Training

Bonjour everyone! We have just finished our first week of training (except for 4 hours of language class tomorrow). Everything is great so far. We are adjusting to the heat and getting pretty good at bucket baths and using the latrine.

On Saturday we met with the chief here to get his okay that we live here for three months. We have pictures and hopefully we can post them this week. Sunday was our adoption ceremony where we were adopted by our host families and moved in with them. Our host family is really nice. Our host father is a math teacher and can best be described as a jolly, Santa-like man. Our mom is also really sweet but she does not speak a lot of French so we have a lot of awkward silences. There are five kids at our house and most of them are really shy and just giggle when we talk to them. Our family is pretty well-off and we were shocked to get there the first night and see they were watching a dubbed episode of Prison Break.

The Burkinabé people are incredibly kind and hospitable. Greetings are really important here and can take up to 10 minutes. It is not a simple "hello" like in the states. A greeting here goes something like: "hello, how are you..how is your family...how did you sleep...how is the work...how are the kids..."

Aaron and I have learned enough Mooré to greet our neighbors as we ride our bikes to class everyday and they normally just laugh at us, but I think they like it. I cannot express enough how nice the people are. The latest example is that I was having lunch with some other trainees and when we left, one guy forgot his bag. We were already a few blocks away when a man from the cafe came honking at us from his moto with the bag.

I tested into the very beginner French class but my French is really improving. It is hard not to improve when almost all of our classes are in French and we live with a family that does not speak English.

Fun Fact: Burkina Faso has the 2nd highest rate of diarrhea among PC Volunteers of all the African countries. Yay.

Just as a closing note, while we are having a good time and making some great friends, life here can get pretty tiring. Studies show that PC Trainees experience stress levels equivalent to someone who just lost a family member. It is hard to communicate and gets really frustrating, a lot of the food is hard to eat and sometimes makes us sick, and you never get a full nights sleep because of the heat (a fellow volunteer with a thermometer said her room was around 100 degrees). But we hear that getting mail from home can lighten your whole week. So, if you have some time, please send us a letter or email (we prefer a letter) during these next three months. We would love to hear from you. Tomorrow we are going to get cell phones so we will post the numbers when we get them.

We love you and miss you all!