french then zone out as my family chats away in french or moore (i dont sleep very well here so im usually very tired in the morning) breakfast is alaways eggs in white bread and coffee, then leave for ecla around 7:30, class starts at 8. the first class is usually language and lately thats been at a professors house in the courtyard under a tree with only one other student, me, and the language teacher and we talk in french. today were language placement tests which also consisted of just talking to a teacher and he decides based on the number of gross errors in your french who hes is going to group you with. i was nervous i think i may have made a lot of mistakes but i have been tutored everyday this week so i think my french is actually a lot better than before. after the language tests three teachers came out with scrabble boards and we all spent the next hour or two playing scrabble in french. it was a lot of fun. anyway i was talking about my routine. after language its usually a technical or cultural session. a couple days ago we had a cultural session on taking public transportation and it was in the form of a skit and it was sooo freaking funny the trainers were acting out the worst case senarios all happening at the same time and they actually ended up bringing a real, live goat and chicken into the sketch it was awesome we were all cracking up. a lot of our sessions are like that, skits brainstorming and group work rarely do we have to listen to boring lectures and if we do even for five minutes we all start falling asleep haha!
anyway after the second sesion is lunch that for me lately in an attempt to not have to eat rice macaroni spaghetti or toh ive been getting yogurt, between three and five little cakes, juice that you suck out of a bag, and a mango, and today i also got sweet coconut candy which was pretty good. i usually eat that stuff at a cafe that serves egg sandwiches which i dotn get cause i get eggs every morning for breakfast, or back at ecla. there are always other people there so i usually talk with them or try to take a nap. after that there are more classes of lang, technical and cultural sessions, then i usually hang out at ecla for a bit with other trainees or head to an internet cafe and then head home. at home i may help cook, ie, watch other people cook, or play with my little brother or talk to my big brother. occassionally i get to do something really cool like watch a local soccer game or visit and hold a new little three day old baby. but usually i start to get bored after a while so i study and go to bed early after dinner.
tomorrow we are heading over to ouaga early in the morning to meet our counterparts we will be working with for the next two years. after a few days were heading back up to the sahel to visit my site for a day then im heading farther up to meet another trainee and a current volunteer. were going to hang out in djibo for a day then in the morning if were up to it were going to bike 30km to his village out in the middle of nowhere to see what an actual volunteers site looks like. it will be similar to mine i think except more camels and sand dunes, less transportation and no cell phone reception. my site is small and its north but theres regular transport to cities that have electricity, though the road for that transport isnt paved, but if you keep going to hit ouaga the capital. anyway the next day were biking back 30km and heading on a bus back to ouhigouya for the rest of training. Im looking forward to a break from the normal routine of tons of classes and training, though the whole thing will be like one big language class but at least it will be somewhere different! im excited about meeting my site my school and my counterpart and visiting the north and seeing all the camels :)
anyway thank you everyone for your letters! i havent written any actual letters yet theyre really expensive to send but i will start i promise. and thank you for the packages! i havent received any yet but i know they are on their way so thanks for that!
well this session is almost over so i will have to go for now. africa rocks! will write again after the site visit!

site announcements and the fourth!!

so its the first holiday away from the states and more importantly its site announcement day!! thats the day we learn where we will be living for the two years. my site is the second farthest north of all the new secondary ed people and i also one of only two people living with a host family. this weekend were meeting our counterparts in ouaga and then im headed back up to the sahel to my home sweet home for a few years!! im excited all i asked for was a small village with no electricity and it sounds like i got what i wanted as much as possible, in general ed people dont get tiny villages but my village only has 2000 people in it plus its north which is more rural than the south in general. im also excited about being close to ouhigouya so i can visit my current host famly a lot. Also im going to be near camels! a current volunteer said my place has some camels and the regional capital to the north has a lot of them. so other than that, its the fourth of july today and were having a party in a village tonight to celebrate america day so thats exciting. i havent been to that village before so its even more exciting for me. its funny though how we have to go all the way down to ouaga for the counterparts workshop and then we turn right around and go back up to the sahel for the site visit. i will write more when i see my site. just a few more days!!

helloooo from africa!! ya so everyone else is updating their blogs all the time so i guess its time for me too. well what can i say im here im alive and all is wel. i havent gotten sick yet which is saying a lot here. everyone has gotten sick pretty much. i am living with a family, i have a mom who i think has a liscence to be a doctor but is looking for work, i think, so she is mainly at home taking care of the kid and the house and my dad is a teacher and he runs a non profit organization for the development of burkina faso, and he owns two resturants. he works a lot. right now he is spending the rest of the summer in france to get fun,ding for his organization to get clean water and mediine to the villages. sorry this keyboard sucks and its french but i dont have time to go back and spell check so whateverr.

so i go to a lot of french classes whiwh can be detrimental to myy self esteem sometimes. its a clas of five people and i tend to be the retard of the group but im working on it. we have a big important test coming up this week which will determine the remixing of the classes so i have been studying a lt foor that and i pan on getting tutored a loot for that too.


i love the people here. they are the friendliest happiest people just about all of them are. joking around seems to be a very important cultural habit here to the point where people are just always smiling and happy and if someone tells a joke, which happens a lot, forget about it everryone is cracking up and just as happy as they can be. that true for the families the staff at the training center, the guy who just took my money at the cyber cafe, the waiters at restaurants and all the random kids i wave to on m bike, theyre all those people who are so rare in the states that are just happy and smilng all the time that everyne loves to be around. i heard about it before i came and its true the people here are amazing.

so this weekend was my first time away from ouahigouya i visited komsilga this tiny village a few miles away. it has lot of mud huts and farm animals and traditional living. the girl i stayed with has her own hut in a family compound with her own latrine i think and a hangar but the animals al sleep right outside her door so she says she has a lot of trouble sleeping. i never sleep much here anyway so it didnt bother me at all. another trainee in the village lives in this huge walled complex of housess, he has his own hut and couirtyard and latrine and when he plays his guitar all the kids show up and he has a big audience. another gir lives kinda off in another area in the village she has a traditional round hut with a grass roof and her family speaks moore. at night we took bucket baths and ate yams with sauce and talked to the neighbors while the kids all stared at the new nasara (thats me) in town, then with the help of some friendy children esorts we heded over to another trainees hut and he held a little concert for the kids and we talked and hung out in his courtyard until i started to fall asleep (it was the late late hour of 9:30 after all) then our escorts brought us back hme and i had a lt of fun blowingn up my air mattress and settingn up my teny whle all tttthe girls stared and laughed and tried to help by holding up the matress nd tent. seriousy i was blwing up the matress with an audince of about eight girls all holding onto the matress and staring at me i couldnt stop laughing. it was awesome. i listened to the sounds of animals off and on during the nght and in the morning more peple came over and i met them and tried to talk a little bit but my french still isnt very good. we then left to take a little tour of the village, visited another trainee and headed hme. im coming bck this weekend to take pictures sine my betteries were deadd. i really liked the village i think i willll be happy in mine. i asked for a small vllage during the site interviews and i am glad i did. the village seemed like a very safe and friendly place. i think i would feel very safe there whereas now in the city i dont feel like i should go out on my own at night just cause i live nears some bars and i have no idea who many of my neighbors are.

i guess i should describe my neiighborhood too since this is my first entree sine arriving. all us education volunteers live in ouhigouya which is a regiiional capital and i think a big city for this country. its in the north of the country so its all deserty. all the roads are dirt except for the main road and i think there may be only one traffic light. there is a swimming pool though and a restaurant that serves haaamburgers. i havent tried one yet. we have all of our tech and sme language sessions at ecla whiwh is a training center slash hotel i thinkk. theres electricity at my houe but no running water. we have a big cuourtyard with a well. my family does pretty much everything outside since its too hot in the house, the cooking is outside over a fire. i take a bucketbath twice a day and i do laundry by hand out of very big buckets. when my family helps me they can get really really clean.

okay my time is just about up at the cafe. i really like it here a lot ad i am realy excited to leeearn about my site on wendsay and to visit it soon after that. will write more later. burkina rules!!