February has been a pretty fantastic and exciting month here in Burkina Faso. As usual, things are going really well here. The nights are still really cool and comfortable. Needless to say that the hot season has yet to arrive, but I have faith that it is nipping right at our heels.

School has been going really well for me. My students are really becoming very interactive in my classes. I honestly believe that some of them are really starting to like school. Then again I have started to bribe my classes with different things each week if they are well behaved and complete their homework. This is not at all a good thing to be teaching my students, but at this point I honestly just want to them to actively participate in my classes—do their homework.

One of the bribes that I used to get them to complete their homework was an entire 2 hour open room discussion on the U.S. along with a book that I have of Illinois. I had one of the best times in a very long time just chatting with my two classes. They of course were fascinated by the U.S. and everything that we do. We did a lot of comparing between the U.S. and B.F. The students that this was the greatest thing ever since they could better distinguish the similarities and differences between the two. They were super excited to learn about how we do farming in the U.S. When I showed then the book on Illinois and the saw the fields, they were completely blown away that one farmer had a field that large and then even more astounded when I told them that farmers have more than just the one field. It was really a refreshing look on the U.S. seeing things through their eyes. Oh by the way they thing that white tailed deer are one of the coolest animals ever.

Tim had to shut down his lab the last week of February because the heat during the day is too much for the type of computers in his lab. He has talked with the administration and put a little pressure on them to fix the A/C in the lab. I am still amazed that by tying into the electricity in the computer lab for the new building they sent a surge through it and burned up both A/Cs.

Our Country Director, Shannon, came for a site visit the 16th. She walked with us and got to see some of what Boulsa has to offer. She visited the school with the Principal, Tim and myself. She was very impressed by how clean Boulsa is compared to many other places. The community here does a fair job of picking up the used black sachets. Shannon also got to meet with the Vice Principal of the school and the money man. They all of course loved Shannon and loved even more the chance to talk about their school and all the wonderful things that the school has to offer to the kids.

In the afternoon, we accompanied Shannon to a 50th anniversary tour celebration in

Namtenga. This is site where Mike, a former volunteer and president of Friends of Burkina Faso, served out his two years. During his service here, he was part of a well digging stage. He and many of his friends were charged with the job of digging wells in villages that needed them. Mike said that he was able to dig around 25 wells in his two years of service. That is quite a good number to have completed in 2 years and even better; one of the wells still has water in it 30 years later.

The celebration in his village was an amazing sight to behold. The energy in that village and the love that they have for all things Peace Corps was a HUGE boost to all of our morals. They had a welcome party which was practically the entire village there to greet all the volunteers and Shannon. They had masked dancers performing for us. The kids made American and Burkina flags and sang a song for us. There was a different group of men who played instruments and danced as well. We also got to visit the women’s traditional weaving center. They make some of the most beautiful cloth I have ever seen in my life.

The day after Shannon’s site visit, Tim and I traveled to Ouaga for the SOFANWET tournament. This is a small international softball tournament held every year in Ouaga. Peace Corps had a team and we played 3 games. Unfortunately, we did not win a single game, but we had a great time playing. Tim pitched two of the three games and he was a pretty good hitter. Me, well, I got onto base several times, and I had a good hit down 3rd that the baseman caught. It was a great weekend to just be us. We do not get the luxury of just being Americans and blending in very often, so this was a heaven sent. Many of us attended the banquet dinner following the tournament. Some of us participated in the raffle. David won four different items, Michael won a necklace and I won a vase and a 24 pack of Heineken which was shared with my teammates. Good job team Peace Corps!

The end of the month was passed in Kaya with our other volunteers working on Camp Glow. The camp is really coming together. The kids are going to have such a great time at this camp and they will learn so many important things that will help them with the rest of their lives.

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the long delay in posting an updated blog. We have been experiencing some difficulties with our Internet key in Boulsa and we are just busy. Whenever we find a free moment to post the blog the Internet key decides it does not want to work. Luckily we finally got the Christmas Blog and the January Blog up :)

January has been pretty good for both of us. We are both rather busy with school. Tim is busy teaching the students how to type on a computer. These students hunt and peck all the time. I am relatively certain that any five year-old in the US could type faster than these kids. After two weeks of using the typing program the students started whining that this was boring and they wanted to continue on to something else. Tim really did not want move on to something else because the students had not learned what they needed to learn. I told him to have them cover their hands and type without looking. Tim thought that was a pretty great idea. Now every day of class, the students have to type the following sentence at least five times: The quick brown fox jumped over the very lazy dog. Needless to say the students are not particularly thrilled to have their hands covered up while they are typing. It’s actually quite comical to watch them try and slouch down in their seats far enough to look at the keyboard.

As for me, I am busy teaching my sixth graders how to calculate the area and parameter or a circle, round numbers, compare two numbers and the basics of fractions. The circle was a breeze. They all memorize the formulas by the next class period. Rounding numbers was a little tricky for then in the beginning. They had a hard time remembering the rule of 5 or greater and you round up, but after a blackboard filled of examples, they finally got it. Comparing numbers was one the best lessons I have ever given. I explained how < and > were the mouth of a crocodile and every crocodile would rather eat more food than less. Of course I did a couple of great demonstrations for the students were I turned some of them into birds and one student into a crocodile. The “crocodile” had to choose the group of “birds” it wanted to eat. All of my students think I am insane now, but I bet you they will never forget how to compare numbers.

My seventh graders have been busy learning how to draw and calculate the volume of cylinders and prisms, multiplying positive and negative numbers, factorization and development, and exponents. They had some trouble learning how to draw perspective drawings of prisms, but after a week of practice, they were back on track. The multiplication was really straightforward for them once they memorized the rules. Factorization and development was one of the easiest chapters for them. I was able to complete the entire chapter with them in 2 hours and that included 30 minutes of exercises. Our current chapter is the exponents. There was some confusion in the beginning between the difference of doubling a number and squaring a number. After a little explaining and several examples everyone caught on. They love figuring out scientific notation.

Tim went to the IT meeting at the end of January. The committee got a lot of things completed. If you would like to check out the website for PCBF it is maintained by the IT committee. Peace Corps Burkina Website. I had a VAC meeting the last weekend of January. The meeting went very well. We were able to get several accomplished with our meeting. We also held elections at the meeting. I am the new President for VAC. Emma is the new Vice President. Althea is the new Secretary.

Tim and I are trying to schedule town meeting for Boulsa to inform them about Camp Glow. Our school’s Secretary is our counterpart for this project. She is going to help us do everything for this camp. We will post more information about Camp Glow soon.

All and all life is going pretty good here in village. We are starting into a very busy time. We have Friends of Burkina Faso in country right now. A site visit from our Country Director as well as our APCD scheduled for next week and March. Tim and I are playing in a softball tournament one weekend. Then we have a meeting for Camp Glow another weekend. I have another VAC meeting. Tim is trying to get another IT meeting scheduled and we have the end of the second trimmest at the end of March as well as our Close of Service Conference. WOW! Talk about being busy. We still have to find time to give exams during all of this as well!

Pictures to come in 2 weeks and February Blog!

*Sorry for the delay in posting blogs. The Internet has been a little unreliable.

The first trimester of school is officially finished and we are glad to have reached Christmas break. We have been busy grading the last of our tests and checking with student s that we wrote down their grades correctly. I have had a half of my student ask for exceptions since they didn’t reach the required 50% to continue in my class. It was ridiculous. I gave them a chance for extra credit every Friday for a month and only about 10 took it. All you needed to do was watched a movie and write a little summary of it. So, there are no exceptions, pardons, or extra points in my class. Becky’s students seemed to get the idea that they needed to study. One Friday, there were more than 40 students from Becky’s classes that wanted to watch the movie. Unfortunately I had to turn a few away because I ran out of space in my lab. I hope that the movie night is that popular again, because it is nice to see success.

We just got through Christmas, which was fun and hard at the same time. We missed home a lot, but the people in Boulsa were great. A couple of our neighbors gave us chickens to cook. There was one that was ready to be cooked and another that was still alive. The live one was a bit of an adventure. Becky was the one who answered the door and as soon as the neighbor left, she started to yell for me to come and grab it. Of course neither of us knows how clean a chicken, so Mr. Rooster got to relax outside for a night while we waited to ask Nathanial to clean him for us. He ended up tasting pretty good.

Christmas in village was interesting. Everyone gets dressed up for Church then go visit their neighbors. The kids were very cute in their Christmas best. The girls had on matching dress and the boys were wearing three piece suits. The town was very busy and there have been a couple of huge market days.

We spent a couple of busy days in Ouaga trying to get work done for the Peace Corps. I don’t know how successful it was but we did try. I have spent the last two weeks fighting a never ending battle with my lab. Most people would have thrown in the towel by now as a plea for mercy. Hopefully things will smooth out soon or I think that Becky may put me down.

New Years in village was uneventful other than having to listen to the neighborhood bars blast music the entire night. I thought that going to bed at 1 was ok, but not here. When I got up at 5am they were still going strong.

This year’s cold season has been much cooler than last year. At night it is getting down to the low 70’s and we are cuddled together under our blanket. During the day it is only getting to the mid 80’s and is wonderful. Taking a shower is interesting. The water may be warm but then we are freezing right afterward. It seems like the cold season might last longer than last years as well. By now it was starting to heat back up. Hopefully this hot season won’t be as bad as last years, but on the bright side, there is A/C in my lab now.

School is starting back up now and we are looking forward to the second trimester. Becky has a test scheduled for next week and I am looking forward to teaching practicals so that the kids will stop complaining about theory. Typing practice here we come.

Our trip to Egypt is all planned out and we are getting excited for the trip. It will be nice to get to see the ancient wonders and to have something other than rice and sauce be reliably on the menu.

We’re starting to look forward to our COS (close of service). It is nice to think about home but the time here has flown by. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were just getting to Boulsa and starting to teach. We still have a lot of stuff that we would like to get done before we head home. But with only 4 months of teaching left it really puts into perspective how much time we have left.

Surreal has been doing well. She seems to think that it gets cold at night, so decides to climb in bed with us. This is a nightly battle since she tries to take up the center half of the bed with Becky and me on either side of her. We thought sleeping in bed with Desi was bad. Surreal has taken bed hog to a whole new level.

Hope you all had a great holiday season and can’t wait to spend it with you next year.

Pictures to come later--2 weeks

Tim’s voyage to Ouaga with the server was successful. He was able to get to the technician without too many problems. He had to pay a 2000 cfa fee for transporting the server on the bus. The technology fees are sometimes a little outrageous. A bus ticket to Ouaga costs 3000 cfa. When he finally arrived in Ouaga, he waited around at the bus stop for an hour with the school's accountant waiting on the technician to show up. The technician never showed up, so Tim took a taxi to the repair. After a brief review of the server and talking to Tim the technician decided he needed to keep the server and run diagnostics on it. The accountant Okayed that. Once the technician figured out the issue with the server, they would call the school and get the work approved.

Tim had a pretty good time in Ouaga. He was able to hang out with a lot of PC buddies and have good food. Unfortunately, his voyage home was not the most pleasant time. Since he didn’t take his bike to Ouaga he had to use a taxi. He caught one at the main street and road to the bus station. The taxi man helped him get his bag out of the trunk and drove off. Tim went to purchase his bus ticket and found out that his wallet and phone had fallen out in the taxi. Damn. He explained what had happened and the nice ladies selling the tickets said no problem to just pay for the ticket in Boulsa. Tim borrowed someone’s phone at the station to call his and ask the taxi man to bring his stuff back, but no such luck. In the ten minutes it took Tim to do all of that, the taxi man or another passenger had found the phone and wallet and taken it. The phone was turned off and unreachable. As you can imagine Tim was not a happy camper. Luckily he only lost about 8000 cfa, which is about $15.

School for the past two weeks for me has been interesting. My seventh grade class had their first test two weekends ago. Sadly they did not heed my warning of them studying for the exam. Only 25 of the 115 students passed the exam. Most of the students that redoubled from last year passed my exam. The one who didn’t improved her grade by 6 points from last year. I found it pretty funny that after I gave the tests back, one of the redoublers, Moussa, told the students close to him “I told you you have to study for her tests.” The look on the rest of the students’ faces when Moussa said this was a look of disbelief especially when he pointed out that all the test questions were the same as the homework problems, just with different numbers. Hopefully now that they know how my tests are, they will study a little more/better for the next exam.

One week after I gave my seventh graders their test, I gave my sixth graders their first test. Good God I have never heard so many kids complain about a test in my live. This was before they had even taken the test. They did not like the idea that I was only giving them an hour long test. They were insistent that one hour was not a sufficient amount of time to complete the test. I asked them how they knew it wasn't long enough for the test. I asked if they had seen the test. One student said yes. I told them that was great and they would get a zero for cheating. Yeah that made the student retract their yes very quickly and the rest of the class just laughed at them. The day of the test finally arrived and all be a monkey's uncle, one hour was more than enough time for them to complete the test. Most of them completed it in 45 minutes. I told them one hour was plenty of time!

Aside from giving and grading tests, class has been continuing on as usual. I really enjoy my seventh graders. They are very calm and listen to what I say. On the other hand, my sixth graders are really trying to push me, but that's normal. I have two hours of tutoring a week for my kids. They seventh graders really take advantage of the extra help that they can get and the one on one time with me. My sixth graders are still not sure about the whole tutoring thing.

Last week I did have quite a surreal moment. I was chatting it up with the school's truancy officer and one of the new teachers at the school. The new teacher is a first year English teacher. He was complaining about how rowdy the kids are and how sometimes they don't listen to a thing he says. He had one kid put a small rock under his shoe and he would use his foot to scrape it across the cement floor whenever the teacher would begin to talk. I felt bad for the guy so I told him some of the battles I had to face last year. At the end of the how thing I look at the new teacher and told him “Du courage!” This just made me laugh because that's what I got told all last year.

Tim's server has returned from the technician and is working now so hopefully his lab will be open in a couple of weeks. The school had someone out this weekend to look at the AC in the lab. Now both of the air conditioners in the lab are up and working! Next step now is going to be getting Internet to the high school. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for us.

Tim's classes vary from being well behaved and fun to work with to they need beaten with stick to get them to shut up. He is giving his first test next week to all of his classes. That is going to be a lot of work to correct with over 600 students this year. He is going to try and make his tests harder this year to weed out a few more of his students so that he has class sizes that are manageable.

Our weekend in Ouaga was a blast. We did so much this weekend that we need a weekend from our weekend. Friday we got into Ouaga and talked with our holiday teammates for the competition on Saturday. We got plans worked out for the teams which was great. Tim and I relax a little that night and had a milkshake at the Rec Center.

Saturday was a whirlwind. At 9 a.m. We visited Seb's widow and gave our condolences >with several other SE volunteers. Afterwards a group of eight of us headed to SIAO. This is the international art fair. We were blown away by all the beautiful things that were for sale. We spent about 2 hours there and bought two carved chairs, a little hippo stone statue and a mud cloth painting. All and all a great shopping trip and best of all I didn’t have to carry a thing ;) After SIAO we headed back to TH to meet up with our respective teams and help prepare for the party. The party was a huge success! One of my favorite parts was Emily's turkey dress. The food was all wonderful and of course the company was great. Lots of fun memories were made this weekend.

We have survived our first two weeks of teaching. This year seems to be running a lot smoother for us. The administration is going out of their way to make sure that they are providing us with anything that will make our jobs easier. The Censeur even scheduled our classes so that we have three day weekends! Needless to say both Tim and I are feeling pretty good about our last year here as teachers.

I am teaching two classes of math this year: one sixth grade level and one seventh grade level. I’m still not sure how my two classes will behave this year. I have a sneaky suspicion that the sixth graders are going to be little hellions. As for my seventh graders, I am lucky that I have some repeaters from last year who can talk to the new one and tell them not to try stuff with me. It only ends with me getting mad and them getting reprimanded.

I have decided to continue on with my Peanut Gallery this year. It worked so well last year that I couldn’t think of any other affective way to get the daydreamers to pay attention. I have already had peanuts in both of my classes. One of my seventh graders was a little peeved at being called a peanut and having to sit on the floor in the front. He even had a talk with me after class because he hated it that much. After hearing his side of the story I told him this: If you do not like being a peanut you have two options. One you pay attention during my class and do not fall asleep. Two if you hate being a peanut I will simply send you to the school monitor and he can discipline you. Well needless to say now he is going to try very hard to pay attention during my class, but if he does not, he has said it is ok for me to put him in the peanut gallery. :)

The only other moderately entertaining story I have has to deal with my sixth graders and their homework. I assigned them all the homework problems at the end of the chapter on Thursday and told them they were due on Tuesday. They stared complaining that I had given them way too much homework. 11 homework problems is not too much homework. After about 5 minutes of their whining, I finally said enough! I told them that 11 homework problems was not too much homework, especially since it was due on Tuesday. I then told that if they wanted to continue to complain that I would make the homework due the next day, because then it would be too much homework. As you can imagine 90% of the class quieted down and the other 10% were quickly hushed by the others. Amazingly Tuesday when I collected the homework, only one kid had not completed the assignment.

Tim has seven classes again this year. His schedule is a lot nicer this year. The Censeur really worked on trying to condense Tim’s classes. Last year he would have an hour class then two hour break follow by another class. At least this year he will be able to do more of the secondary projects that he is interested in.

Thus far, Tim has only gotten into a few “battles” with his kids. He is having some trouble getting the kids to take his class and him seriously. They do not like to listen to him at all. This as you can imagine is a big problem, especially when you have 80+ students in your class. Tim has gotten the permission from the Censeur to make the kids do P.E. when they don’t listen to Tim or when they talk back to him. Tim is a little excited about the prospect of making the naughty kids do suicides or up/downs. He knows that after the first time he makes a class participate in his P.E. class, they will more than likely become model students for a few weeks.

Oh Tim is also going to play the Peanut Gallery game this year. Two of his eighth grade classes are my two seventh grade classes from last year. He broke out the game with then on Thursday because a student fell asleep. The students were a bit surprised that Tim plays that same game, but its also familiar. It should be pretty interesting to this year because over have the school will be participating in the peanut game. Its even better because some of the other teachers know about the game and they continue with the game by calling the kids peanuts.

Tim is still working on trying to repair the server. He replaced the motherboard, but now he thinks that BIOS needs to be flashed. Unfortunately the floppy diskette is corrupted and the A drive on the server no longer works. Tim is not at all happy about this new series of problems. He downloaded the BIOS and put it on a thumb drive, but the server is not able to boot from thumb drives. Now Tim is being forced lug the 30 lb server to Ouagadougou. This wouldn’t be such a big deal in most places, but here transport is not the nicest form of getting from one place to another. Tim will have to board a European castoff bus that will be completely packed with people; more people than there are seats. Then the bus will be overloaded with motorcycles, bicycles, furniture, house hold items, chickens, goats and sheep. Then the overloaded bus must traverse 56K of pothole ridden dirt road. Then its another two hours driving on a paved road and he will arrive in Ouaga. Then the fun really begins as he will have to negotiate for a taxi to take him to the transit house. I imagine the negotiation will be a lot harder than usual since he will be traveling with a big computer. Good Luck Tim!

Surreal is doing very well. In all honesty, she is a little pistol. She loves to play games, especially when it is bedtime. She goes to school in the afternoons when I offer math tutoring. The students are very intrigued by our “American” style dog. They find it very hard to believe that she is actually a Burkinabe dog. They love to watch her do tricks. The administration at the school just love to say high to her and shake her paw.

As far as the weather goes its still not too bad out. The temperature hasn't really been too hot at all. Of course we still break sweats when we bike anywhere. Compared to last year the temperature seems a lot cooler. I don't know if we have just adapted to the weather better than we think or if it is cooler this year.

One thing that has been a little weird is that it is still raining here. Last year all the rains had stopped by the first week of September. This year we are still getting some showers. Its nice though because the temperature drops so much when it does rain.

Summer blog 2

Tim's Time at Training

It's been a couple of months since we got back to BF and things have been pretty busy for me and slow for Becky. After flying in I headed out to work training for the new volunteers. There are almost 80 new trainees and we were moving to Koudougou. It is one the largest towns in BF about an hour south of Ouaga. Unfortunately most of the trainers and staff had never spent time there. It was hectic trying to find the stores that the trainees were asking for. After about a week, we had a list of a few restaurants, a couple of grocery stores, and an internet café for everyone to go to. Training itself was pretty busy. The trainees just started model school and were stressing out over having to teach in French. I had to teach a couple of classes as a demonstration, then they started teaching. They were doing a good job and it was interesting to see how they started and where the took the classes. They would sometimes teach a lesson I would have never thought of or thought wasn't practical, but it worked and their classes seemed to understand the ideas they were trying to get across. I also planned a couple of other technical sessions on IT setups/options and a session on Positive Deviance.

The work hasn't been too hard it is just difficult to get back into the habit of working from 8 to 5. The new trainees are a good group through and I can't wait for them to swear-in. There are 22 new teachers, 7 of which are IT teachers. The group is much different than our group last year. Most of their experience is in end-user things like Excel, graphic design, and such. There are also 4 women in this group. Quite a bit different than our group of all guys who have been working in tech rooms trying to fix broken things.

Becky was there for the last two weeks of training. All of the trainees were getting pretty excited about being done with training. It was very interesting being on the other side of training and watching them. It brought back some good memories of the last weeks, particularly Becky's last language test. During her last interview, she spent most of her time trying to explain Harry Potter to someone who has never heard of the story and has drastically different ideas about magic/wizards. It must have turned out OK because she passed her LPI. She spent time talking with the people who hadn't made language level trying to calm their fears. She gave them the same advice that we got last year, that you'll learn a lot more in the month that you're in site by yourself, and that it comes a lot easier when you're in site because you have to speak French all the time and there isn't an American buffer.

We had our mid-service conference in the middle of August. It was basically a glorified doctor's visit with a one day meeting where we got to talk about our “feelings” on our service thus far and what we hope for the next year. Becky got reelected to the VAC, the student council for volunteers. It was nice to get to see everyone again. It was the first time that we had seen everyone since January.

After mid-service, we went to a tree planting in Dori. It was a bit of a hassle for Becky and her friend Lorena because they were in charge of recruiting volunteers. Getting hold of 80ish volunteers is not easy. We are notorious for not answering our phones and refusing to commit to anything. The tree planting went better than expected, but was still an event that happened in BF, interesting to say the least. Buses getting stuck, another trying to tip over, pee breaks every 45 minutes if not sooner, and planting almost 20,000 trees. Overall opinion of tree planting: SUCCESS.

Swearing in was a great time this year. The ceremony was at the new American Embassy. The First Lady of BF came and gave a speech. The Embassy is beautiful and the refreshment after were wonderful. Even the weather cooperated and was wonderful.

Becky just had her 25th birthday. It was the best one she has had in the last couple of years. It started raining in the morning and then stayed cool the rest of the day. We both went and got out our hoodies since it was only 75 degrees out. We got to use our new camp oven and I made a stuffing pot pie thing and we had a bottle of wine. Becky was Queen of the Computer for the day so I suffered through Cougar Town, True Blood, and Julie & Julia. She got phone calls from both parents which was nice. Now she has all the scuttle on both families. She is such a gossip hound. :P

NB Thanks Matt for fulfilling Becky's B-day wish.

Hello everyone

Its been a while since we last blogged so there is a lot to catch you up on.

May was the last month for regular classes. Our school wanted grades turned in by the 15 which the kids loved. Tim helped an English teacher at out school with the last month of class. He got to listen to their final projects. The students were given topics in the beginning of the year to research and write a final paper on in English. Tim had quite a few students visiting our house because they needed help translating their papers.

In the beginning there was some confusion on the students parts because they thought that if they wrote the paper in French Tim would translate it all into English. He broke their hearts when he would send them home and make them work on translating it. Translating the papers was quite interesting to be sure. There were times when both of us would be working on translating one sentence because it used an idiomatic phrase. The students didn't quite understand why a translation just can't be word for word. Tim explained to them about fluidity and that word for word translation doesn't have that. They seemed to understand that idea but didn't know exactly how to execute it in English.

I also helped one group translate there paper. Lets just say I was completely floored when they handed me print-offs from the Internet and had circled paragraphs and numbered them for order. When I question them what was this, they said well this is our paper. Here is the first paragraph then the second is on this article and so on. I was dumbfounded and didn't know how to explain to a bunch of sophomores that you can't do that. Trying to explain academic integrity was an interesting feat. They didn't understand that they couldn't use whatever article they found off the internet as their own. They told me that they had found it so it was their work. It was a long day explaining to them that they couldn't do that. I was able to get them to redo their introduction and first paragraph correctly with original writing, paraphrasing and quotes. When those two rewrites took them 3 hours to complete they told me that they were done with my way of writing because it took way to long. So they returned to their direct translation for their paper.

As for my class, well it was pretty interesting to say the least. After I gave the class a final exam, which only a third of all the kids passed, we had a game week. I brought in a bunch of activities for the kids: word search, suduko, geometry bingo, Izzy, I Spy jigsaw puzzle. The kids had a blast. They all really loved bingo. It took them a few times to caught on, but once they learned that if they got a bingo they won a sticker and got to be a caller, the game was on :)

During the last couple of days for class, I would go into class and have a general chatting session. The kids really got into this. They started asking really interesting questions. One student wanted to know how agriculture worked in the U.S. They couldn't believe the way we do ours versus their way. Here everyone does subsistence farming. They also got really interested in the way the U.S. Government works. Congress was really an interesting subject to then and the process that is used to get a new law in the U.S. They also loved learning about the interesting things that some of our Presidents did. Of course Barak Obama is still their favorite, but they also really liked Abe Lincoln too. They thought George Washington was a pretty interesting guy too, but they think his hair is funny.

At the end of the school year, there is a teacher party. Ours started at 7 a.m. With a soccer match. Tim participated in the match. He didn't do half bad either. He was instructed to attack the ball and not the person. Tim just apologized and said that he was used to American football not European football. The game ended with Tim's team wining. He was pretty stoked about wining his first soccer game in Africa.

After the match, all the teachers went to the orphanage in Boulsa. Every teacher had donated 1000cfa to buy soap for the kids. After everyone gave money, we were able to buy 2 entire boxes full of soap for the orphanage. As you can imagine they were very grateful. We received a tour of the orphanage. It was a pretty surreal experience for me seeing an African orphanage. I can't really explain what made it so unreal. It was like I was watching a movie back in the U.S., but I was there. When you watch a movie that depicts a third world orphanage, they do a pretty good job of it. The metal cribs all in a row was probably the most striking thing I saw there. It was a really good experience to go and see the orphanage and meet the people who run it.

After the orphanage, all the teachers and spouses went to the school for lunch. While all the women, including me, were busy preparing the lunch, all the men were having tea and playing games. Cooking lunch with the Burkinabé women was pretty interesting. They got pretty rowdy and started joking around which made the time pass pretty quickly. They of course all made fun of me for how I cut up onions and tomatoes. They tried to imitate my cutting style, but that just ended up with them cutting themselves. The riz gras was finally ready to serve around 2 and boy were the guys excited to have something to eat.

After lunch everyone went home to sleep and get ready for the big party that night. We were told the party started at 8 so we showed up at 8. Everyone else kinda

trickled in for the party. I believe our principal finally got there a little before 10! Dinner wasn't served until midnight. We were not informed of this late dinner so we were both famished and exhausted by the time the food got there. We quickly ate our food, took a spin around the dance floor and called it a night. WOW! It was a long day :)

After school was finished, Tim spent most of his free time studying for his CCNA exam. As for me, I was lazy and relaxed. I read a couple of good books and hung out. Tim and I took a mini vacation May 28-30 in Ouaga. We used this time to just relax in an a/c room and watch a couple of movies. We also did some souvenir shopping.

May 31-June 5 we were up north for training of trainers. Both Tim and I are so excited to be trainers for the new volunteers that are here. We had a blast at the training event. A lot of our friends are trainers too so that made for an awesome time.

When we got back to site, it was a whirlwind. I was so busy getting everything prepared for our vacation home. There was so much to do and I had only 5 days to do it before I had to be back in Ouaga for VAC. Luckily Tim and I got everything done that we need done for the trip just in time. I headed to Ouaga and Tim followed me 1 days later.

June 15 was an exciting day. Tim, Emma and I were on the same plane. Once we got on the plane it was like stepping forward in time 50 years. The trip home was absolutely amazing. We ran pretty much none-stop the entire time we were home. Tim played a lot of golf. We did some shopping. We ate a ton of food. Each of our families had reunions, so it was great to get to see so many people. We got to visit with friends too. I had a couple of bridal showers to go to too. Oh we also participated in a golf outing on our 2 year anniversary. Tim won the bull's eye trophy and I won woman’s longest drive. Tim also got his CCNA certification! Going home was wonderful. Its pretty hard being several thousand miles away, but coming home made everything worth it.

Now we are back in country and continuing on with our second year. Tim is currently helping out at stage and I'm in site. He's having to work hard each day from 7:30-5:30. Me on the other hand, I am whiling away the time in village. I have been busy reading books (3 thus far), cross stitching (just finished the second bib), taking Surreal for lots of walks (trying to get her leash trained), and visiting with all our friends. They really love hearing about everything we did back home. They are particularly interested in golf and how that all works.

Well until next time. We miss you all and hope everything is going well.

Congratulations to Chance & Mary C.

Brian & JoJo

Curtis & Julie

Everything has been going pretty good lately. The hot season finally broke last week when it rained for the first time this year. It was wonderful. At night the temp got down around 80 and the daytime high was only in the mid 90s. We have been living it up with cold water and good nights of sleep. It is nice to go through a day and not sweat the entire time. With the rains it has started to green up around here. Our moringa trees have started to get much more bushy. The Burkinabe are worrying about malaria because of the rains.

The school year is winding down and everyone is getting excited about that. Becky just finished giving her final exam to her classes. I think that everyone involved is pretty happy to have finished the year. Now she is getting ready to start game week.

I have had a couple of meetings about my lab. The first was with the professors. The meeting started off with them bitching for an hour about not getting paid enough, which is not usual but stupid considering they are some of the best paid people in Burkina. When we got around to the lab, they were being about as unhelpful as possible, but they were demanding to use my room to calculate their grades. After coming up with every excuse they could think of for not wanting to help me, they said they would wait and see what the parent's association would say at their meeting. I was not surprised but still pissed.

The meeting with the parents was quite the adventure. I was the only professor that was there, along with the school administration. There were about 30 parents who ranged in age from late 20s to early 60s. Of course, the administration had to sit in front on the teaching platform, but then they made me sit up there with them. Not exactly where I wanted to be. So front and center of the parents, I try to act like I'm paying attention while the whole meeting is conducted in Moore. Watching the Censeur and Proviseur try to explain computers in Moore in hilarious. There is absolutely no vocabulary for it and the words they were using just made me want to laugh. Afterward everyone came over to my lab to take a look around and saw where the problems were and why I was asking for help. I turned on a computer and wrote a couple of sentences in Moore and that thoroughly impressed them. After the meeting finished, Censeur told me that the parents had agreed to help out by having every student pay a 1000cfa technology fee. That is 2 beers at the bar or a beer and a plate of rice and sauce with some change left over. It was nice to finally get some help from the community.

After the meetings I left for a training in Ouahigouya, where we had are stage. The training was over a method of influencing a community to solve it's own problems, called positive deviance. Basically it means that in every community there are individuals or groups of individuals who are more successful with the same resources. The training described how to get the community to decide which problems it wanted to address and then how to find the people who were successful in spite of the problem. To practice we visited 3 communities, and were trying to increase the rate of girls enrollment at school. It was an interesting exercise if not the most effective because of time restraints.

We have started to have some clothes made here by the local tailors. For Becky it has been interesting to say the least. Her tailor is either extremely busy or forgetful or a little of both. Becky will drop off some cloth to be made into a shirt or skirt and the tailor will say to come back in a week. Week passes and she goes back; “Not finished, come back tomorrow” Next day still not done and Becky gives her a couple days during which the tailor decides to go to Ouaga for vacation for a week. This is how the getting your clothes game is played in B.F. After she finally came came back it took another two weeks to finally get everything, and only one of the things fit, so back to the tailor is was. There is no just going to the mall in search of what you want. (Becky swears her tailor likes to play hide and seek with her)

Surreal has been doing good, but I think that she might be a little racist. She doesn't like it when Burkinabe come over to the house and will go hide under the bed. When our PCMO visited she didn't come out for the entire two hours that he was at the house, not even for treats!! Otherwise she has been doing good. Becky says she's getting too pudgy and doesn't like it when she flops in her lap. Surreal has been pulling guard duty until about 4am then she starts trying to sneak into bed with us. Some days this works much better than others. (N.B. She isn't allowed in bed) We're finding out that she takes after Desi in being a bed-hog.

Hello everyone

We both hope that you all had a wonderful week. We had a pretty nice week here in Boulsa. The temperature on average here all week was around 113oF. Most of the time we really don't notice the heat anymore. The only time we really do “feel” the heat is when there is no wind and the air just hangs. That is about the time that Tim and I will be sitting in the house reading a book and just sweating buckets. Its also the same time that we start to reminisce about Illinois winters. We miss ice so much now. We used to be able to it in village, but with the hot season in full swing, we are lucky to by cold water now. You just got to love African spring time :)

School News:

Tim has unofficially received his confirmation from Censeur that his lab is not getting any money from the school to fix the a/c. This means that Tim is completely done with his IT teaching. Now he is having to find something else to fill his time. He is trying to get the ok from the school to help the 3éme and terminal students study for there oral exams in English. It makes since to us that having your students practice speaking English with native speakers is a huge benefit to the students, but by doing that we might be stepping on the English professor's toes.

Otherwise Tim has been filling his days studying for his CCNA. He only has four chapters left to study out of one book and then he has another 1000 or so page book that he wants to read before we come home. I have never seen him study so much in my life. He is studying as much as I did in college. There have been a couple of times when he has studied for 4-5 hours at a time and I have had to ask him, “Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” His response is to smile and say that he really wants to get certified.

School went really well for me this week.

Both of my classes were absolute angels. I gave each class a little speech for their first day of the new trimester. It pretty much told them that they only have two more chapters in the book. They have one more regular exam and then the final exam. I also told them that if everyone was really well behaved for the next three weeks that they would have a huge surprise after the final exams. They all seemed really excited by this news. I have planned two full weeks of math and critical thinking games for the kids. I'm also planning on giving them bonus points if they all work in earnest on the games for the two weeks.

Funny story time: Four days out of the week, I have one class for two hours a day. Some days, especially around 10, the kids get pretty tired. This whole year, when the kids get that way I make everyone stand up and dance with me. I did this one Wednesday for about 5 minutes. The students absolutely love this and think that I am completely insane. Anyway, when I was getting finished and told them to all sit down, half the class said, “What about walking like an Egyptian.” I could not believe my kids. They all love that move. So of course I obliged them and we all walked like Egyptians. If another professor was to ever walk by my class when we are dancing, there are going to be ton of questions.

Surreal has been pretty cute this week. She has this fetish with digging massive holes in our courtyard. Tim decided to fill them all in one afternoon and during that same night, Surreal dug them all back out and dug a new one too. When we saw this the next morning we both just laughed. We have joke that the holes are booby traps for the thieves. We have also come home and found her toys and our cannery bottles in these holes.

Other than her digging, she has been up to the usually stuff. She chases flies all around the house. She absolutely refuses to come out from under our bed between 1 p.m. and 3-4 p.m. She has the opinion that repo is not only for humans, but her as well. She and I also have squirt bottle fights every night. She loves getting squirted with water. If she hears use using it without her, she sprints into the house and gets right in our faces.

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Good morning everyone. We hope that you were all good boys and girls this year and the Easter Bunny came and visited you last night :)

Things are going pretty good here. We have been enjoying our two weeks off from school. Well, Tim has had a bit more time off from school. It looks like he is most likely is done for the rest of the school year too. He is on the fence about liking the free time and not having anything to break up his day. I can understand that completely. These past 5 days have gone by so slowly. I have been rather lazy though. I have been trying to grade my last test over break, but its not easy to motivate yourself when you know that you don’t have school again until April 6. Thus it has taken almost 3 weeks to grade tests that normally take me only two or three days to grade.

One of our greatest accomplishments this break has been giving Surreal Pig. This is her new favoritest toy ever. She is rarely seen without him. She carries him around most of the day, it is pretty cute, but then again we are a little bias. She even tries to take him outside when we are not looking. We installed a doggie door for her in our screen door. To do this we cut a hole in the screen and sewed pagne on each side of the hole to keep bugs out. Surreal wasn’t to sure about it when we fist introduced her to it. We had to bribe her with treats on each side until she got used to going in and out of the doggie door. Now she loves that door. She likes being able to come in during the night and try and me to play with her. She is too cute ;)

Well on different note, March passed with no rain in the East. Now the Burkinabe are worried that this means drought year. We are not really sure what that means for the people here in Boulsa. Everybody farms and there is no irrigation system. We aren’t sure how many people rely solely on farming. Everybody here just hopes to get a little bit of rain soon.

Well that’s all we have for right now. Hopefully the next blog will have some interesting school stories. Have a Happy Easter!

Hi everyone

Well not a whole lot has changed these past two weeks. We have been on Easter break for a week now, which is amazing. Tim and I have spent the entire last week just lazing about. We have caught up on some of the movies that were sent over to us. We are going to start watching West Wing this coming week :)

Tim and I took a little trip two weekends ago. We biked 40k to Dave's site and stayed a night there. We got to watch a soccer game between the teachers and kids at the school. It was a really interesting game. There was a man running around the field flicking a camel tail for good luck. It was so funny for us to see that, but weird at the same time. The man truly believes that flicking the tail at the field will send good gri-gri to the game. That night we make some pasta and sauteed veggie sauce by flashlight. That was such an interesting experience. The next morning we left Dave's and took our first bush taxi to Emma's site. The bush taxi was fun, but we got so dirty from it. There was a ton of dust in the air that weekend because of the wind. The sky was literally a haze of dust. Thus when we were riding in the bush taxi and they think it is better to keep the windows open to allow the dust to flow through the car, we were filthy by the end of the hour ride. It was really fun though. Emma's site is big. We were so impressed by everything we saw there. She even has a paved road in her village! The next day the three of us took a bush taxi to Kaya. This city is amazing. They have a leather market there. We are definitely going to have to visit there one more time before coming home. I really want one of their leather purses. Later that afternoon, we caught transport out to Mike's site. 10 other PCVs visited Mike's to kick back and chill. We went to a bar and had beer and chicken. The night at Mike's was absolute craziness, but it was fun too. The next morning, Tim and I headed back to Kaya and decided that we didn't want to wait four hour for transport so we started biking home. Along the way back home we stopped in at Rob's site and visited him for a half hour. We biked 40 of the 90k back to our village. It was a lot of fun and the road was so pretty. Tim did take in a little too much sun so he was a little sick later that night, but he was better the next morning.

March 13, 2010

Hey there

Well this blog is not such a downer to be sure. Things have gotten a lot better in village. Tim and I are back into the swing of TIA. Sometimes it is very hard for us to live our lives here in Africa because we are Americans and the way of life is so completely different. Just to reassure everyone that yes we have our ups and downs and our descents to the Earth’s core, we value all the experiences we have had here.

Tim got to spend an extra week in Ouaga two weeks ago. He is undergoing some tests for a toe that has gone numb. More than likely he has a pinched nerve somewhere, but he needs to get some more tests done.

Tim is also acting as the liaison in-between the IT committee and bureau. He is really excited about getting to work closer with the administration. The IT committee is really doing an awesome job to develop a website for the BF volunteers. They have a public side up and working for everyone to look at. Burkina Public website They are also working on the background stuff for the volunteers. It gives them a chance to save their work and then it gets passed on for future volunteers to look at and use.

As of right now Becky is done with second trimester. Her kids are finally starting to behave again. The Vice Principal was pretty rough on them, but now they are starting to stop being rude. I think that a lot of the troubles that we were having had to do with the heat. The kids hate being in class and we aren’t much better at times. Now that it has heated up, I’ve had to close my lab. My computers were getting really hot and I was starting to worry that they would burn up. I have been telling the school that they needed to have the air conditioning fixed but they don’t want to spend the money to maintain the lab. It is really frustrating when you want to help, but they are fighting you every step of the way. So now I’m just hanging out and working on other projects around the house. Becky and I have been working on a way to make charcoal from field waste, biochar. We are hoping to get people to stop using wood charcoal. Thus far we have been able to get the charcoal made. Now we are working on a formula for how to compress the charcoal into briquettes. This is the hard part of the process. We need to thank Ryan Smith and Leslie Coleman for the idea and doing a lot of the work while they were PCVs in the Gambia.

15 Feb 2010

Hello everyone

February was a pretty hectic month for both Tim and I. School is now near the end of the second trimester so everyone is super busy. The kids have been something this past month, and I’m not sure what that something is.

Most of the family knows that I had a rough month teaching in Feb. The kids were just being horrible. They were not respecting me or the other students in the class. Many of them were being super disruptive during class. They refused to listen to anything that I said during class etc… Well I found out what my limit was one morning and I literally walked out of class and had to go take a break. I went to the teacher’s room to just take a moment to try and collect myself and the kids followed me there. They were demanding forgiveness for upsetting me. Oh it was so not what I needed. I finally had to explain to them that I am an American and right now I am so frustrated with the class that they just need to give me time to sit and calm down. That worked, thank god. After that, the other teacher sitting in the room greeted me and asked me how my day was going. So the wrong question to ask… I told him exactly how my day was going. By the end of my venting session I was looking into the face of one terrified Burkinabé. His only comment was ‘Wow, you Americans like to talk about your feelings.’ After that I went and talked with the Vice Principal of the school and laid out everything that had been going on in front of him. I told him there is no way I can continue to teach here with them acting like this. Having kids laugh at you for punishing them is not a helpful way to manage a classroom. I do give props to the man he completely understood everything I told him and my feelings on it. He told me that Peter, the volunteer before us, had many of the same problems, but the second year is much easier. He told me that he would go and talk to my two classes.

The day kept on getting worse after school too. I stopped by Tim’s room and told him that I need to get away for site. Luckily we had planned a trip to Ouaga that weekend. He was supportive of my need to go to Ouaga. After that I went to the marché. That was where things hit bottom. My best friend in village was being absolutely obnoxious. She wouldn’t lay off on how Tim and I are going to need to take her to the States with us because it would look good if we were friends and I didn’t do that. She continued on how we need to obtain the visa and passport for her and buy the plane tickets. I tried to tell her its not possible blah blah blah. We are volunteers thus we do not earn a salary. She was not satisfied with any of those answers. Then she invited me to a fete that was going on that weekend. I politely declined saying that Tim and I were going to Ouaga. She demanded to know why. I explained that I really need to have a nice long conversation with my family and it was easier to do that in Ouaga. Well was the wrong answer because then she started telling me that I was such a baby and needed my mother to suck on boob… I tried to tell her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen and then the other veggie ladies started to join in and I finally had to just walk away.

On the way home I started to lose it. Once I turned the corner that lead to our house I just started crying. I cried for over three hours that day it was horrible. Tim and Surreal were super helpful and supportive.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t stop here either. That afternoon, I went back to school to “help” Tim and to just get away from our neighborhood kids. Well Tim had finally hit his limit too. His kids are also super disrespectful and refuse to listen to him. He walked 3 kids over to the Vice Principal’s office and had a chat. One kid did run away on the walk over to the office.

Thank god Tim and I left for Ouaga the next morning. We were both very much in need of a break. Tim participated in a softball tournament that weekend. The PC team did really well. They almost one a trophy! Check out the pictures

The break from village was really nice. After that, I did much better dealing my classes.

Our trip to Ghana was quite the experience. Transport was interesting to say the least. We left Ouagadougou at 8 in the morning. Its was 20 hours in a bus until we reached Accra. It wasn't the worst transport we've taken but definitely wasn't very fun. When we finally got into Accra we hopped a taxi over to the airport to pick up the family. The airport was pretty nice for a smaller airport and there was a pretty good Chinese Restaurant there. As the parents arrived we called the hotel and they sent a shuttle to pick us up. Lambadi Beach Hotel was pretty amazing. The landscaping was gorgeous tropical rainforest. There was a good sized pool to swim in and then we had direct access to the beach. The beach was beautiful if crowded. Having private access was nice and hard at the same time. Once you left the private area there were venders everywhere trying to selling you things. That isn't so bad but the fact that they mark the price up 4 or 5 times the real price, then won't budge on their price. Becky and I are used to discussing prices to a reasonable level but this was ridiculous and really annoying. Once you got by the venders and into the water, it was pretty fun. The water was perfect and the surf wasn't too heavy. We tried to body surf a little and it was fun. Becky had some extra friendly Ghanians wanting to teach her how to swim until she told them she was married to me. Getting a town of Accra was OK, nothing too horribly interesting. The Makola Market was fun to go to and we found so really nice cloth there. When we went to the Cultural Center we were swarmed before we even got out of the car. The venders there were assholes and completely ridiculous. We gave up trying to shop there after about 20 minutes. To finish the tour out we had a great lunch at an American style sports bars called Chaps. Speaking of food, the breakfast buffet at the hotel was to die for. It was like a real American breakfast buffet. There was eggs, bacon, two kinds of sausage, and the best fresh fruit I've ever had. Becky and I ate till we were nearly sick. It was fabulous.

After 3 days in paradise, we had to take transport back. The way down wasn't pleasant but not unpleasant. On the way back the driver stopped every hour to hour and a half for something. Then when we stopped to get gas, he took and hour and a half and then had only filled one of the tanks. So he let half of us on then had to circle around for my gas then back for the rest of the passengers. It was so bad that the Africans were staring to get pissed at him.

As we finally got in, the parents and I hopped a cab to the local transport and just got on a bus out to Boulsa. So after 26+ hours of travel we spent another 4 hours getting to Boulsa. We were exhausted when we got in. The parents seemed to enjoy site quite a bit. They were interested in meeting all the people that we work with and seeing where we usually go. The lycee was abandoned because of Christmas break, but I showed them my room and one of Becky's. After a whirlwind tour there we headed back to Ouagadougou for another couple of days and me supposed to be going to In-Service Training.

I didn't make all that much of training, but Becky was able to catch me up in about 5 minutes. We went out to Artisan Village and spent a lot of time and money, and found some pretty cool stuff. We got to eat at some pretty good food. Chris, Dad and I went golfing at the Ouagadougou Country Club. It was pretty entertaining. We had two caddies for our clubs and AstroTurf. Then a guy for smoothing out the oiled-sand greens. Then our taxi driver and his wing man carried our drinks. The hazards were either painted or you didn't get to use AstroTurf, plus the occasional livestock wandering across the fairway.

The last day of vacation was spent tracking down souvenirs for everyone. It was fun and stressful at the same time. Then we hung out at the airport for a couple of hours before the flight buying random stuff and talking with a RPVC about his business in BF.

January 25, 2010

Hi everyone

Well getting back into the swing of things here has been more than a little crazy. Being away from site for three weeks and then coming back, well you have to pacify a lot of people. The Burkinabè are somewhat touchy when they think that you have been ignoring them. To get back into their good graces, well that requires sitting at the marché for several hours and telling them every detail of your trip. Oh and don't forget to buy everyone something to drink. You really have to love the way things operate here.

School is getting more and more interesting every day. I started off the second semester by giving my kids an hour long lecture on the importance of an education. Good Lord, I am so tired of trying to explain to the why they should want to be educated. I told them not only does it get you a better job in life which means more money and a healthier family, but it is the one thing in life that no one can steal from you. That impressed them to some extent, but not a whole lot. Nope what impressed them about being educated was me going off and telling them all of these random facts about every subject I could think of. The kids had a lot of fun asking me about anything they could think of and hearing what I new about each thing. Now the only down side is my students now think I am somewhat of a freak. They are thoroughly impressed that any one person could know so much information and the fact that I'm a girl as well! Yep I have officially blown the minds of 180 kids here in Boulsa :) Now lets just see if this can get them to be even slightly motivated to learn something.

Tim is having a lot of fun trying to teach his students to type. I must admit that it is a little funny to watch them type. Imagine trying to teach someone who has never used/seen a computer before how to type. Oh it is beautiful. Tim is constantly having to run and answer questions because the thing isn't thinging:) Yes they really do say that in French. He does have his students a little worried since one of their tests for the semester is a typing test. They have to have a typing speed of 20 words a minute to advance to the next trimester.

I have discovered just how flexible I am here. I was suppose to give a test to my class today, but the censeur had left town with my tests locked in his office. No problem though, I was at school 40 minutes before my first class so I would have plenty of time to talk with the proviseur and have him open the office for me. After waiting for 40 minutes for him to finish with a phone call, I had to go to class without talking to him. I did however explain my situation to the secretary and she was going to talk with him when he got off the phone. After my class, I ran back to get my tests since I was giving it right after the 25 minute break. Well that didn't really work out so well because proviseur had went into town. Thus I sat in the secretary's office for 40 minutes watching a documentary in French on the Apocalypse of 2012. I finally abandoned the thought of giving my test today and headed to class 15 minutes late. My class cheered when I told them that I had to move the test to Saturday morning. Tim was really impressed by how I handled the situation especially with my type A personality. Then again, that is a huge part of life here; being as flexible as possible.

Surreal is getting to be quite large now. She is approximately 20lbs now! She is super cute and more than willing to crawl up in anyone's lap if she is allowed. She is starting to leave things alone like a good doggy should too. We have even started to take her to school with us in the afternoons. The kids think that she is absolutely amazing. They had no idea that dogs could be trained to do things. They told Tim and I it was impossible for dogs to learn anything. When we showed them that Surreal could sit, shake, lay down and stay on command, they were completely baffled. Surreal is really turning into one of our best assets over here. Whenever we have a rough day, we just come home and play with her and she can get us smiling again. I can't wait for everyone to meet her next year.

Oh last week, I proved that once again I am most definitely a Turnquist. Coming home from school, I hit a washed out area in the road and flipped over my bike. Nothing too serious, just some road rash on my elbow and knee and of course bruises. Being a klutz is so not fun over here. I do have the kids at school telling me how pretty my scabs are and they are being sincere.

It's been a whhile since I last wrote a blog. Things have been going pretty good with me thus far. I gave two tests this trimester to my classes. That was interesting because I wrote the tests to be very easy. The first one was just labeling multiple choice and labeling pictures that I had given them during class then completely reviewed the class before the test. I had some kids that did really well, but there were some who earned a 20% or so. My second test I made quite a bit harder because to continue my class you needed to get a passing average, and 500+ students is a little much for me to handle. The students didn't let me down and continued to be idiots. I wrote 4 versions of the same test and mixed them, so that when they tried cheating the questions were different. The made grading them harder but my entertaining cause I could definitely see who was cheating by their answers. My classes otherwise have been very hit of miss. My younger students tend to not pay attention, and follow the shiny objects. They piss me off cause everyone tries to come to the lab for every lesson. I have 23 computers and 90 students in most of my classes. That doesn't work. I made lab groups for them and they completely ignored those and tried to fight their way in. One of the classes was actually fight so much that they broke the door handle. I was not amused.

The house is coming along great. Becky finished the mural and it looks awesome. That was a lot more work than we had planned it to be. The garden was coming along well then Surreal decided to dig it up. We are going to try again by planting in basins and putting them up on tables. Hopefully that will keep her out of them. Plus we built a fence around where we want the garden to go next time.

Surreal is getting huge now. She loves playing with the neighbor dogs and ends up running off quite a bit. Not a big deal though, we just leave the door open enough for her to come back in and eventually she does. She loves playing tug of war but hasn't quite got the tug part down yet. We are teaching her to fetch and she likes chasing the balls and bringing them back.

Story time with Tim and why he's not allowed to come to Ouaga alone anymore. I came to Ouaga in December to watch some football with a couple of the other guys and to relax at the end of the trimester. Getting to Ouaga was no big deal and I relaxed at the Transit House for most of the day. I put my stuff on a bed knowing that I had reserved a spot a couple of weeks earlier. Fast forward to getting to Rec center where we can watch the games. We cram 7 people into a taxi about the size of my Saturn. Along the way we nearly caused a moto accident cause a lady was staring at us instead of the road. We arrive and get good food, good games, and find some other good people working in BF. Afterward our group is now 10 people and we are trying to find a couple of cabs to take us home. the search isn't going to well, when a plain white panel vans pulls over and offers us a ride. He tells us that white people shouldn't be walking at night. I'm not hte one talking to the guy and can't see him at all and I'm that if I look closely enough at this van I can find FREE CANDY written somewhere on the side. We climb in anyway and there are no seats, just the empty rear. Come to find out, the guys is from Canada helping out here and knows exactly where our house is cause we're kinda a big deal. I get to relax at the TH until midnight when the guard calls me over to ask some people to leave and then tells me that I need to leave too. Not Cool its midnight, I don't have another room and I know that I reserved a spot and that I was at the house way before some others who are getting to stay. Doesn't matter, I still have to leave with 4 other people. One of the other volunteers takes pity on us to try and find a place to sleep for the night. The first place we try is already full and the second option we are told is the same way. After wandering about a mile is find a hotel with a couple of rooms open at 1am. So much for a good nights sleep.

The next morning, I decide to stop off at the office to check my mail and use the internet. Walking down the main road, I have to dodge a rampaging donkey cart. Then on the side street, I'm nearly trampled by a horse that got lose and was trying to make a break for it. Later in the day I applied to my visa to Ghana for the trip with my parents. That went surprisingly well and they told me to come back the next day to pick it up. When I went back to pick it up the next day, there was a small group of us who were picking up visas and one guy who was applying. The visa cost 15000 cfa, but he only had 10000 with him. Not a big thing and one of the other people of going to let him borrow another 10000, but the embassy somehow doesn't keep change of any kind. We check around and I see that I have exactly 5000 in my wallet between small bills and change. I give him that and we head off. We were having a hard time getting a single cab for all of us, so when a taxi with a couple of spots open appeared the other guy and I jumped in. After 10 seconds I asked if he had any money cause I didn't. After 20 seconds we jumped back out cause neither of us had and I'm sure the driver thought that we were insane.

The rest of the trip goes pretty smoothly. On transport back to sight we nearly hit a donkey on three different occasions. Avoiding a donkey involves slamming the brakes a hard as you can on a bus with no seat belts or shocks. Not the greatest time. And this is why I don't get to come to Ouaga alone anymore.

Sorry no pics but we'll put a bunch up the next time we come to Ouaga.

Hi everyone

No Tim and I are not dead. We have just been busy with the end of the first trimester and Tim's family coming over to see us. Well we have also been I suppose a little lazy too. Have no fear though, you are in for a very long update. What have we been up to for the last two months?

School for Becky:

Ok so school for me has been pretty interesting. Last blog, we wrote about my first exam. Well as most of you already know, it was rather brutal. One class had 29 students pass the exam and 20 in the other. Lets just say that I went through quite a few pens while I was correcting there tests. Most of you can imagine how I felt, having 49 kids out of 180 pass is not stellar. My opinion is that the kids just didn't study. I had a nice chat with each class and I told them that I have no idea how they all didn't pass the exam. I explained that every question on the exam was a homework problem with different numbers. Some of the questions I didn't even change the numbers. Sigh...

After the first exam, I started our first section of geometry. I was hoping that the kids would be really good at geometry since algebra really isn't their thing. Teaching geometry is very interesting here. I teach straight out of the book, but I do not always agree with how the book presents certain concepts. I usually only teach what is in the book, but there are some concepts that are extremely difficult for the kids to understand, so I have started incorporating my own way of explaining different concepts. I will admit that the kids think I am exceptionally bizarre. One of my favorite sections this time was trying to explain the different types of symmetry. Most of you can probably recall your teachers doing the whole manipulation of you hands to see the different types of symmetry. I did that same activity with my kids and wow, they went nuts. I have never experienced anything like it. First the kids look at you like you are some alien creature and then one of the kids finally sees what you are showing them and get all excited and explain it to their neighbor. After that, the race is on, all the kids are manipulating their hands and their neighbors to get all the types of symmetry.

I gave my second exam at the beginning of December. I had a lot of fun creating the exam. I got to draw a few images and I used African animals on the name the type of symmetry section. The kids laughed when they saw the animals on the test. I was informed however that my lion was sick because he had spots. I laughed to myself and thought poor cheetah, he is going to have a complex with some of the kids thinking he is a lion. Well grading the second test was a treat. One class, I had 24 pass and the other class I had 48 pass. This did not make me extremely happy. I do not understand the differences in the classes. The class that only had 24 pass is the class that I teach second. Thus in theory, they should get better scores because I have worked out all the rough spots in my teaching. Oh what to do, what to do. I am so proud of my 5eme C, having half of the kids pass is amazing. Now I just need to keep those kids motivated and get the others motivated as well. Wish me luck :)

One thing I have learned in my three months of teaching is that pattern recognition is something that these kids can not do. This has certainly made teaching math very challenging. I am hoping to finish the book early this year. I have already gotten through seven chapters and there are 19 in the book. I want to have a few weeks at the end of the year were the kids do nothing by puzzles and brain teasers. I really think that if I can get them to develop even a little pattern recognition, their life will be a hundred times easier.

Oh I almost forgot! I now have a peanut gallery in my room. Ok let me explain. I have trouble with kids not paying attention to the lecture. They will just start staring off into space and I can't get them back. I also have the kids who put their heads down on top of the desk. That is a very dangerous thing for them to do since they love to sleep. I also have the kids who will fall asleep while sitting up. Thus I have three different types of offenders that I just didn't know how to deal with. I really didn't want to kick them out of my class. That only hurts them more; the kids are devastated by getting minus five points on the test every time they are kicked out. I was getting rather frustrated with the kids too. One day while teaching and about 15 kids were not paying attention in one way or another, I had a stroke of genius: the peanut gallery. I explained to the kids what the peanut gallery was in America. They laughed and I told then that if they didn't pay attention to the class they were a peanut and would have to sit in the peanut gallery. The kids were not to sure about this. They new it wasn't a good thing to be in the peanut gallery, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing either. When I tell a kid to sit in the peanut gallery, they have to sit in the front of the room on the floor and take all their notes there too. This helps me to know that they are taking notes and I can make them pay attention by asking all sorts of questions to them. There are some rules to the peanut gallery. The peanuts can only talk with other peanuts and not to the other students. Their name is changed to peanut for the entire day as well.

I have had to add a few other things to the peanut gallery game too. I have had a peanut try to run away to its seat and so I told him he was a mouse. A mouse certainly couldn't sit with peanuts, so he got his own spot on the other side of the room. That same day, I had a peanut who could not stay awake, so she became a mouse too. Well, I could very well watch those two kids while I taught, so I made another student a tiger to guard the mice. If the mice misbehaved again the tiger was to inform me and I would kick them out of class. Oh yeah :) Well this game has gotten quite fun some days. I have had a monkey and an ostrich in the game too. Now the whole school knows about the game and when kids are walking outside and see the peanuts they will yell “Peanut! Peanut!”

Slightly unorthodox....possibly. Highly entertaining....definitely.

November 5, 2009

Things are going pretty good with us. School has been flying by now. We didn't have school on Monday because of All Saints Day. Becky has giving her first test yesterday and today. The kids were complaining that it was too hard and that they didn't have enough time. She got talked to by her homologue because the kids complained so much. When she showed the test to our homologues, they called the kids idiots and told her not to listen to them. They said that she should give them two hours to take the test just so that they will complain less, even though it won't help them. The kids are horrible cheaters too. Becky caught six kids cheating and they got zeros on their tests. They are so bad that when she was collecting tests she found the work of one kid under his bench mate's test, and he was copying the work

I haven't given a test yet but am planning one in two weeks. The kids keep asking what the coefficient is for my class. The coefficient decides how much a class will affect your overall grade and my class doesn't have one. So I decided that you need to pass my class to get into the second trimester. They think that it is some kind of joke or that the Censureur won't let me kick them out and the end of the trimester. What they don't know is that he was all for letting me take only the top 25 students after the first trimester.

I had to close my lab this week because the voltage regulator shorted and I can't run the lab on just one regulator. So now I'm waiting for the Intendant to buy me a new one. My server is still down and I'm waiting for the tech to come to school to look at it. The repair process may take a while to get done, but hopefully sometime around New Years I'll have my server back.

We are still waiting on running water. I talked with the guy at the company again and he said that he is waiting on a truck. The truck should be here in a couple of weeks. I'm not too hopeful about having water in a couple of weeks either. Maybe by June we'll have running water. I would really love it for April but that may be asking too much.

We put in our garden on our day off. I have realized why the Burkinabe are so strong. It was hard to break up enough ground just to fill the boxes. I don't relish the idea of having to dig out the rest of the garden for when we transfer things into the ground.

Surreal is a little terror now. She is digging in things that she shouldn't be. Becky gets just a little peeved with her. Becky has given up on Flamboyant trees for the moment after Surreal dug up the same spot six times. She doesn't dig it up right away either, she waits till it grows just little so that it is more fun. Surreal gives Becky false hope that her tree will make it this time then she digs it out of her with her tiny little paws. Surreal can now sit and shake, which amazes our neighbor when she comes over. We are still working on down and nice.

We have updated our contact information and put up some new pictures :)

October 24, 2009

Well it has been a while since we have written a blog entry and a lot has happened. We are both doing fine. We are both healthy right now. Yay!

So the weather in October is very interesting to say the least. There were a couple of days were we measured the temperature outside and it was 121 F. Oh my God! We have never sweated so much in our lives. Just so you know, a fan can't even cool you off in that type of heat. We pretty much just sat there and tried not to move too much. When the temperature is that high, all you can really do is take lots and lots of bucket baths. The water might be 90, but to you it feels absolutely wonderful :) October here is a mini hot season, so that's the reason for the ridiculous heat. Now that we are toward the end of October, the temperature is a lot more comfortable. The daytime temperature ranges between 90-105. What is sad is that we are happy to have a temperature of 95, that's comfortable to us! The nights are starting to get really cool. We go to bed with the fans blowing on us and we are hot. By 3 or 4 a.m., we are fighting each other for the sheets to cover up with. From what we have heard, the temperature should start to fall now. The daytime temperature during the winter is around 80 and we hear that it gets cold at night, 50-60s!

The house is really starting to come along. We have almost the entire house painted. The living room is a really pretty blue. Tim painted the kitchen. Well I will say that mixing paint here is very difficult. You buy your own pigments and add them to white paint. Tim was trying to get a burnt orange for the kitchen and ended up with peach :) Then he ran out of paint halfway through painting the room, so he decided to make the next batch a deep red. Well he ended up with florescent pink! He said there is no way he was having a peach and hot pink kitchen, so he decided to add some blue to the paint. He used all the blue that we had and the hot pink paint turned into a bright lavender. (LOL) Oh no it is completely ok to tease him about it, I did for a solid week. My special Timmy :) I painted most of the bedroom a sea foam color. There is one wall left, but we ran out of paint completely. We are going to buy some more and finish the bedroom off with a yellow accent wall. We also have to finish the living room by painting the mural. Please check out the pictures of the painted house :)

Surreal, our puppy, is getting huge! She can't fit into her harness anymore, so now she runs around with a bandanna on. She is now a big girl and stays outside when we are not home. She even sleeps/plays outside all throughout the night. We are teaching her to sit and shake. She kind of has it down as long as there is food involved. She is so much like lucky, its scary. Surreal has started to find her voice too. She now barks when people come into the courtyard and she sees them. She is not a big fan of strange black people coming into her courtyard. She loves our friend David. He came to visit and they played all the time. We still need to break her of biting. Those puppy teeth hurt! She is starting to get a little adventurous too. If we leave the courtyard door open, she wonders around outside. She is super cute and has Tim wrapped around her little paw.

Well as most of you know, school started on October 1st. Well lets just say that things are very different here and very interesting. Tim and I both enjoy and hate teaching at the same time. Hard to explain, but for me, the kids are such little snots some days. My kids and I have finally found a middle ground. They know exactly what I expect out of them and I try to make class as fun as possible. The kids really tried to push me in the beginning and unfortunately for them, I didn't budge. If anything, I just got more strict and they lost more points off their next test. One of the rules in my class is if I kick you out of class you lose 5 pts off your next test. When your test is only worth 20 pts, that really makes them not what to get kicked out. In the three weeks of teaching, I have accumulated eight names. The kids aren't really sure if I will actually take the points off the test or not, but they will find out on November 2, that I mean business as that is their first test. The only other remarkable thing that has happened in a class, was my first day with 5e C, a kid vomited during class. That was not a fun experience. I made the chef de class clean it up. YUCK!

As for me classes are quite a bit different from Becky's. I have 7 different classes that I teach. 3 classes are 7th graders and they act like it. They are so annoying some days. With 90 kids in each of those classes, lab is interesting. I have 23 computers that work so I have 23 kids come into the lab. They don't understand that everyone will get a turn in the lab and there have been several small riots when I open the doors. Kids getting mushed against the glass, hitting each other, yelling and then running for a computer; followed by at least one person coming back to retrieve a lost shoe. Once they settle down a little I have the chef de class read off the names of people that were in the lab before and they get kicked out so someone new gets a turn. It is funny to me but bothersome because they are wasting so much time. I also teach 4 classes of upper level high school. There are three high school levels, but it is much harder to get into high school here. So I teach the sophomores and juniors. They are much easier to teach and learn the things much faster. Which is nice until I am trying to plan lessons for them. They are done with something that would take the other classes all hour to do in about 15-20 minutes then I am having to try and make things up or letting them explore the computer, mostly playing games. So that is how most of my classes go and then I struggle to kick them out of the lab. The kids never want to leave, and kicking them out takes me shutting down their computers remotely and then yelling at them to leave. Then the cow bell starts to ring signaling the end of class and that they need to head to there next class. Save by the cow bell. After class is done I head home and hang out with Becky, play with the puppy and then head to bed.

September 30, 2009

Hello everybody!

Well Tim and I had an awesome time in Ouaga. Then again, I really don't think that you can ever have a bad time in Ouaga. It is most certainly our haven here in Burkina Faso. Tim and I gorged ourselves on food. I have discovered a new liking for veal cord on bleu. Yep I love ham now! You could get me to touch the stuff in the U.S. Now stand back or you might lose finger :) Tim still prefers his pizza, but the next time we travel to Ouaga, he is all about the veal. Staying at the transit house is such a nice change. We get to sleep on real mattresses, that is something of a luxury here. Going to Ouaga refreshes both your mind and body after spending a bunch of time in village.

The house is coming along. Tim and I have purchased two types of paint. We have quick lime paint and oil based paint. We have certainly gotten a workout with the quick lime paint. We both emphatically state: “Whitewashing SUCKS!” We now understand why that form of paint is rarely used in the U.S. Anymore. Tim ordered furniture for the house. He designed an awesome cabinet unit. It is 2 meters long, 1 meter tall, and 40 cm in depth. It is absolutely marvelous! I have been able to organize almost everything we have into the cabinet or on the desk. I love being organized :) Tim also had the carpenter build a cubby unit for our clothes. This one is 2 meters tall, 1.5 meters long, and 30 cm in depth. Yeah, my husband likes them big :) It was rather interesting to watch a donkey cart pull into our courtyard loaded down with the two pieces of massive furniture. The poor guys that had to maneuver them into the house were wonderful though. They got both pieces through the front door and into the house without bumping into anything.

The courtyard is still a work in progress. There are hundreds of bur/thorn plants. It seems like the week after we pull them all up, they have grown in again. It is a little bit of a daunting tak, especially with the climate here. I have been busy planting trees all over the front of the courtyard. I have eight spots planted with moringa. Moringa trees are not very good for shade, but they are good for nutrition. You can harvest the leaves and dry them. The amount of vitamins in the leaves is remarkable. If the people here in Burkina only knew how great these leaves were and used them properly to cook with, they would have the majority of the vitamins that they need.

Tim and I have been having meetings at the lycée this week. School starts tomorrow. Yay! Tim is going to be teaching seven different classes. He has two 1er, two 2nd, and three 4e classes. He is going to be teaching a total of 14 hours a week. Not too bad compared to other IT volunteers here in Burkina. I am teaching math to two 5e classes. We are both hoping that the kids are going to be nice to us and understand that we have only been studying French for three and a half months. I guess tomorrow will tell.

We have a new addition to the family. We got a puppy! The boy who gets our water for us found her. She has been here for four days now. We named her Surreal. She is so tiny. We are not sure how old she is but the first two days she was here, she wouldn't drink water, just milk. We both think that if she was weaned, then they just started. She is pretty darn cute. She doesn't do a whole lot right now, but we are still pretty new to her. Tim ended up sleeping with her out in the living room her first night. When I got up the next morning, it was a rather cute sight; Tim sleeping and the puppy curled up right next to him. Of course, we are having a ton of fun playing the potty game. Anytime we see her try and squat, we make a mad dash at her and try to get her outside. You have got to love training a puppy. We have bought her a few toy balls from the marché, but we have to be careful that the neighborhoods kids don't steal them. They don't understand the idea that we buy toys for our dog to play with. We both love to stun them with our bizarre western ideas and habits.

September 11, 2009

Well Boulsa is starting to get a little more livable. We both have finally gotten to talk to both of our parents. Neither the parents or us know what the heck is going on with the international calling right now, because we can call home without any problem, but home can't call us. Oh well, just have to figure out what is going on sometime to know when to call.

Becky is now 24! Yeah, I am starting to feel my age too. Tim and I have started to exercise here, and OMG it hurts. Whoever invented planks is a twisted sadist. Anyway, it is one easy way to make sure that we are awake and going in the mornings.

We are starting to have a pretty normal routine here. Tim gets water everyday with my bike. He is always breaking his bike. I will admit, it is entirely worth the inconvenience of only having one bike since I get to watch him ride a bike that is at least 5 inches to small for him :) I go down to the veggie ladies everyday and deal with there viscous badgering. I really enjoy listening to them say that their veggies are so much better than the lady's right next to them. They have even tried to entice me with generous cadeaux. I will admit, the free gifts do help. What can I say, I'm a sucker for extra tomatoes :)

Tim and I are starting to get adventurous with our cooking. This week I made village tacos out of canned corn beef, and I made a creamy tomato mushroom sauce from scratch! Tim made some awesome pizza sauce the other night that we put over village bread and some yummy fried rice. I also made some from scratch bruschetta today that Tim devoured.

We finally made it out to the lycée this week. Tim got to go in and see his lab. It is really nice by the way. There are 25 computers that are linked to a server. He found out that he will be teaching the following grade levels: 4em, 2er, and 1er. He is going to have 14 hours a week of teaching. I found out that I will be teaching two 5em classes and one 4em class. I am going to teach 13 hours a week. I am a little nervous about teaching 4em students since their French level is much higher.

We are starting to branch out a little more in the town. Tim and I have been taking daily walks around the town. We have come across all sorts of interesting things. One thing that I pretty much ran from was a butcher chopping up the head of a hog (EW!!!). We have found all sorts of local bars here in Boulsa; who would have thought? I have gotten pretty friendly with the post office people as I have picked up that archaic thing called writing letter?!?! Thus if you are an avid stamp collector and want me to write you a letter, I have oodles of time. Just shoot me an email sometime with your address and I'll write you a letter. Some of you have no choice and are going to receive endless amounts of letters from me ;)

We have started painting our house. All I can say is I know exactly why whitewash doesn't get used a whole lot anymore. I will say one thing in favor of whitewashing, it comes out of your clothes pretty easily. There is the coolest chemical reaction that happens when we add the water to the paint chuncks/rocks. Oh and if we add hot water, OMG the reaction is three times cooler. Maybe now I know why Em and I got in trouble in chem lab...

NOT SO FUNNY STORY TIME

Authored by Tim:

So Becky and I are going to kill one of the neighbor kids soon. This evening I was reading my book in the bedroom and Becky was under the hanger doing some laundry when a kid came into our house and started to look around. Not cool. I yelled at him when I noticed that he was there and he ran out the door. Becky chased him out of the courtyard. He ran off so we don't know where he went but there was another kid who had come into the courtyard at the same time and we talked to him, then his older brother and finally his uncle. The kids might have thought it was funny or not that big of a deal until the uncle started to scold them Then tonight we were greeting our neighbors and that came up with the kid's mom and the future didn't look bright for him or his friend. While we were talking, the topic of pets came up and we asked were we could find a puppy. They are going to help look for one for us. We both pretty pumped. The kids coming in unnoticed yet again has solidified our decision that getting a dog is a good idea, cause they are not friendly like in the States.

September 4, 2009

So we have now been residents of Boulsa for ten days. Well I'm not really sure where is the best place to start. The first couple of days was really hard for me, but Tim seemed not to have too much of a problem. The first two days, we pretty much just laid around and napped. You would not believe how tired we were after three months of training. It was absolutely amazing to finally be able to sleep in late, 8 a.m.! Tim and I have made it a goal to go out into the community every day. That sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult, but when you don't know anyone in the city and you aren't comfortable speaking the language, it is very difficult. We have survived a couple of marché days now. There are so many people packed into a flee market setting, it is almost surreal then we both remember TIA. The vendors here seem to be rather honest which is a huge surprise! We really don't haggle too much over the prices here since the people are so honest. Usually if they are inflating the price because we are white, it isn't by a whole lot. I will admit that I do miss getting to make the vendors really mad with my stellar negotiation skills over prices. It seems so alien to leave a boutique and not have the vendor absolutely furious at me for getting a reasonable price, instead of the nasaara price, which is at least double if not triple the real price!

The people of Boulsa seem pretty nice. It is a little difficult to get a real feel for the city since so many people are intimidated by us and don't really want to talk to us a whole lot. I guess that is to be expected in a town that isn't used to having white people here. One of my favorite reactions when we greet people is their mouth pretty much hitting the floor. There are times that I have to ask Tim if I said the correct thing to the Burkinabé because I get absolutely no response and they just stare at me. Talk about breaking your confidence in a hurry. I am now rather hesitant to even say hello to people. I really can't explain what this feels like... So Tim and I pretty much live in a fishbowl here. Everyone is watching us because we are new to the town and we are also white. Add to that the fact that kids just come over to your house to stare at you because you are different. Then you also have everyone astounded that you can even greet them in French or Mooré and boy does that make a fantastic mixture. I've never had a problem being the center of attention before, but this is so unnerving. Tim isn't as creeped out by it as I am. However, he does find it hilarious when I try to attract as little attention to myself as possible and it just attracts more attention :(

Our house was, well for the OCD people out there like me, a disaster. I swept the floors three times in one day and was still getting piles of dirt. Not to mention the lovely color my snot turned. Have you every seen reddish brown snot before? Its weird! Let me tell you it did not benefit my cold or our allergies. Tim and I have done a lot of work to the courtyard. We are trying to get the trees to grow straighter, but it is difficult with all the wind that comes in right before a storm. Most of the trees have a slight tilt in the northernly direction.

The kids here are not all fluffy bunnies and rainbows. Thus far, the kids are constantly coming into the courtyard and demanding money, candy, toys, Tim's shoes, our bikes, basically anything that they see we have or can think of. Oh!!! They have even asked us for the keys to the school... Why they think we have those keys... Don't know.

STORY TIME:

Authored by Tim

This afternoon was going along pretty much as normal. I was taking a nap through the afternoon heat and Becky was reading a book to pass the time. Apparently a couple of kids had come into the courtyard without distracting Becky from her book. All I hear is Becky scream and turn to see two kids running from the back door. I get up and go outside to see where they are and what is going on. On the porch there is a pair of flip flops and at the front gate there are two kids one of which is asking if she can have her shoes back. Just to let you know running through our courtyard barefoot would have to suck a lot. There are enough thorns that it would stop the penguin army. Of course I was laughing my ass off as Becky denied the existence of any shoes in our courtyard. So Becky has officially scared a kid straight out of her shoes. :) She didn't even use the LOOK. I don't want to see her use the LOOK on some poor unfortunate soul. They will never be able to recover, and Becky will be admin sepped for child abuse without ever having touched them.

August 25, 2009

Sunday morning, we all piled onto the STMB bus that came to ECLA to pick us up. We were all relieved that the bus came to pick us up first before going to the bus station. At least this way, we all got a seat on the bus and there was no half the people going at 8 and the other half going at a different time. I noticed that the bus company had oversold the tickets for the bus. There were several people that had to wait for the next bus to Ouaga. A couple of the PCVFs made everyone frozen coffee! It was absolutely delicious :) I slept for most of the bus ride, and Tim watched the countryside as we road to Ouaga. After the bus dropped everyone else off at the station, the bus drove all the PCT to the hotel. From there people broke off into groups for lunch. Most of the people went to either a Lebanese place, a Chinese restaurant, or to the Four Seasons. Tim, Steph and I decided to find somewhere different and give it a go. We stumbled across this yummy little sandwich shop. I got the very special hamburger, which was a huge cheeseburger with a fried egg on top. Sounds gross, but it was amazing. Tim and Steph both got the schwarma.

After lunch, Tim and I crashed for an two hour nap in our air conditioned room! Lets just say, it was heaven... After that, we went down to the lobby to see what was going on that night. A group of 10 of decided to go to the Four Seasons for pizza for dinner. Tim and I each ordered a pizza, gosh it was so yummy. 5 of the group left after eating and the rest of us just hung out for a while and they ordered drinks while I got a banana split!

Monday morning and part of the afternoon were spent in classes. We had a class with Doug, our CD first. Then a class with Sylvie, our PCMO. We did manage to sneak over to the ice cream shop in between the first and second session :) Tim and I went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. The food there was so good. I ordered the sweet and sour chicken. It was nothing like what I expected, but that wasn't entirely a bad thing. The sauce was super sweet, but very good. Tim ordered a beef dish that was amazingly wonderful. It reminded me of beef stroganoff. After lunch, we had our final session with Jeff. After this session, Tim and I went to the most wonderful place in Ouaga, Marina Marché. This store is amazing! It has wonderful European products for sale. Tim says it is the equivalent to a European Supermarket. I want to cry when I first walked into the store. Directly off to my left was a lovely chiller full of confectionery delights. You can also buy Lindorfer chocolate there, but not the yummy truffles. Tim and I decided that our first trip to the store was just to look around a little and not buy a whole lot, so we ended up spending 60,000 CFA there. Our next trip to the store, we spent another 60,000 CFA too. Yes I know we are horrible, but being denied yummy food for three months, you are going to go a little wild.

We got to take a tour of the embassy here in Burkina. That was pretty cool. The embassy here is rather small with only 30 people from the US working there and about 150 Burkinabé. We got to meet the person who is running the embassy now since we are waiting for the replacement to arrive in October. The speech that he gave about what the embassy does and how to become a member of the State Department. There was also a guy that had been in the Peace Corps. He gave us some advice on not looking to far into the future and that the Peace Corps wasn't really a career track because you can only be in for 5 years then you have to be out for 5 years. After the tour we went to the rec center and had a pretty good lunch with milkshakes, chili, and onion rings. The chili and milkshakes were awesome but the onion rings were a bit of a let down.

Tuesday afternoon was a busy time for both Tim and I. Tim went to this nice little store that sells all sorts of amazing things. You could buy nice European cookware and utensils, some really good cleaning products and shampoo. I spent my afternoon trying to get to the bureau to talk with Sylvie about my nasty little cold. I left the hotel a half hour before my appointment. I walked from the hotel to the round point. I jumped onto the Rue de Fada and went to talk to a taxi man. I asked him how much it was going to cost to drive me down the street to a specific intersection. He told me 3,000 CFA, I laughed and said no. I told him that I would give him 500 CFA and he told me it was a long distance. I shook my head and just started walking. I hate having to deal with the taxi people. They assume that since you are white, they can rape you with charges. I walk for until 5 minutes before my appointment then hailed a cab. I told him the intersection that I wanted and that I would pay him 300 CFA. He agreed to the price, so I hopped in. Well as we were driving, I noticed that I was only 3 blocks away from the street that you go down to get to the transit house. This meant that I was almost to the bureau. The driver kept on going and I wasn't 100% sure how far down the road I wanted was. When the driver started getting toward the outer edge of where I had seen before I got really nervous. I asked the driver where the intersection was. He told me it was up further, I told him no it wasn't and to stop the taxi. The driver wouldn't stop the taxi after I told him several times to stop, so I just opened the door. He stopped after I did that. I jumped out of the cab and started walking back the other way down Rue de Fada. I ended up texting the PCMO phone that I was going to be late because the taxi got lost. This was answered by a phonecall from Sylvie. After walking for another 5 minutes, I hailed another cab told him to take me to the Red Cross. I finally got to the bureau and my appointment 45 minutes late. Then again, being 45 minutes late in West Africa is being on time :) Sylvie scored myself and two other PCTs a ride back to the hotel that way we would have time to get ready for our swearing in ceremony.

The Swearing-in Ceremony was a lot of fun. We all got dressed up and headed over in our finest Burkinabé fashion. The food was pretty good and the cake was great. Becky kept going and getting two pieces using the excuse one for her and one for me. The speeches were kept short for the most part. Five of the trainees gave speeches in French and in local languages. The temporary ambassador gave a really good speech and had pretty good French as well. After the ceremony, we got to hang out for a bit and talk to all the other volunteers who had come. We talked with the guy that we are replacing and to our closest PC neighbor. The party ended around 8 o'clock and we headed back to the hotel for the post party around the pool. Becky and I headed to bed early cause we were getting taken to Boulsa the next morning at 7 in the morning.

August 22, 2009

Hi everyone

Well a lot of things have been going on with stage coming to an end. Our last couple of weeks have been absolutely crazy! With model school coming to an end, everyone is getting extremely antsy. By the way, after teaching algebra for the first two weeks and then switching over to geometry for the last two weeks, I can honestly say I am most assuredly an algebra kind of girl. So in my six days of teaching geometry I had to teach the students about perpendicular lines, parallel lines, rectangles, squares, and rhombuses. The kids had no trouble drawling perpendicular lines, but a lot of trouble with parallel lines. Then the fun really began to happen as I started teaching the students about the properties of geometric figures. They were absolutely stellar with the rectangle. They understood that one right away. Then I introduced the square to them. That went perfectly well until I ask then the question is a square a rectangle? They all of course said no. When I told them that a square was actually a rectangle, well let me just say that was 20 minutes of my life I will never get back ;) The kids really would not believe me that a square is a special type of rectangle. They finally said okay after I wrote the properties of a rectangle up on the board next to the properties of a square. Oh gosh the next day was even more chaos as I introduced the rhombus. They understood the properties of the rhombus and they could draw them very well. BUT when I asked the question is a square a rhomus? They said no, I said yes it actually is... Well there went another 30 minutes of my life arguing with sixth graders. Geeze you would think they could put a little faith in a teacher. When I wrote the properties of the square and rhombus up next to one another, they still would not believe me that a square is a special type of rhombus. The Burkinabé really do not like when one thing can be classified as multiple things. I can hardly wait to teach these two lessons again in October.

Oh I have a fun story about test day! So I ended up giving a joint test with Ryan another PCT for the 6em math class. We divided the test equally 10 pts for algebra and 10 pts for geometry. During the test Ryan and I were watching the students, ok me more than him, but I despise cheating. I ended up catching two different pairs of students cheating. One boy wrote on a piece of paper “Can you do this for me?” It was a division problem I think 75/8 was the problem. Then I caught two girls passing a piece of paper between them on the bench for a multiplication problem. I had all four students write down their names on a piece of paper. I deducted 5 pts from each test since I was responsible for 10 pts of the test. It was really brutal to their grades. None of them got anything higher than a 9 on the 20 point test (10 pts is passing here in BF). One student got a zero on the test after the 5 pt deduction. Ouch!

Well Tim has been having a lot of fun teaching computers. During his last week of teaching, he showed the kids the importance of the Internet and solitaire. What is sad is that he says teaching solitaire was one of the toughest things he taught to them these past four weeks.

We had a lot of closing ceremonies this week. One for the closure of model school and one for the host families. The one for model school was extremely hot and long. The one for the host families was really nice. There were lots of snack foods and pop. The host families got a certificate for hosting PCT and they got an invitation to go our swear in ceremony. Our host dad went to the ceremony. Our host parents got us a couple of gifts this past week. They got both Tim and I matching little purses, and they got me a really nice magnetic necklace. They also had a photographer come our last night with them and take pictures of everyone. They gave us a copy of the pictures :)

Tonight, we ate at a Lebanese hotel. The food was fantastic and a wonderful surprise for our taste buds!

So this has been a interesting week in training. We got to cook in groups this week which was a lot of fun and a great change in the diet because everything the Burkinabé cook is similar. Meaning that they cook some form of starch (rice, couscous, or pasta) and either tomato or peanut sauce with oil. They don't really believe in variety here.

Becky made banana bread that didn't quite get cooked all the way but was delicious anyway. We had planned to make a double batch of bread but there was time so we made a type of banana syrup that was pretty amazing. We used it to fill the crepes that we made. We had a salad, that was pretty good, from spinach, tomatoes, onions, and a dressing of honey, oil, garlic, and vinegar. We also made mashed potatoes with garlic and onions which were amazing. Then Becky and I cooked mashed potatoes and grilled cheese for our host family. They were pretty excited by that. I thought that it tasted pretty good as well.

Model school has been going OK.. For me, I am amazed by some of the things that these kids are able to do. One girl had opened 19 new documents during class and somehow did not crash the computer or get the exercise correct. She also hadn't erased any of her mistakes. Trying to get them understand that it is possible to fix a mistake without restarting from the beginning or try new things by themselves is very difficult. Becky changed from 6th grade algebra to geometry. The kids know how to draw a square and a rectangle, but anything with angles other than 90 degrees they just don't understand. One day a kid made fun of Becky on her pronunciation of a word, so she named that kid mon amis and every time that she asked a question mon amis was the one who had to answer. The class thought that it was hilarious and laughed at him every time Becky called him mon amis. Next week shouldn't be to bad for Becky, she is doing a review then giving a test for the class. I am going to get to teach about the Internet for a couple of days then am going to spend the last day going over how to play solitaire and freecell. That is going to be NO fun :)

Last weekend and this weekend we have had to ride out to village for our classes on Saturday, which isn't bad in and of itself, but why wait till the last two weeks of stage to do it. We are tired and even less motivated than usual on Saturdays. I would understand if we had done it at the beginning of stage when things were completely new, but now the only difference that I between village and city was the availability of distractions. There aren't any in village. That and the trainers forget that we need more than one water filter for 32 of us.

The Peace Corps giving me a bike probably wasn't the best idea on their part. I like to go fast and bikes aren't really made to carry a guy as big as me. Thus far I have bent one rim so badly that it could be fixed and have another rim that now needs to be replaced. It is also not the best for my health. On the way back from village I took a tumble after hitting a bump a little too fast. I had to ask Becky to patch me up after washing the most of the dirt off. I'm fine just a little road rash. Becky isn't really good for her bike either. She has gone through two sets of pedals and one kickstand. Plus she's had a couple of flats.

We got to go to the tailor this week too. That was kinda fun. Becky is getting a dress and two skirts made. I am getting a shirt and a mini boubou made for swearing in. My shirt and Becky's dress are from the same material. One of Becky's skirts and my mini boubou are going to be of the same material. Aren't we cute. The tailor is charging us about 13,000 cfa, which is about $30. Yeah the tailor is ripping us off a little but can't complain to much since she is making a dress from the Victoria's Secret catalog. :)

Hi everyone! Sorry that we were not able to post a blog last week. The cyber cafe that we usually us was closed all week due to someone having a baby. Don't worry though, we posted the blog that we wrote for last week anyway :)

Its official, we only have two more weeks left of training! I have am starting to tell everyone how many days we have left every morning. This may sound silly but I have every intention of being extremely lazy that first week at site. I'm even thinking about sleeping in until 7 a.m. Holy cow! Yep we have sad sad little lives here. We wake up at 5 a.m. and are watching the clock by 7 so that we can go to bed by 8 p.m. I know my Mom is laughing her butt of reading this especially since I always made fun of her for falling asleep while she was watching T.V.

Model school is more than half way over. I can honestly say that for me, model school has really made my French progress a lot. I now reprimand children for not following directions or tease them when they do not listen to the question that I ask and give me these horrible replies. I am even starting to not follow word for word what is in the book. Sure there are times when the kids just look at me like I'm an idiot when I'm talking, but I figure I'm doing darn good for only having started to learn the language 8 weeks ago :) Tim is a goof. He hates lesson planning so he rarely does it at all. More often than not, he is asking me what he should teach the students to do that day while we are eating breakfast. I'm glad he is so laid back. If I did something like that...oh I can't even imagine it. I love have plans and orderly schedules. Yes I admit I am extremely anal, maybe even slightly OCD :)

Other important or interesting things that are going on over here: Wednesday all of the secondary education volunteers biked out to Bogoya Z. The 7k ride was amazing. I will admit I was getting slightly irritated with our group of riders. Ok story time: So there are 16 SE volunteers and we had to ride out to the GEE village training site. We broke up into four groups. Each of the groups had people in them that had been to village before and said they knew the way there. Well that wasn't quite the case for my group. So the person who had been to village and was leading the group couldn't remember where the road was that lead out of our village to get to Bogoya. So our group leader spent approximately 20 minutes looking for the road that they were sure they would eventually find. Meanwhile I am starting to get a little testy because we are going to be late, and I detest being late to anything. Well as luck would have it, she did eventually find the road that lead to Bogoya. We arrived about 15 minutes late. I love the look Tim gave me when we finally got to the village. It definitely implied pleased don't kill anyone and HI. The day didn't get a lot better after that either. It was so hot that day and there was only one 5 gallon bucket water filter for over 45 people. So that may not seem like a big deal to you right now, but I can explain. The filters are somewhat slow especially if it is not a new filter. After the water is finally through the filter, you must at bleach and then wait an addition 15 minutes before drinking. Yeah not the wisest thing to only have one filter, especially when the filter wasn't working well at all and caused us not to have water for a couple of hours until an LCF went back to ECLA and got another water filter. All Tim and I are going to say about this is TIA (This Is Africa).

Oh some other interesting news to tell you all about; we did our committee voting this past Wednesday too. So there are several groups/committees that you can be voted onto here in the PC BF. Tim volunteered to be on the IT group and I was voted in as the SE representative for VAC. This means that we both go to Ouaga once every three months for a quarterly meeting. We are both pretty excited about being on each committee. The IT committee is working on expanding sharepoint so that it can be accessed from any computer in BF. VAC is more or less the student council of PC BF.

We are starting our second week of model school now and Becky is starting to be a hard ass during her classes. She has kicked out 2 kids from her class and yelled at a couple of others. I on the other hand am the nice teacher and have not had to kick out anyone. The LCFs say that Becky's assertiveness is good though for when we get to site. They really like that she doesn't take any flak from the students. On the other hand the PCVF say that she needs to mock the students when they don't listen and thus issue stupid responses to questions. My kids just don't even try to answer the questions cause they have never used a computer. But they know that they can download music and they are excited by that idea.

Today I brought material for my outfit for the swearing in ceremony in a couple of weeks. I think that I am going to have a bubu made. A bubu is a shirt that comes about to thigh length then has matching pants. Becky found material that she really likes but we couldn't get it today because we didn't have enough cash on us. It is a deep red with gold peacocks. My pagne is gold with black designs all over it.

We're pretty pumped that we haven't killed each other and that we are a still happily married most of the time. When Becky is sick at night I am giving her the wash bucket and tell her not to wake me up . Now that I'm on amoxicillin Becky tells me to stay away from her and we are both happy.

So now comes the time to test all the skills that we were supposed to be developing during our PST. Model school starts next week and this week we watched Burkinabe teach a class then PCVFs teach a class. Becky is teaching 6eme algebra, which is equivalent to 6 th grade math. She has a class of about 30. I am teaching intro to computers and have 14 in my class. Taking attendance is going to be a treat trying to pronounce the students names. Trying to come up with a lesson plan is also hard because I don't know where to start teaching kids how to use a computer. Some of the stories that the other teachers have are pretty funny. And I have to team teach an advanced course for people who already have some experience with computers. Advanced is a very general term though cause the test that we gave to check for basic knowledge would usually only take about 5 minutes for me to do took the better part of 45 for them if they were able to do all the tasks. The lab that we are using is a piece of junk. We went in on Saturday to try and get it running a little better but that didn't work at all. There are 12 computers of which 9 are functional if slow, 2 more take over a half hour to boot, and 1 that makes for a large paper weight. Next week though we are changing labs and the new one is supposed to be pretty nice with 20 machines.

Becky's chef de class is probably close to 16 and she had already seen a kid kicked out of class in just the second day for falling asleep in class. Speaking of sleep the Burkinabe can sleep anywhere. I saw a lady sleeping on the ground using a wooden foot stool as a pillow. When we go shopping it isn't unusual to find the vendors asleep in their stalls. Eating lunch the other day there were a couple of women sleeping on broken concrete and gravel under a hanger. I don't know how that could be comfortable, but it is to them.

REFLECTIONS AT MID-STAGE

Language—We both feel very strongly about French as a language. As of this moment, I can understand why the French have never succeeded in winning a war, everything sounds the same. I have asked my LCF (Language & Culture Facilitator) how people can understand what is being said when a conjugated verb is pronounced the same exact way. Not to mention the fact that he is pronounced the same way as they/them. The only answer I have gotten thus far is that you can tell by context. My feelings on this answer is a rather naughty response. We only hope in time that we will be able to tell the difference. On the flip-side, we both are in love with Mooré. This is one of the oddest sounding languages I have heard. The grammar is wonderful and easy. I will admit that the nasal vowels are extremely difficult to pronounce. Tim loves to make fun of me because I have to scrunch my nose to get a nasal sound.--Side note- Coming back to our families house one day this week, there was little girl probably 5ish standing outside of the courtyard gate. She pointed at us and said “Nasaare.” I decided to give my Mooré a try and so I greeted her with “Ne y zaabre.” The little girl stared me down for a few seconds and then proceeded to cry and run away. Tim and I have decided that if this is how all kids here react to us speaking Mooré we will greet them all the time in Mooré.

Food—The food in Burkina Faso is very palatable. However, there are only three choices: carbs, mystery meat with bone fragments, and mango or banana. So those of you who are on the Atkin's Diet, don't even think about stepping foot in Africa. Becky has lost over 22lbs, but now has a belly due to the excessive carbs. Tim has lost close 25lbs with no gain in belly jiggle ability. The food in Ouaga is excluded from the previous statement due to the fact that you can get anything in Ouaga as long as you are willing to pay the price.

Weather—Its hotter than Hades!!!!!!!!

People—They are very friendly here and always willing to help you, even if you don't want their help. I will say that the vendors do have a little bit of a pouting problem. Side note—The vendors here due not believe that white people should get to pay the actual retail price. Today Tim and I badgered a vendor into selling us a power strip for half his asking price and telling him we could buy the same one at another boutique for less when he wouldn't lower the price. The vendor was quite putout with us because he didn't make a huge profit. I also think we made his brain hurt with our poor skills. Then again we got exactly what we wanted at the price we wanted :)

Country—Its hot here! Otherwise the landscapes are gorgeous. So is the sky for that matter. I have never seen so many stars in my life. You would not believe how big Orion is here in the night sky. He is probably 2-3 times as big as he is in Illinois. We love to just sit outside and gaze at the stars. This country is very dusty. If you do not care for the color “African Red” then don't come here. Inevitably, everything you own and your feet with be some shade of this color no matter what you what you do.

P.S. Sorry for any confusion on the timing of this post. We wrote this post on Sunday, but due to the rain we had to delay putting it up on the blog.

So the first two days of model school are done :) Thank god too! I was so nervous about teaching in a language that I don't fully understand. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback though! Today, David, a PCVF told me that once I master French I'll be a kick-ass teacher. I am having a little trouble with one or two students not standing up when I enter the class so tomorrow, I am going to make them stand for the entire class if they do it again. I know mean teacher, but they have to learn to respect me even if I am a white woman teaching them.

Oh I am also feeling a million times better! Thanks for all the get wells.

Love

Becky and Tim

Hi everyone!

Well we just got back from our exciting trip to Boulsa. We are both extremely happy with our site. Boulsa is a pretty big town by Burkinabe standards. Roughly 25,000 people live in Boulsa. The city actually houses a technical school, a municipal lycèe, a provincial lycèe and several primary schools. Tim and I will be teaching at the provincial lycèe. This is the largest of all the schools in Boulsa. The school itself is rather modern. The school has several regular classrooms. This lycèe is very lucky to be equipped with two laboratories: one for Psychics and Chemistry and one for Natural Science. By the way, there happens to be a regular toilet located in the building for the two laboratories :) The school also has a pretty sweet building for the computers. Tim's lab has 25 virtual computers running off of a large server. This computer lab is also equipped with TWO air conditioners! Guess where I am going to be hanging out and grading papers. Our school also has a pretty nice teachers lounge. It even has a frig! The school also has a running track and two volleyball courts; although they are essentially just dirt fields.

As for our house, well to some it up in one word—sweet. I will admit that when I first saw the house, I just wanted to cry and say no way in the world I can live here for two years, but after some time and reflection I realized how silly I was being. Now I am extremely excited about our house. We have two bedrooms in our house; although one is being used as a kitchen. We also have a huge salon with two windows on opposite sides of the room, and two doors from the outside! We were also lucky enough to have an indoor showering area. I must admit that the house definitely needs quite a bit of TLC, but I am really looking forward to it. I think that once we slap a coat of fresh paint on the walls everything will look a million times better. As for our private courtyard, I am in heaven. There are quite a few trees growing within our courtyard. I am really looking forward to possibly buying some gravel and doing some major landscaping in one section of the courtyard. I think that I could really make part of the courtyard into a beautiful oasis. We will be posting pictures soon so that you can see our house and courtyard.

After visiting Boulsa, we got to spend two more nights in Ouagadougou. This city is a break from reality. In Ouaga you can buy anything! We ate pizza, hamburgers, twice baked potatoes, BBQ beef sandwiches, breaded chicken sandwiches, onion rings and milkshakes! OH YEAH!!! Talk about being in heaven. Hey Mom guess what I actually like Hawaiian Pizza now, even with the ham on it :) While in Ouagadougou we also got to go over to the Assistant Country Directors house for dinner, Mexican themed. We also got to tour the Peace Corps' bureau, which was pretty cool.

Some not so fun news to let people know about. Traveling is a bit hard on Tim as his sinuses act up quite a bit. He chewed on quite a bit of sinus meds these past five days. I can't blame him for getting sick though, because there is a ton of dust here. As for me, well, I am officially the first one of the two of us to go and pray to the porcelain god. I woke up Monday morning and had to make a mad dash down the hall of the transit house to get to the bathroom. After my unwanted intimate time with the Hasselhoff, I curled up with Tim and popped a few Pepto. Side note all of the bathrooms at the transit house are named after deities and the bunks are names after infections. I woke up and thought that I was all better. Ha that was not quite true. So Monday we took public transport back to Ouahigouya which was not fun at all. The bus was overcrowded and extremely hot. This is about the time that my body decides to take vengeance on me. During our four hour bus ride back to Ouahigouya, I was unaware that I had spiked a fever. I just thought that I was hot and miserable due to the heat in the bus. So I began to now something wasn't quite right in the bus station in Ouahigouya. Tim and I had to leave our bike behind in Ouagadougou because there was not enough room on the bus. I wasn't feeling good at all by this time and having to hike 4k back to our house was not going to happen. We got a ride back to ECLA from the PC. That's about the time when Tim told me I looked like shit and a shade of yellow. Thank god for my hubby, he got the PC to drive us to our house and drop us off. I actually started to feel a little better on the ride home as the air conditioner was blowing right on me. I took a bucket bath and felt even better. I took my temperature afterward and it was 101. I munched on some acetaminophen and went to bed. I felt a lot better in the morning but still had a low grade fever :( Oh well, that just meant I munched on some more acetaminophen. Now my temperature goes up and then back down, so I can say fun times ahead for me. If the fever doesn't break by morning I will finally get to call Jean Luc and say, “Jean Luc, I'm dying!” LOL although, I might have to race Tim for the phone.

Well that is about everything that has happened. We love you all and miss you bunches and bunches! Don't worry too much about us. Aside from the stress, we are having some fun here.

Love

Becky and Tim

PS We appreciate all the comments that you guys are leaving it helps to boost our spirits when we see them. :p

Drum roll please....................................................................................................................................

You have won an exciting two year vacation to the wonderful city of Boulsa!

Now for those of you who are sitting there asking yourself “Boulsa...Where is that?” My first response to you would be “Why in Burkina Faso silly!” Haha :) I just felt like being a little bit of a smart ass especially since that is how most of you remember me :) OK so putting all my lovely wittiness aside, Boulsa sounds like it is going to be a pretty cool place to live. The city is actually pretty big in size. The city is located in the East kinda between Ouaga and Fada. The city is located close to a paved road, so traveling to the capital won't be too terrible. We are going to be teaching at a big lycee. There is electricity in our city and in our house! I'm pretty pumped about that, so is Tim :) I personally think he is only excited about being able to sleep with a fan blowing on us all night long. Our house sounds amazing. Seb has told us that the house has two bedrooms! This is a pretty big deal here. That extra room is going to be amazing to have. We will be able to have friends come and stay anytime they want. Our house also has a big salon. This is the area that will have the living area and more than likely a small cooking area too. Our house is also equipped with an indoor shower area for our bucket baths :) No more getting to watch people in the courtyard over the low wall in the shower. Oh sweet, delicious privacy!

So some new developments that have arisen over on our interesting continent. I am no longer teaching SVT (natural science) or IT, I am now going to be teaching math! Apparently there were two math teachers at our school that just got affectated. Thus leaving the school in desperate need of at least one math teacher. So now I have to brush off the cobwebs and remember all the lovely lessons that Mr. Mac taught me so many years ago. Oh the endless memories of class in the little school surround by cornfields :)

This coming week is going to be very busy for both Tim and I. On Monday and Tuesday we have a day long counterpart workshop with our homologues from our school. For those of you who are wondering, a homologue is one of our most vital resources while in village. The homologue is there to help us not make asses out of ourselves. Basically our counterparts have been warned that we know nothing and that we are not trying offend anyone, so if it happens that we do offend them we didn't mean it. They are responsible for us when we visit our site this week too. We leave Ouahigouya on Wednesday and head for Boulsa. We get to take public transport for the first time too. Oh goodie! To be honest, I am terrified of public transport due to some of the stories that I have heard. People have told me that they have had babies pee and vomit on them!!! Anyway, its only about a 7 hour bus ride, so think happy thoughts. Once in Boulsa, we have a whole list of people we have to go and meet. First and foremost, we have to go and greet the Chef of the village. We then have to walk around with our homologue and of course meet our neighbors, the perfects of the village, high ranking functionars, and our coworkers. We are also going to meet the current PCV in our village that we are going to replace. We will be taking over his house and working in the school that he did. He is pretty excited to meet us and we are most certainly excited to meet him. We are hoping that he will be able to show us some useful spots around town.

Well I think that is about all that is new here. We are still trudging through our French lessons. I still am not too fond of them, but I am getting better at speaking the language. Tim is doing really good too! We still get our lovely wakeup call from the stupid rooster every morning around 3:30 :) We'll keep you all posted on any new developments. Hopefully our next post will also include some pictures of our future house.

It's still hot here. We are starting to see some rain but it hasn't been enough to cool off yet. The farmers are starting to get their fields ready now. We heard rumor that it might be a short rainy season, which is really bad for the people here.

We are so tired right now. We have turned into some retirees going to bed at 8:30 at night. But who ever heard of a rooster crowing at 3:30 in the morning. I think that the only reason it does it is cause the mosque just down the road took over the job of getting us up at the crack of dawn. If those two don't work then our host family washing pots and pans at 5:30 will make sure that we're up.

Then it off to class for 9 hours then some homework. Maybe a little relaxing to end the day before heading back to our host family for a dinner of sauce with mystery meat and little pieces of bone to chew on. Becky has tried for two weeks now to explain that she is vegetarian, so far it has been mildly successful. Having to watch me eat a chicken liver one time made Becky a little sick, but it wasn't too bad.

We are trying to get our laundry done on Sundays now because it's the only day that we have off. Laundry is not like back home where you just throw it in a washer and come back when it is done. We have to first let it soak in Omo for 10 minutes, then we start to scrub on our clothes using another bar of soap. Then we rinse in another bucket and start with the scrubbing again. Then repeat once more and let hang dry. It takes hours to get it done. Our host family said that we should try to wash during the week but we never have time. Becky is also allergic to the Omo.

One of our fellow trainees has fallen ill with malaria. It's a bitch when the government misdoses you on antimalarials. Apparently we were supposed to have gotten our dose a week early to have full coverage. The only thing that the PCMO could come up with was that he was infected within the first two days of being here. Otherwise our stage is holding together OK. Just a few stress induced meltdowns, Becky included. French fucking sucks. No wonder they never won a war. We did do our first lesson in French and that was brutal.

This week we get to find out where we are going to be spending the next two years. Then the week after we get to visit our site. We had interviews with the director of education to describe what we would like in a site. I told him that I want beach front and if that's not possible a swimming pool. He said that he would see what he could do. That means we're probably going to end up in the Sahel. Çe la vive.

Hi everyone! Well I think that we are finally settling into a route here in B.F. We wake up every morning at 5 a.m. Let me tell you, that call to pray is never late :) It is pretty to listen for the first minute or so and then we both roll over for an additional 30 minutes of sleep, or until the girls get to loud from preforming their morning chores. We both grab a quick bucket bath cause it never gets cool here. Also the Burkinabé believe that there is a genie that sleeps with you that is scared away when you take a shower in the morning. If you don't take a shower it will haunt you throughout the day and cause other people trouble cause we each have our own genie. Then we get breakfast, which usually consists of café with sugar and milk, we share half of a baguette with either eggs or an avocado spread. Around 7 a.m., we pack up our stuff and bike 15 minutes into town—uphill all the way :( We then endure classes from 8 a.m. until 12:30. Lunch break is an hour and a half, only if the classes do not run over. We then reassemble at 2 and continue to sweat our butts off in class until 5:15. We usually hangout with the other trainees until 6 p.m. We then get to go on the fun 15 minute bike ride home that is downhill all the way home—score. Once we arrive at our African—suburban home, we have to shower right away. We are covered head to toe by sweat and red dirt! We usually dine with our host dad, Jean, and talk with each other until 8. We finally get to say that we are tired and can bring all of our bedding including the mattress outside for sleeping. So that is our day in a nutshell. Sometimes we like to spice things up and add in a trip to the cyber café or we will get to talk with other members in our host families. One night last week, I was rather bored and a little irritated that kids would not talk to us, so I bribed them with a game. Apparently the Burkinabé love games, so I broke out our game of CLR. Well it was nothing less than successful. The kids love us now, and they are starting to talk to us! On Tuesday, we learned that the children here find animated films to be quite fascinating. So me being my lovely self bribe them again with Over the Hedge played on our iPod. They all loved it, even though they couldn't understand it in English. Every night since I had played that movie they have asked to see another one. Last night, Tim and I set up the laptop in the living room and played Night at the Museum for them in French. The kids and Celestine loved the movie. I was a little worried about the magical content especially with them being Animists, but they really enjoyed the movie.

On a much brighter note, mine and Tim's stomaches are starting to settle down :) This makes all of us very very happy. I have developed a new found love for jus de wetta. This is the most amazing juice ever. It tastes like orange juice mixed with pineappley awesomeness. We are missing all of you like crazy! I hope to hear from some of you soon. We are checking our emails every Saturday and mail gets delivered here about once a week. We love everyone's questions on the blog. Keep them coming and we'll keep on answering :)

Love Becky and Tim

Yep you have guessed it; Tim and I are suffering through the adjustment period. We now get to eat pepto with our meals that maybe stay in us for a couple of hours before we see it out the other end :) We are learning the fine art of using a pit latrine :)

It has been hot here. Really hot like 104-5 with it dropping to 95 at night. Not the best sleeping weather but we are getting to sleep outside that is helping some. It has rained here the last couple of days, and when it rains it comes in buckets and buckets. Last night it finally cooled off enough that we could stand to be in the same bed.

Our host family is very nice. The father is a teacher at the high school and the mother is a teacher at the elementary school. They are working with us to get our french up to speed and that is difficult at times! The kids finally stopped being scared of us after Becky broke out CLR to play with them. They spoil us with their cooking. We get to suggest what to have each night for dinner and each morning we have coffee with bread and butter. We even get salad which is very expensive here.

Washing our laundry for the first time was an experience. Our father brought us a large basin and a bucket, put some water in them added a little detergent in the basin and walked off. Becky followed the example from 7 brides for 7 brothers. Thank god for old movies! When our mother got home she brought us a bar of soap and showed us how we were really supposed to wash our laundry. She made it look so easy.

Becky is obsessed with catching one of the 5 million geckos that are running around here. They are everywhere that she can't reach and it isn't proper to catch the geckos. There aren't any snakes here, but there are vultures and I think that they are starting to follow the trainees. A sign of things to come????

There is an awesome golf course in Ouaga. The fairways are suppose to be well kept and the rough isn't to deep. You have great roll cause the ground can get a little hard during the dry season. Granted you are carry the fairway with you in the form of an Astroturf mat. Sounds fun to me.

You can contact us either through email or post. The information is on our contact link. Email is definitely faster but we don't have constant access. Real letters are like Christmas. We have a phone now that has free incoming calls. Call the moms for the info.

We finally made it to Burkina Faso. Things have been going ok so far. The language is being difficult and Becky and I tested into the same group, novice. Our host family is going to be a couple one of who is a professor of French at the local high school. Hopefully that will help us catch up. Please send us M&Ms. We love you all very much.

We are finally there. Africa that is. After nearly 18 hours on planes today we had a little trouble at our last stop and are stuck in Niger. But we are in a great hotel that has wireless and an awesome buffet with Air France footing the bill. I just had the best mango that I have ever eaten and the sauce that is apparently a staple is great with just a little kick to it. We have about an hour flight left to Burkina Faso, but thought that everyone would like to know that we are fine even though we're not in Ouagadougou just yet.

Signing off,

Tim and Becky

Well I can honestly say that Tim and I did start packing earlier than some. We began our packing expedition on Sunday morning. Can I just say I really dislike packing! We decided to take everything out of the packaging prior to packing it in the suitcases for space saving reasons. By the time we had everything out of its original packaging and into properly labeled Ziploc bags, we had one 30 gallon trash bag and one 25 gallon Rubbermaid tub full of trash/packaging AND we had gone through an entire box of gallon sized Ziploc bags.

We had an interesting time playing the shuffle game with our luggage. Our goal was to pack everything into two pieces of luggage. Well that did not go over so well :) By the time we got most of the toiletries packed into my blue suitcase, it weighed nearly 50 lbs! We then proceeded to pack some books and some of the clothing into Tim's big backpack traveler luggage. Well that one was interesting too! We had the bag entirely filled and it weighed approximately 45 lbs and took up more than 57 ins of the total 107 ins that each of us was allowed to take. So after packing two bags and still having more stuff to pack we called Chris and had him bring his own smaller traveler luggage. Now at this time Tim has roughly 50 ins left for an additional bag and 35 lbs. I have roughly 52 ins and 30 lbs left for my allowance on packing.

Once Chris' bag arrived, Tim and I continued to pack. After filling that bag, we still had more stuff left over to pack! Well to be honest, by this time, I'm feeling a little down. We were only going to take two bags, then three, and now FOUR! Geeze I was starting to think that we had over packed. Oh well, Tim and I added our final choice piece of luggage, a sturdy black duffel bag. We finally had everything packed: YAY!!! Well we measured and weighed each piece of luggage and tried to figure out who was taking each piece. Disaster! The two traveling luggage bags from L.L. Bean were costing us too much space and weight. So Tim and I proceeded to unpack things that we were not going to us right away. We also started taping pockets down on these bags to get them within the linear constraints. After much finagling, we were ultimately able to pack everything down so that Tim's two L.L. Bean travelers backpacks were within the limits and my two bags didn not exceed weight.

This was one very long process. I have not been this stressed out about something since college. Oh we also had fun picking out what would be in our carryons besides our important papers. Packing actually took us two whole days.

Getting to Philadelphia was not too terrible. We did experience a flight delay of a little more than an hour after we had boarded our Chicago to Philadelphia plane. Our meeting was long, but full of useful information (some of which has caused us to repack our carryons and luggage). Later after the meeting was over at approximately 7:45 we went to dinner with five other volunteers. We had a great time and enjoyed some more ice cream!

Well I think that's all for now. Plenty in my opinion since my hand is starting to hurt a little :)

Love you all

Becky and Tim

We now have six days left prior to starting our grand new adventure. Wow! I'm not sure where to begin. Tim and I have just returned from visiting his family up North. We had a blast. He even let me buy a new skirt (who would have ever thought that I would be excited about buying a skirt)! Tim got a couple of games of golf in this past week too. He and I teamed up one afternoon against his dad and Erik. Well I'm not one to brag, but we did beat them like they were red headed stepkids ;) I think the final score was 86 to 99 (OUCH)! --Tim says "Boom...Boom...FIREPOWER!" We have been struggling to convert our movies over to iPod form. How many freaking audio tracks does one DVD need; just so you know Mr. & Mrs. Smith has six.

Well to highlight our going aways parties in one word--AWESOME! The party up in Dixon was a lot of fun. There were a lot of people who showed up. Mary Coleman even stopped by and talk with us. She gave us a lot of valuable knowledge about Leslie and Ryan's PC time. Grandpa really loved those baked beans and he let everyone know it twice or even three times. The party down in Monmouth was well...hmm... a lot of chaos. I believe Em said it best, she's never been to a party like that before. She even ask my mom to invite her to more family parties. Oh my, I wonder what she would think if it wasn't such a tame party for the Turnquists at least. I'm not sure what the best part of the night was: Randy and Caleb's ATV mudding adventure or some of the interesting conversations people had.

We still have a lot of stuff to do prior to Sunday. We are going to have to organize all of our stuff into piles and run through the list of items (thanks Ryan & Leslie). We will of course have that last minute shopping trip to Peoria to get those final items. I still need to defer my loans. We both still need to do a little work on Rosetta Stone. --A word to anyone thinking of getting this program, DON'T. Becky's thoughts: worthless unless you don't mind not knowing exactly what you are saying. Tim's thoughts: It would be better to spend the money on "Language " For Dummies and a game of charades so that you have at least some practice at what you are going to be doing in BF.

Tim's things left to do go golfing, copy DVDs, go golfing, eat at the Packinghouse, go golfing, go out with Randy and Jannie, go golfing with Randy, win back the money from Jim and Randy from golfing by golfing more. Possibly spend some time with Becky and Desi golfing. :) Yep I need to golf more.

Until next time

Becky and Tim

Last Friday Tim and I received our staging information via email! We got to read some more about a lot of things we already knew. Like making safety our number one priority over there (seems like a no brainer to me). The "packet" did contain some really helpful stuff though. It gave a schedule of what we would be doing in Philly and everything that we need to bring with us. It also gave us the information we needed to book our flights out there. So as of today at approximately 4 p.m. Tim and I will begin our Peace Corps adventure in full starting with a 6 a.m. flight out of Moline on June 9th! Ok, so the whole 6 a.m. thing really isn't that great of news...I still have to tell my hubby that I will be so excited that I won't be able to sleep and if I can't sleep well I get hyper =) I'm sure he is going to love that! From Moline we fly to O'Hare and have a two hour layover then we head on to Philly.

We also got the information on our other flights. Basically we fly from Philadelphia to Paris in 8 hours. We have a two hour wait until we hop a flight from Paris to Ouagadougou which is another 8 hour flight. So when everything is said and done, Tim and I leave Philly at 6:40 p.m. on June 10 and finally arrive in Burkina Faso at 4:40 p.m. June 11. All I can say is I think there is going to be some jet lag going on =)

Other than receiving our staging info Tim and I have been pretty busy getting all our stuff in order. We both have about 20 hours left to complete on Rosetta Stone. All I can say is that there is one girl in our cluster who has completed 82 hours...she must have no life, because we are struggling to complete the 40 hours. Oh I also found out that we have to learn some basics in Moore, just some general greetings and other things that we will need when we first arrive in Ouagadougou.

On a final note our going away parties are coming up. The one that Denny and Rose are giving is this coming Saturday. I'm pretty darn excited about this. Tim is planning on have bags and possibly some cribbage games going. I can't wait to play some cribbage with the family and I know Tim can't wait to have me as his Lucky partner. Then we have another party the following week on Sunday. This one is at Ron and Ida's. I'm trying to get a volleyball net for that party as well as a wicked beer/pop pong tournament going.

Well I think that is quite a big update for now. We'll keep everyone posted on any new developments.

Why hello everyone!

It is mine and Tim's greatest wish to keep everyone updated as often as possible while we are over in Africa. Since most of you know me rather well you now how anal I am about things, thus you get the first posting. Tim and I are currently still working. Tim is subbing at the area schools and then he golfs. I am still at CAT, at least for the next six weeks! We are both realizing how little time we have left in the good old USA. Now we are making plans to visit with as many people as possible. Both of our families are having parties for us in May (YAY!), so hopefully we'll get to see everyone.

Well we haven't gotten any additional news from the PC yet. So right now its just a waiting game for our staging info. However, I am getting to do a lot of shopping! Which in turn means that Tim is either really happy because he gets new shoes or really sad because of all the bags he has to carry :)