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!