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!!