wow america's cold! So i'm back in america, turns out i caught some strange african disease so i'm here in washington, dc to get better. they're going to do surgery and take out a piece of lymph node tomorrow to see what kind of fun parasites are inside. awesome. I'm just worried that they may not let me come back since i only have nine months left. But I really want to come back!! I feel bad leaving my students since the school is already understaffed, i have tests and stuff to give, i have projects planned like a theatre group and a school garden that i really want to get done, i have all these vacations planned not to mention that francois and my friends and my dogs are over there. I really want to go to the ivory coast in august :( we shall see. For now, i'm somewhat enjoying america, eating at every moment i'm not asleep, feeling cold for the first time in 2 years, having REAL coffee with international delight coffee creamer, and discovering things like peppermint hersey kisses! And chocolate skittles??? And John and Kate plus eight. My family picked me up from the airport, i'm staying at a really sweet place with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen and has lots of public transport options. There's other peace corps medevacs here from other countries, and another one from burkina faso! Alexis drove up and spent the day with me yesterday which was nice. Friday after the surgery I may be heading up to spend the weekend at home in philly!! That'll be awesome i'll get to see the dogs and the house and the neighborhood :)

so most of my free time is spent considering what to do now. Best case senario, they figure out whats wrong with me, fix me really fast and send me back to africa with no problems. I have 45 days to get better and then if everyone is cool about it they will fly me back to continue working in the same village. If recovery takes longer than that and i can't recover in africa for some reason they will send me home to philly and then within one year once im better i can apply to be reinstated in the same country but in a different program and a different village. After a year i have to completely reapply to the peace corps. Well, after a year i would probably have to find another job in burkina since the odds of getting the same country are pretty slim. The whole reason, of course, that im thinking so much about all of this is cause i dont want to leave francois. well, we shall see what happens. we should know more next week.

This week is Siao, which is a big arts and crafts festival in ouaga. All the artists in west africa come to ouaga to sell their crap. I'll be alone so i know i'm going to be hasseled BIG time with people wanting to rip me off from the taxi ride on but i can't not go, theres going to be so much cool stuff there! Good/bad thing is, the banks are closed today because of some obscure holiday so I'm only going to siao with 10,000 CFA, about 20 dollars, so i can't go crazy on the buying stuff. Though I may be coming back to ouaga on thursday to pick up grant money, if so i can go to the bank and then i can go crazy with the buying stuff!!



So what else is going on. Some of my friends and I are planning on camel treking through the desert for thanksgiving, then doing a safari about a week before christmas and then spending christmas on the beaches in togo. Then I'll come back and spend new years with francois in ouaga. With a week in togo i should have about one week of vacation left to go hiking in mali, and maybe swing by and see the garaffes in niger some time before my peace corps adventure runs out. I also really want to see the elephants and the waterfalls in banfora sometime!! I feel like I still haven't done a whole lot to take advantage of my time here, but I'm planning things and some of them, like the camel treking and safari and togo vacations are starting to materialize. Also the vacation I'm REALLY looking forward to will be when peace corps is over around the end of july francois and I are planning to spend all of august and september lying on the beaches and eating pineapples in the ivory coast. That will be SO nice!!



okay well i'm going to head to siao now have fun in america land!

HAPPY RAMADAN EVERYONE!!! Actually ramadan was two days ago so happy late ramadan! Karem is the 30 (i think) day fast that muslims do where they cant eat or drink anything from 5am till 6pm, and its very difficult in this hot weather. Well the last day of Karem everyone goes to the mosque in the morning then around 10amish the prayer is over, the fast is over, and everyone is relieved and happy and they celebrate by gorging themselves until they get sick (I drank so much bissap that I literally thought I was going to throw up). Last year ramadan was soon after I got to my village so I didnt really know anyone, but this year I was with francois in his neighborhood so I got the full experience of ramadan. It's like the best possible mix of thanksgiving and halloween: you go door to door to all your neighbors but instead of getting candy you get entire meals. And bissap. Lots and lots of bissap, which is like a syrupy-grapeish type of juice made from boiling flowers. Seriously drank SO much of that stuff, and then we biked way way out to buy really good zoom koom, which is like sugared flour water (really good once you get used to it), but when we finally got there, they didnt have zoom koom that day. What did they have????? Bissap of course!! Bissap was like the last thing in the world I wanted to consume more of, but since we had biked all the way out there I figured what the hell, and we drank more bissap, and then the owner came out and of course since francois knows everyone in this country he knows the owner of the zoom koom/bissap place so he came out and greeted us with... YOU GUESSED IT more bissap!! So thats when i started to feel ill like I was literally going to throw up all over the place and we still had that long bike ride back. I didn't throw up, I'm happy to say. But to this day I still don't feel quite right. I guess rediculous ammounts of that syrupy grapey juice just isn't good for you.

So francois is on his way over to help write a new grant for the theatre project. We're still working on that its taking way longer than it should. The deadline is in four days so we'll see if this thing actually ever happens.

Okay well I just found out I'm getting a sitemate!!!! That means another peace corps volunteer will be living with me in bourzanga. Score!!

hello again!!
okay so i'm blogging again when the summer is almost over. it's now the middle of august. I've been sick for like a month I dont know what is up with that. First francois gave me a cold, and from there i got headaches which turned into a cough which turned into a fever with sneezing and the worst headache i've ever had in my life which no ammount of drugs would make go away, until i took antibiotics, which didnt work, finally I came to ouaga and took very strong antibiotics and codine to ease the pain, which worked, but i still feel sick to my stomach and dont have an appetite, and i just started sneezing again. Okay so the doctors when they healed me with strong antibiotics called it a lung infection cause they could hear crackling in my lungs but at the same time i had ameobas, which i guess caused the stomach problems. Anyway, theyre all supposedly cured and gone at this point but i still dont feel quite right. I'm going back to village tomorrow, maybe a few days of lots of sleep and relaxation (ie bordem) will do me good.

mmm i just ate a banana split

anyway, things are going very well. I just got back from ouahigouya where i talked to the new trainees about what it's like to date a burkinabe. They were more interested than I thought they'd be. We went over on time but they all stayed and asked lots of questions even after already hearing a long speech about it given by me and my friend andrea. I remember this session from when i was in training and I remember noone asked any questions. So anyway it was good.

So what have I done this summer. I've been avoiding village as much as I can, theres nothing to do and its really boring during the rainy season (thats now). So I hang out in ouaga when I can, since francois is here, and I've gotten to know his family and neighborhood friends a bit. I went to koudougou for life skills training, francois and I went horseback riding which was freaking awesome, I spent a little bit of time in kongoussi in the beginning of the summer, a week in ouaga for mid service training, and two weeks in france with my parents. France was fun but it was way too romantic to be there with my parents, I missed francois. But it was very fun and great to be in a developed country again!

So i learned something scary today. My friend has been dating a burkinabe for a year and he just got married to someone else a couple weeks ago that she had no idea about. What the hell??




hi everyone. this is cassandra's friend zach. you should come visit.




Ya that was zach. He says I can delete that but I think I'll keep it.
Anyway, I think this year I will work hard on actually getting secondary projects going. I am going to get a ton of moringa seeds and give them to my students so we can plant them and grow them together, and then I will teach them how to care for them in their courtyards and how to cultivate the leaves, or maybe we will start a school garden, or plant them around the community, I'm not really sure. Francois and I are also working on getting funding for a theatre production about HIV, and I will do an english club.

Okay Im going to go watch pochahontus. bye!!

so im in kongoussi. thats funny that i wrote about my inability to start a relationship in that last blog cause exactly two days after writing that blog i started dating someone!! his name's François, hes a beautiful man with a georgeous smile and he treats me like a princess. hes the history and french teacher at my school. he grew up in cote d'ivoire and now lives in ouaga when hes not teaching in my village in bourzanga. he makes me very happy :) ive been out of bourzanga two days and i miss him. anyway, hes been my best friend in village for about six months and i think its been pretty obvious from the beginning that we both liked eachother but for some reason he wouldnt ask me out until this last break we were hanging out at the american embassy in ouaga and i told him "you like me, i like you, for the love of god do something about this!" so weve been together ever since :) anyway, just wanted to report the good news!

i came down to kongoussi to go to the bank and it turns out there are seven other volunteers here for a birthday party so im staying the whole weekend and partying with them. last night we had meat and drinks (coke for me, beers for everyone else) (one doesnt eat meat very often here so eating a bunch of goat meat and then very good grilled chicken makes for a good celebration) and then today they convinced me to stay instead of going home to my man and we spent all day watching House DVDs and eating frozen M&Ms. life is good in kongoussi :) so i guess tonight well be partying again maybe with some more meat and coke, or im hoping to get my hands on some really awesomely good kongoussi yougurt ive been craving since i got here. they serve it very cold with bread and its amazing.

next weekend im in djibo for the big april birthdays joint party in the north! my birthday is monday im turning 25! i cant tell you how happy i am about turning 25 in africa. i feel like im accomplishing things, experiencing things and seeing things. i feel very good about where i am right now and i cant wait to spend my first birthday in africa!

okay well i do actually have to accomplish some things on the internet (ie write my quarterly report) so im going to get on that. africa rocks!! till next time bye!!

hey there! well its been five months since ive written in my blog. sorry! i will try to write more often. the bad thing is, i dont write letters or emails, i dont even have a journal and i hardly take pictures. im going to leave and after a few years i will have no memory of this place. but i read a quote that inspired me yesterday "Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly start remedying them - every day begin the task anew" --Saint Francis de Sales. so here i am, i will journal!

so things have changed a little bit in the last few months. i no longer have the happy 11 hours of teaching every week, i now have 19 hours. the students werent happy with the way the director was teaching english so they went on strike and got a new teacher, and in order for him to teach 3eme i took the two 6eme classes, so that makes 19 hours for me. i decided i really dont enjoy teaching and i dont even like those damn kids they are all like little soldiers with every teacher except for me, in my classes its like a party, the little bastards. anyway, the teachers are awesome, we setteled into a routine at the end of this last trimester where everyday at 3 oclock we would start tea and end when it got dark so everyone can go eat and sometimes we would reconvene after dinner and then the tea-taking would continue until maybe 11ish. its fun, even though i dont participate too much in the conversation. im to the point in my french where i can always get the point across but when it comes to rapid fire conversation intersperssed with local language, i still get pretty lost.

yesterday i decided to say a big SCREW YOU GUYS IM GOING HOME to the world for my eternal singleness and made a conscious decision not to see my inability to have a relationship not as a fault but as a virtue and exploit it for all its worth. being unattached at this age grants almost unlimited freedom to do adventurous things. so screw you, world, when im done with africa im going to asia. after peace corps, ill travel around east africa, spend a few months in america then im heading off to somewhere in asia to teach english. the programs are easy enough to get into for americans and they actually pay real money. awesome! im doing it. im already sad to be leaving africa. i really do love it here. i will most likely do a third year working with an ngo in a regional capital before heading off to asia. africa's an amazing place, and having at least a loose idea of a plan for afterwards makes me sad to leave, i can already imagine missing burkina lots. i will be sure to appreciate this place as much as possible while im here.

so let me elaborate on the whole tea taking process. process is definately the correct word for it. it takes hours and hours, often all day. you have charcoal, two tiny tea pots, one to four shot glasses, one large glass, a tray or plate, tea, sugar, water, and if youre lucky mint or vanilla. first you wash everything with water (noone ever skips this first step), get the charcoal hot in a little basket, then you measure out one shotglass full of tea and one large glass full of water and you add that to a little tea pot and put it over the charcoal to heat up. then you wait for it to heat up and when its boiling over, you pour the tea out into the large glass, then pour the tea back into the pot and pour it back out several more times then put it back on the charcoal to heat up again. repeat about two more times, then you transfer the tea to the second teapot, add water to the same tea leaves in the first tea pot (this is called the duxieme) and heat that up, meanwhile you add sugar to the large glass and mix it with the tea in the second tea pot, then you make the foam by pouring the tea from way up high over the large glass, then into the tea pot, over and over until theres lots of foam, then you put the foam into the little shot glasses and heat the tea (with mint or vanilla optional) over the charcoal, meanwhile you mix the duxieme into the large glass, then you pour the hot tea into the shot glasses with the foam, and serve it on the plate or platter, in order of the most important people present. its really good with peanuts floating in the tea. In america tea parties are for little girls and their stuffed animals, but here its a very testosterone driven male-only activity, and at any point of any day you are gauranteed to see groups of men outside taking tea. i have managed to inflitrate this world and take tea with my teachers daily, i have even made the tea several times, mastering the entire complicated process. i rock. they just say that my tea is a tad too strong.

so for christmas and new years me and almost all of the volunteers in burkina went to ghana! now that was fun! christmas on the beach!! it was awesome. i had kenny chesney's "all i want for christmas is a real good tan" stuck in my head the whole time. we took a 24 hour bus down to the coast and that on its own was an adventure. i used so many of the most unsightly latrines imaginable on that trip. many people resorted to going in feilds, between buildings or behind cars but i never did. we stopped in the middle of the night for about an hour at a place where we all got off and ate egg sandwiches and drank hot chocolate. i cant tell you how happy i was to eat egg sandwiches and drink hot chocolate with my friends in the middle of ghana at 2 in the morning just a few days before christmas. It was just one of those expriences i will taken with me forever. so some people actually managed to sleep on that bus ride, i was not one of them. we spent a week with a volunteer's friend who is researching sea turtles on the beach so after lounging around on the beach for several days, on christmas eve at night we went walking down the beach looking for turles laying eggs. we didnt find any and then we got tired so we stopped by a fishing boat and we all fell asleep on the sand. we then woke up at midnight, said merry christmas and walked back. christmas was spent on the beach and eating seafood and then a party at night. i got a little sick so i went home early at the party but i had a great time. after christmas we went to a second beach and stayed at an amazing resort where we all got a faux mudhut literally right on the beach with a resaraunt, bar, gift shop, bonfires every night. it was all for 5 dollars a night! ya, it was freaking awesome. so new years was spent there, specifically watching a really bad magic/hiphop show. but the whole trip was amazing, ghana is definatly a more developed place than burkina, and the beaches were beautiful.

so recently ive traveled around a bit, visited djibo, dori, kaya, ouaga, and a little village east of ouaga. thats most of the central north and central burkina, next i want to visit west and south, in the bobo, banfora, cote d'ivoire region.

there are now two new volunteers in kongoussi, my regional capital. i went five weeks once without leaving my village and i was going INSANE so after that ive been leaving every two weeks on the dot to kongoussi and the two volunteers, the electricity, big stores, and internet. it was a very wise decision.

well i cant think of anything else to say. i love africa, my site, my collueges, the other volunteers. im excited about my plans for the future and im working on appreciate every moment i have here. i miss america a lot sometimes, and the people there, especially lex, my best friend. but i will see everyone again someday, once africa's done with me and i'm tired of traversing the world.

oh im going to france in the end of june just got my ticket. im so excited cant wait!!! the developped world woohooo!!!

bye!