Site Announcement!

These last few days have been really exciting. First, we had our 4th of July party on Friday. It was a lot of fun and we had a lot of good food that reminded me of home. It also reminded me of how much I miss the everyday devices which make cooking at home easy. I think I spent 3 hours chopping and peeling in preparation for the party. We did have a local band, called Laffi Bala (pictured here) which is Mooré for "is it good" I think, and we danced a lot. Towards the end, some local people came by and joined us in the dancing. The only downside was 3 days later over half of our training group was sick, so we are thinking there was something wrong with the food. It tasted great at the time, though. :)

I spent the night in a village called Bogoya F on Saturday to get a taste for village life. It was really nice and really different from how we are living in Ouahigouya. At our host family's house, the tv is normally always on and we can communicate with a hybrid French-English concoction pretty easily. In village, I was lucky to find someone who understands French and English seemed out of the question. This led to a lot more awkward silences, but it was okay. Aside from the huge, man-eating spiders that seemed to occupy Joanna's house, it was really nice.

I bought some fabric this weekend called a pagne. I am not sure if it's because of the pagne or something else, but my mom came out of her room on Sunday all dressed up and said, "Amy, take your picture with me" ( in French, of course). She had me put on my pagne and gave me a wrap for my head and taught me how to sit for pictures. It was really cute and a little surprising. The picture is to the left.







Yesterday was a big day for everyone because they announced where our sites are. The way they do the site announcements is there is a big map of Burkina they put on the wall. Someone will read a small clip about the site and then they will announce who is placed there and that person comes up, finds their site on the map, and places a little cutout of themselves on the map (pictured here). Aaron and I are going to Titao. It's actually close to where we are now in the north. When we flew here a month ago, we met a Peace Corps couple at the Paris airport who were returning to Burkina to finish their service. They were on our flight and we chatted with them for a little bit. Well, it turns out that Aaron and I are taking over that couple's site. Crazy. Everyone says they have a great house so we are excited to visit next week.

We played soccer yesterday against a local girls team. I am pretty out of shape but it was really fun. We ended up tying. I think we are also going to start playing volleyball against a local team. That will be lots of fun.

Mom and Ron, we got your packages yesterday. Thanks so much! It was our first piece of mail and it totally made our day. If anyone feels like sending a letter or a package, feel free. We can always use more peanut butter, granola bars, and mixes (sauce, cookie, drink, anything).

USA! USA! USA!

Happy 4th of July everyone. I hope you have something fun planned. As for us, we are trying to go as all-American as possible here. We are grilling hamburgers and eating the mutton that the chief gave us a few weeks ago complete with fruit salad, potatoes, and even a little watermelon we were able to find at the marché today. I heard a rumor that some local drummers are coming to play, which isn't American, but it is way cooler.

The other day we got a cookbook compiled by former and current PCVs who have created some recipes with local ingredients. I cannot wait to start cooking. Ok, really, I cannot wait for Aaron to start cooking so I can eat and I will start baking. That's right, you can bake here. There are instructions for making a dutch oven along with recipes for breads, cookies...all the good stuff.

We had a class yesterday on how to use the black board here. It was really interesting. The students do not have textbooks so their notebooks are their only resource for studying the material so they are very picky about what they write. This means that you have to be really organized in how you present information on the board so that they don't fill up their notebooks with stuff they don't need. Also, there are specific sections of the board that students will copy everything you write, other sections for where students can work problems, and a section for where you outline the days activities everyday, and a section for equations and new definitions. We also learned how they do basic math operations here. The division is a little different and some of the numbers are written differently. It was just really fun and interesting.

Thanks to the Clem family and Mama Duck for your messages and prayers.

Birthdays, 4th of July, etc

First of all I would like to say happy belated birthday to MG and Ron and happy birthday today to Andrew. Monday was Aaron's birthday and with the help of some current volunteers I was able to scrounge up some little gateaux and made some chocolate icing for a birthday cake. I also got some of the other trainees and training staff to sing happy birthday in a bizarre combination of French and English.

So one of the helpful/bizarre/embarrassing (pick your adjective) things about living with our host family is that they seem to have a 6th sense when it comes to the latrine. Everytime we use it, one of our host sisters is lurking nearby somewhere to get in there and clean as soon as we exit. Because of this, our host family stays pretty up to date on our digestive health.
Wednesday morning, Aaron wasn't feeling great so I went out to greet our host family and let them know (which of course they already knew). My host mother and one of my sisters kept telling me to go do something or prepare something for Aaron (I'm still not sure what they said) but I just figured they were reminding me of wife duties to go take care of Aaron so I just said ok and went to eat breakfast. A little while later Aaron joined me and our host sister told us that they had called the PC doctor for him. We were a little confused by this, but we just said "ok, thanks" and kept eating. No more than 5 minutes later a PC car rolls up and one of the staff hops out and says "ok Aaron, we take you to the doctor". It was a really bizarre/confusing morning for us.

The thing about host families is that they really take your safety and health into their hands. So when we get sick, they get really worried. It's really sweet but can be difficult as well. Our host dad keeps saying Aaron has malaria, which he doesn't, and I am not sure how to convince him of that.

Moving on, everything else has been good. Next Tuesday we find out where our site for the next two years will be. And the week after that we get to go visit our site. I am hoping to go spend the night with one of our GEE (girls education and empowerment) trainees who lives in a village outside of town this weekend to get a feel for village life. Joanna's boyfriend and parents if you are out there, I am talking about Joanna. She's doing great but she broke her bike this week. Also Lauren Nouis, if you are reading this you should see if you went to school with Joanna. She is from Colorado Springs, she is tall, and she is just like you in all other ways. So maybe you went to school together or are long lost twins separated at birth or something like that.

Ok, it's time for language class. Thanks to Aaron's parents and my parents for calling. It was great to hear from you. I didn't have time to talk about our 4th of July plans, so next time.