This is an activity I did with my Girls Club at the primary school on hand washing. I started by asking them what are things that we know exist but we cannot see. I used the example of the wind. They came up with things like air, and God. Then I asked them what causes disease and they said germs, which is really good. So then I said that germs are so small we can't see them, but we know they are there and we have to wash our hands thoroughly to get rid of them. Then I had one of the girls help my with a demonstration- I put a bit of oil on her hand and then some dirt (we meet outside under a tree so this was easy to find). I told her the dirt is like germs and they are sticking to her hand so she needs to wash them. The left hand has cholera and the right hand has typhoid I said. Then I splashed water on her hand a few times but the “germs” would not all come off. So then we added soap and after scrubbing, the germs were all gone. Then I told then to show this to their sisters and mothers who do not go to school.

So I finally started teaching at the Teacher Training college, 6 weeks late. It was delayed because of the elections, nothing starts on time, etc. Then on the first day, I didn't know where to go, so I called another teacher to show me where the classroom is. So a half hour before class is about to start, I call him up. He comes over, but tells me the classroom is in use. Then he makes a bunch of calls and finally its decided that I will teach at 5 pm (6 hours late), just for that class. The other teacher told me he would call me later and tell me where to go. 5 o'clock rolled around and no call. Finally at 5:30 he calls me me and says take a moto to the Bilingual School! So of course I jump on a moto and roll up there. It didn't take long for my students to find me, I kinda stick out.

Then the next week, the class was supposed to start at the real time in the real classroom. But I couldn't get a hold of anyone to give me directions. All I had was a neighborhood name. No one was answering their phones. So I just hopped on a moto and told the driver the name I had. I got off the moto by some university students and asked them. They said oh its not too far, just make a right there and straight down-across from the Women's Center. So I just wandered around for a bit, asked someone where the Women's Center is, and finally reached a building, which sure enough was the classroom!

The class is going well so far, with all 150 students. It just goes to show you that this is a reversy land. Everything that is easy in the US is hard here, and everything that is easy here is hard in the US. C'est la vie I guess!

Last night I made some popcorn in a disproportionately small pot because the rest of my dishes were dirty. Unsurprisingly, some popcorn popped right out of the pot onto the floor. I figured I would leave it there until I felt like sweeping it up. The next day, I saw a kernel in the hallway. Upon closer inspection, an army of ants was moving it from the kitchen to an unknown destination, probably their lair. I also saw 6 other pieces moving mysteriously. I didn't have the heart to kill them all. I wanted to see how far they got. At night, hours later, I went into my bedroom and found a pile of popcorn. Apparently they had gotten stuck on my fan cord. That is when I thought enough is enough and swept up the popcorn (and some ants) to throw out.

We celebrated the feast of the ram or tabaski on Sunday. On saturday I got henna on my arms by one of my students and they fed me good beef jerky and cookies. On Sunday I went to watch the prayer around 8 am and then I walked back with my neighbor Amaya. Aie stayed at home because unfortunately her grandfather died so her grandmother is very sad. Well, we all are. So a little after we got back the iman and the macabo came to cut the throat of the ram. Well, something wasn't right. We gathered around the animal and we going to sit and pat it while it took its last breaths, but it wasn't right and it was thrashing and putting up a fight. The girls yelled for me to help them and we had to hold the poor guy down for like 15 minutes until it died. Then they cut it up while we just chatted. The girls did my hair and we took pictures. I also went to a co-workers house and Louise's neighbors house. The women spend all day cooking and preparing different dishes with the mutton. My neighbors gave me a big hunk again and I marinated it overnight with spices sent from the states and then slow cooked it for an hour an a hour. The day after Tabaski was Monday and school was cancelled. Everyone eats more mutton the day after, so I went to visit another friend and had some more. Its mutton breakfast, lunch and dinner for at least 3 days!

Time for another slice of my African life, because I don't feel like anything too exciting has happened, but maybe you think an average week in Mora is more interesting than I do....

Sunday-Spent Saturday night at my friend Emily's village, Mokolo, for her birthday. Woke up late, 7:30 am and ate pancakes with guava jam for breakfast. Went to the bus stop to get a bus to Maroua. The place was a shit show because it was Sunday and they were filling up big buses not bush taxi vans so it took a while to fill them up. Waited about 2 hours or so. This involved one van backing in and out of the station for some reason. Got to Maroua just as the bus to Mora was filling up-got the last tickets so we left right away! Bought some beignets and hard boiled eggs from a child to eat on the way. Got to Mora and was exhausted from the weekend, so just layed around for the rest of the day. Made soup for dinner.

Monday- Washed a load of laundry (by hand of course) and did some dishes on my front porch. Went to lunch with some volunteers from here and some that were visiting to work with my postmate. Ate ignames and tomato sauce for lunch. igname is a big root vegetable, tastes like a potato. I was pissed off at lunch because on the way there I saw one of my students who told me the exams at school had been postponed AGAIN until Thursday. Usually I have 2 hours of class on Monday, but I didn't go because I thought they were taking exams. so annoying. They change just the time, don't tell anyone, postpone it 3 times, and now my students think I didn't come to class. To top of this day, I went to the market after lunch. It decided to rain while I was buying dried fish for my cat, so I was stuck at the horrendously smelling fish stall for an hour. It was a surprisingly strong storm for the end of rainy season. I was freezing, huddled with men, women and children. People tried to give me a dry place but the wind was too strong. I'm pretty sure they were laughing at me because I was freezing and they all had their head scarves which were coming in really handy. Finally the rain stopped and I caught a moto home. Relaxed the rest of the day. Had a meatball sandwich for dinner with meatballs and bread from the market, made in Mora. Delish. I also planned my lesson for the next day since we were teaching after all.

Tuesday- Class 9:30-11:45. Talked to the students in my clubs after about having a meeting before I leave for two weeks on Friday, but they were not motivated so I said I will see you for fete de mouton. Then I went to the tailor to drop off some fabric for a dress. I'm completely out of control with getting clothes made. Its where all my money goes. But I don't care-there are too many beautiful fabrics waiting to be made into custom fitted dresses. After that, my bestie postmate Louise came over and we made LOTS of tempura-fried green beans, eggplant and zuchinni (these are bought in Maroua-2 hours away. can't find these in Mora) and we made two sauces- ranch and mustard/mayo/soy sauce. It was fabulous. Then she left and my other postmate Jessice came over to talk about our security plan for when I travel and they announce the election results.

Wednesday-Woke up and washed some more laundry. Walked over with my neighbor to her mother's house because she just had a new baby. (My neighbor lives in the same concession as me, with her grandparents. Her name is Aie and she's 15) The baby was really cute of course. We also saw a tiny premature lamb which was really cute too. Then I went to the post office, where I got a wedding announcement from Emilie <3. I was on my way to girls club at a primary school, Group 1A. We played football oops I mean soccer and then talked about what the girls do everyday. They said they wake up at 5am, wash clothes, cook breakfast, sweep the house, and then come to school at 7:30am until 4:30 pm. Then they rest a little, then cook and study until bed around 10pm. One girl said she goes to bed at 11pm and wakes up at 3am everyday to help her mom make beignets. It's no wonder they don't stay in school or get good grades when they have all that work to do! I went to dinner at a place run by my friend Patricia and she made me delicious rice, tomato sauce and mackerel. I brought the head of the mackerel home for my cat ;) Then I went to my postmate Martin's house for a bonfire. I went home by moto around 9pm.

Thursday-Woke up and washed all my sheets and my mosquito net which took basically the whole morning. Then I dug a compost hole in my backyard, which I've been meaning to do for a while. After all that, I took a little nap, then hopped on a moto to go to another girls club at Mora Massif school. We played football with these girls too. Then I went to the market and home. I stopped at a neighbor's house to say hi then called it a night.

This summer has gone by pretty much as fast as I thought it would, which is why I haven't had the chance to write. I'll go ahead and skip to the good part- backpacking West Africa. In three weeks, two other volunteers and I went to 4 countries: Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo and Benin. I won't bore you with the whole saga of our adventure, but these are the highlights (in no particular order):

-Being in Djenne, a city with a beautiful mosque for the first night of ramadan

-Having tea on the rooftop of a new friends house

-Two boys getting into a fight on said rooftop ending in one slathering himself and the roof in lighter fluid (we made a quick exit)

-Meeting a Malian who had been to the US and I quote “I took my tea at Times Square HAHAHAH” good old Ibrahim. He called himself a nomad but then we saw him giving a tour and put two and two together.

-Getting spit in the face by someone trying to swindle me (unsuccessfully)

-Getting giardia on the PLANE RIDE there. First I tried antibiotics, which controlled it but as soon as I stopped taking them, it came back full force. This ended with me taking a rickshaw motorcycle to a pharmacy, doubled over with stomach contractions (I think it was similar to labor) and the pharmacist was like what the heck did you eat? He gave me some magic pills that kill everything in your body, and I felt better within 5 minutes.

-Sleeping on rooftops while hiking in Dogon Country

-Fanmilk in Burkina- its a delicious milk treat

-Jewelry shopping in Burkina- best artisan market EVER

-Bush taxi accident- see pics on facebook

-Sleeping at the chief's house in a small village in Togo- that spicy sauce for breakfast was firey!

-Best moto ride ever- up the mountain in the rainforest to see the butterflies

-First skin infection since coming to Africa from a mosquito bite in the foot

-Hunting for a movie theater in Togo....we finally found a hotel/resto that projects movies onto a white wall while serving pizzas and popcorn...AMAZING

-Pizza, pasta, cheese, asian food and ice cream

-Couchsurfing for the 1st time!

-Hitchhiking from Burkina to Togo and the people in the car were so mad because we had to get visas at the border and they were waiting for so long

-My monkey friend at the hotel

-Dennis and Jessica, who drove me from Kpalime to Lome in their mercedes for no charge, while playing the complete Michael Bolton collection

-Meeting a real Togolese fashion designer and watching videos of her fashion shows

-The beach in Grand Popo, Benin

-Pissing off the taxi drivers in Grand Popo, who then attacked our new taxi driver and we had to lock ourselves in a car

-The prostitute who asked me if I was from Finland...really, is that your first guess?

The words to describe this trip would be crazy, amazing, beautiful, tiring.

When I got back from my trip, I delved into a Training Design Workshop for a new program coming to Cameroon, Youth Development. We spent a week developing the plan for training 13 volunteers in a completely new program. I'm going to be facillitating training sessions in Bafia, where I was trained, in late October/early November on some of the work that I've been doing in the field. I also found out I got into the first grad school program I applied for. In October, I am going to start teaching classes at the University of Maroua. Pretty much couldn't ask for more professionally at this point. Oh and did I mention I am coming home in 10 months?!

In Yaounde, the capital city of Cameroon, there are 6 places for passengers in a tiny car. 2 in the passenger seat and 4 in the backseat. If you want to take a taxi, you stand on the street. Each time a taxi with an available seat comes by, you shout through the window where you want to go. If they are willing to take you, they honk the horn and you get in. If they are not already going in that direction (because of the other people) then they just keep going. So sometimes it takes 5 or 10 minutes shouting into taxis to find someone going in your direction. The driver, unless there is 6 people in the car besides him, is constantly driving on the side of the road looking for other passengers. You pay usually 200 francs (50 cents).

We went on an excursion to Kumbo for a pig roast. This involved a 14 hour train ride from Ngaoundere to Yaounde. We tried to reserve beds but surprisingly, the person that cleans the office in Ngaoundere did not get the tickets on time, so we were in seats for the ride. The train leaves at 6pm. There were very loud people in our car that were screaming until about midnight and they do not turn off the lights during the ride, so I brought a sleep mask. We got in around 8 am. Then we went to the Peace Corps office to brush our teeth, and immediately got onto another bus. First we waited in our seats on the bush for over 2 hours. It was a seven hour bus ride, but we were happy because there were many corn and pineapple sellers along the way to buy snacks through the bus window. We arrived in Bamenda at dusk and went to meet our friends directly at a bar. We ate some meat then went to a restaurant to eat delicious chicken and jamma jamma. The next day we went to the bus station to catch a car to Kumbo. Luckily there were many of us so we filled the car fast and left. The road was fine until the last part which was unpaved and mountainous and made our heads hit the roof of the van many times. It took about 4 hours. The first day in Kumbo we prepared the food and the second day we had a feast, including ribs, ham, pulled pork, and a bucket (literally) of potato salad. We ate lunch and dinner without moving from our chairs. It was definitely the best meal I've had in Cameroon. I have not had pork in SO long because I live in a muslim community. So on the last day in Kumbo we went out to breakfast and of course it had rained the night before and the road with slippery and muddy and when I got off a moto I took a huge tumble in the middle of the street. I bruised my knee really badly, scraped the other and my elbow. All my friend Janelle said that was a very graceful fall. I said I was due for a serious injury, the last time was when I fell down the stairs in Union Station so badly people had to hand me my shoes back. My kind friend Claire cleaned the mud out of my wounds and I was good as new. We took the car back to Bamenda and then we missed the last day bus, so we had to take the night bus to Yaounde because we had a meeting the next day at 8 am. The night bus is supposed to leave at 9 pm. We left at 10:30. The bus arrived at 4:30 am and we took an overpriced taxi to the office/house. I needed a shower very badly, as I had not showered in 5 days. This is the longest I have ever gone without at least rinsing, but it was SO cold in the Northwest so I could not stand a the water temperature. So I was really looking forward to a hot shower at the house. Unfortunately the hot water heater was not on, so I took a cold shower at 5 am and it was not fun. Then I threw some laundry into the machine (!!!!!!) and went back to sleep for an hour.

Feeling very good the past couple days. I did a young girls camp for girls 10-14 (we had a few 5 year old straglers) for a week with some other volunteers. It went really well. We taught them about communication, decision making, health, careers, saving and income generating activities. Let's not forget another condom demonstration by yours truly. I planned the whole thing start to finish so it was really good to see it come to fruition. Now I'm heading down to mid service, which is basically a series of medical examinations. We will need to provide at least 3 stool samples, so we were told to bring at least one with us. Nice. So on my way I stopped in another town called Kaele to check it out. First we ate some traditional southern vegetables. Then we went to a nearby lake to see the crocodiles. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. We only drove about 7 km out of town, but it felt very isolated and remote. It was an old quarry so it was very deep with large ledges. There were mountains right next to the spot so standing up on the precipice with the wind blowing, I felt great. There was only one little grouping of huts at the foot of the mountain. That and the boys bathing in the lake when we first arrived were the only reminders of civilization. We saw the crocs pop their heads out of the water and float on the surface and then go down again. The most we saw at one time was 7.' Then on the bus ride to Ngaoundere we passed the river in Garoua and saw a big pile of hippos. They were huge and just sitting in the water. One popped its head up as we passed. After the 10 hour bus ride, we arrived and immediately went to our favorite restaurant Le Concorde, where I had delicious rotisserie chicken. Today, after 3 hours of negotiations, we found a car to drive us to the waterfall at Tello. It was a little over an hour drive on an unpaved road. Now that it is rainy season, and we are in the Adamawa region, there is so much greenery and the earth is a dark red. Then we had to walk down a very long and steep flight of stairs made out of rocks until we reached the waterfall. The stairs led to a big cave, where the water was falling from the top of the cave, so we were essentially behind the waterfall. There was lots of moss and it was beautiful. Then we took another flight of stairs which led to the other side and took some great pictures. My camera is broken, but my friend has already tagged me in some photos on facebook.

This country really is beautiful and I cannot do it justice in my humble blog. I know that I will always want to continue to travel to new and majestic places like Cameroon.

What I like about living here is that you have time to decide things. A few minutes ago I was just lounging on my bed/couch and eating groundnuts, about 5 pm, just deciding what to do with the next couple hours. As I lay there in the heat with the fan gently blowing hot air at me (at least it dries your sweat), I decided to give you a little glimpse into my african life.

My week started on Monday at about 7:20 am. The vice principal of my school came to my door to give me some more tests to grade because I had come looking for him on Saturday, but he had just left (it was 9 am). Luckily I had woken up about 10 minutes before, so I didn't look like a complete bum with him waking me up 3 hours after everyone else starts their day around here. I graded these tests for a couple hours then went back to sleep. I was awoken by a call from my postmate to go to the market. Off I went. The good ole market. I bought some vegetable oil, which is a luxury here because most people use palm oil, made from palm trees. I don't like palm oil all that much because they put it in the same bottles as they do gasoline, so I always think the palm oil tastes like gasoline. I know its probably in my head but oh well. Then we bought some fresh squeezed mango juice and sat outside the shop to drink it. I saw some of my students out there and they were being wild and dancing like Michael Jackson, or at least trying to. After that, I took a moto taxi back to my house and graded more papers, while sitting on my porch. Then I did something I'm not proud of. I took the wrapping off my homemade tortillas and they had gone moldy. I didn't feel like making new ones, so I just scraped off the mold. I was a little nervous because I remember something about red and black mold being bad and green and blue being ok (hence blue cheese btw). This mold was black. A little later, my neighbors were eating lunch and of course they invited me over, so I had 2nd lunch. We eat under a mango tree in our yard. The food is on a big platter. It's a big mound of couscous with follere sauce on the side. The coucous here is just like putty because its made out of water and flour. So you grab a golfball size piece of couscous with your hand and then dip it into the sauce. My neighbors are pretty well off so the sauce it delicious (keep in mind I've been here a year). Its made with the traditional follere leaves and smoked fish. There's also probably garlic, salt, maggi (msg in a cube form) and okra. While we were eating my neighbors argued about when it was going to rain.

After 2 lunches and more grading, I went to my postmate's for dinner. She made dinner while I threw out/ took a lot of her stuff because she's going home for the summer (not a Peace Corp volunteer). I had so much stuff in the end that I had to call a moto taxi to pick me up and take me home.

On Tuesday, I got up and went right to school. I filled out 2 classes' report cards, which took 2 hours, not including the trips to another room to get the key to the room in which the report cards were kept, and a tea break. Somehow I was there from 8-1pm. I went home and had leftover pasta with tofu for lunch. I really needed to do my dishes, but I couldn't move in the heat. I read for a while, and then got hungry again so I made a boatload of zucchini tempura with mustard-soy sauce. Then I watched some TV on my hardrive and went to sleep.

Wednesday I woke up and went to school to do 2 more classes' report cards. Then I went to the tailor and the market to buy some more mango and some follere juice. The juice lady gave me a freebie because I am her best customer. I took a moto back to my house because by that time it was noon and really steaming. Then Claire and Mamdih stopped by because they had business at the prison (long story). We sat on my porch for a while and then they left. After that, I made myself an omelet with peas for lunch. Then I finally mustered up the energy to do my dishes because literally all of them were dirty and I had to use a dirty plate to eat my lunch on. After that I finished a book, watched one TV show, then started another book because my computer overheats. Tonight I'm going to go to dinner with the other volunteers in town because its my friend's last night here for a while.

So, this is a little taste of the exciting, action-packed, development-working life I lead here. Hopefully I change someone's life along the way.;)

I was sad to hear that my last blog was depressing to some people. That's not good. Of course I'm homesick, it's not like I'm living in Paris or something, where it would just be a matter of missing friends and family. But I'm living in a completely different culture, and there are few things here that are like home, so I miss the environment of home as well as the people. It's not easy sticking out all the time, especially when you've been here a year and feel as though you should be able to blend in a bit (impossible). So it's been hot season. It was incredible. The heat was incredible that is. It was regularly over 120 degrees (in the shade where my thermometer is). Oh and by thermometer I mean oven thermometer because that's all I had, and regular thermometers sent from home just break in this heat. In the sun it was about 140 degrees. The worst part is that it does not get cooler at night. It just stays the same. I couldn't even turn my computer on- it would be burning to the touch. Probably not a good sign. So what did I do? I would go into the shower with my clothes on then go to bed. Hopefully, if the power was working, I would have a fan. Between this and the soaking wet clothes, I would sleep for about 2 hours. Since its dry heat, it wasn't too sweaty, except for anything touching you. So when I would sit in a chair for instance, my entire back would be drenched in sweat. I got up to 3 showers a day. I drank over 7 liters of water a day. I would be consumed with thirst after only a half hour or so. Sometimes if I went a while without drinking, it became the only thing I could concentrate on until I got to somewhere with drinks. You get very irritable in this heat. I felt bad for my students sometimes, because I definitely had less patience in class. But pretty much everyone was snapping at each other. I think I did bargain for better prices at the market though, because I was just so irritable and wouldn't accept a high price. That's also how I ended up with 2 new dresses and a pair of custom made leather shoes with pointy toes. At night, I would be sweating while sleeping, and have to wake up to drink. Often, when I was very tired, I would start to dream about a cold, icy bucket of beverages. All different flavors, with the condensation trickling down the bottles. Then I would wake up and know I was dehydrated. A couple days ago we had our first storm in 6 months. It started off with gray clouds overhead. It was very humid. Then it got very windy. The mountains looked majestic with the clouds surrounding them, making the peaks difficult to see, and the dust swirling all around the base. After a few minutes of a wind/ dust storm, it drizzled for about 10 minutes. But since then the heat has not come back (its staying around 90 or 100) and it is once again bearable.

Sorry I haven't written in awhile. It just gets to a point where there are no words. I just had a nice dinner with a retired dutch couple.

Right now I have never been so happy and unhappy at the same time. Basically I live my live with dualities right now. Foreigner/Resident, American/Cameroonian, Effective/Ineffective, Outrageously happy/want to crawl into a hole somewhere, Disgustingly dirty/ refreshingly clean (once a week), Fitting in by disregarding everything I knew up until 10 months ago/ sticking to my work ethic in order to facilitate change.

Homesickness. It's not like before where even watching a movie set in the US was saddening, but now its more like eveytime I am reminded of something from home, such as Amici deli, ice cubes, or dry erase boards, I feel a dull ache, similar to the empty hole that a loved one leaves in your heart when they die.

I just took a shower in the dark because the power went out in the middle of it. When the power goes out here, its pitch black. You cannot even see your hand if you put it up in front of your face. I didn't feel like leaving the shower, so I just finished up, which wasn't difficult. Then I stumbled around in the dark until I found my headlamp. Now I'm switching off between fanning myself manually with a piece of cardboard and typing this. Yes I work up a sweat by just sitting here.

It is hot season. By hot I mean 140 degrees. A typical day for me is waking up around 7 (I sleep in late, I know). I eat a breakfast consisting of water and bread with a little peanut butter or if I'm lucky, nutella on top. Hey, at least the water is icy because I put it in the freezer the night before. I put some sunblock on my face and a scarf on my head, and then walk to school. The sun is already blazing at about 100, but it feels cool compared to what's coming. I go to school, where I'm expected to say good morning to everyone and shake their hand. Then I go teach a couple classes. Horrendous is I good word to describe my classes. Everyone is hot, tired, thirsty, hungry, and god knows what else. Today I saw a student not writing so I said start writing, and he lifted his hand up from under the desk and it was swollen to 4 times its normal size. What do you do in that situation?

After class I do administrative tasks that come with being the head of the department. If I had a dime for everytime I found out about a meeting after it had happened.....I chat with a student or two,co-workers, and then head home around 2 or so. There is no one on the streets except for people that have passed out from sun stroke before they got to their house. It is a struggle to walk home. I honestly see mirages with blue raspberry slushies from the gas station. They do sell frozen juices here called follere or bilboa which are absolutely delicious and I take full advantage of these, even though I could get many different GI infections from it. By the time I get home, I feel dizzy and lethargic. I quickly chug a liter and a half of water (my second of the day) and heat up some food. Then I lay down (with my fan going full blast) until about 4. Finally it gets back down to about 100 again and I can be semi-productive, preparing lessons, washing dishes or clothes, sweeping my house. The dust. Don't even get me started on the dust I'm supposed to sweep everyday. For dinner I have pasta or rice. I really am having the time of my life!

There's nothing like putting on a moo moo after a long day of teaching and demonstrating how to use a condom. This week I helped train 30 preschool teachers in a 3-day seminar, taught classes, planned a AIDS panel, and did the panel. Although only 18 students showed up for the panel, it was really positive to see them and 4 other teachers contributing. I planned it with my girls club. I love this club. There are even boys in this club and they're a great group. They had a little pageant to pick a “Miss” and a “Master” and the Master was on the AIDS panel. Because I brought the demonstration condoms and male genitalia, somehow I ended being the person to demonstrate how to use a condom. Great. I had to ask my co-worker to help me explain because I don't know that vocabulary in french! But the talk was really open and honest so it went really well. We're going to do another in March and hopefully more students will come.

There's nothing like putting on a moo moo after a long day of teaching and demonstrating how to use a condom. This week I helped train 30 preschool teachers in a 3-day seminar, taught classes, planned a AIDS panel, and did the panel. Although only 18 students showed up for the panel, it was really positive to see them and 4 other teachers contributing. I planned it with my girls club. I love this club. There are even boys in this club and they're a great group. They had a little pageant to pick a “Miss” and a “Master” and the Master was on the AIDS panel. Because I brought the demonstration condoms and male genitalia, somehow I ended being the person to demonstrate how to use a condom. Great. I had to ask my co-worker to help me explain because I don't know that vocabulary in french! But the talk was really open and honest so it went really well. We're going to do another in March and hopefully more students will come.

So I'm sitting here in my house on a random Wednesday evening, music blaring in the background from the wedding on Friday (its still going!!) and slightly nauseous from the 4 ½ pills i just took (i won't explain the whole sitch-its complicated). Today was my 3rd trip to the hospital. Don't worry, I'm fine. Its just that diarrhea has a way of lasting weeks here, so I thought I should get some medicine. (P.S. you can buy any pills imported from Nigeria on the street but I don't trust those). So on Monday I taught 2 classes and then realized my entire body hurt and I should probably go home. Couldn't get out of bed tuesday (don't worry-my postmates took care of me in the evening-before that I was living off peanuts, which is typical for me anyway). So even though I felt better this morning, I figured I should bring the stool sample in that I had prepared in advance (its hard to perform under pressure). I arrived at the hospital and after waiting for the doctor to arrive and 2 arguments about the order in which we were waiting, I saw the doc. I told him my symptoms, and he asked if I took malaria prophalaxis (legit) and if I had eaten anything with hot pepper in it (????? they put it on everything here!) Then he took my blood pressure (that's new) and weight, but not my temperature, even though I said I had had a fever. Then I go to the lab to get the tests done. They tell me to go buy a syringe (1 penny US) and the guy breaks off the needle in order to use it to prick my finger and make a malaria slide. Then they said there was no water so they couldn't test the stool until it came back on. When I came back later, it turned out I had parasites. I went back to see the doctor and he wasn't there, just two people sleeping, waiting for him. I didn't think that was a good sign. But I didn't wait too long. I was with my friend this time, not the weird school nurse who took my pills the last time. My friend said with a fresh coat of paint this room wouldn't look too bad. And I said, “and a new ceiling...”The good news is parasites are not as bad as dysentery! I only go to the bathroom after eating as opposed to after every sip of water with dysentery. So then I purchased the medicines (2 dollars each) and the consultation (1 dollar). Overall it was a successful day.

At first glance the school looks like it could be in California. Because of the warm climate, the classrooms are open-air style. The buildings are small, containing one to three classrooms only. The buildings are made out of cement and are painted blue. The roofs are made out of tin. They glint silver in the sunlight and when it rains its difficult to hear anything but the sound of the raindrops. Some have pretty lattice cut style windows and others are just rectangular shaped holes with grey shutters. However when you step inside, you know you are not in the US. The walls are covered in graffiti. The desks are long benches that seat five of the younger children and three of the older ones at one time. They are simple benches made from light colored wood, and except for the new ones, they are also covered in scribbling. The floor is covered in dust, candy wrappers, dirty tissues, and broken pens. The students are assigned days that they are supposed to sweep in groups, but many times they do not do it. The brooms provided are traditional-dried palm leaves tied together with a piece of string. Many times there are critters in the room, like lizards or frogs. Sometimes a bird will fly in, maybe even intentionally fying right through the room. All the classrooms are fairly large because they need to seat up to 180 adults (since that's what many of the oldest students are). The blackboard is not in good condition. The surface is so old the chalk will not write on it. In fact, when you try to write on it, the chalk just turns black. Some parts of the blackboard might be separating from the wall. The room is often so large that even if you wrote very very large, the students in the back won't be able to see. Or there will be a glare from the sun blocking one side of the room from seeing, and in another section, its blocking the other side of the room. There is usually a group of at least 20 students who literally cannot see anything thats written on the board. When students say, “Madame, I can't see,” I often go right next to them and look, just to see from their perspective. The board will look like a bright light is shining on it and you can't even tell there's writing on it. The motivated students will go to the 2 foot space in the front of the room between the board and where the desks are and crouch down to copy what's written. Some people in the back stand up to be able to see. Others just copy from someone else that was able to see. All this shenanigans obviously takes a lot of time. When I walk over to a classroom, the students see me if they are not already inside and they start going in. It takes a few minutes just for everyone to go in, find a seat, cram themselves into a desk. There's usually an argument or two about desks. My sixth grade class, which is known as glorified babysitting, is the worst and the fight usually gets physical. Often the last person to sit down pushes the person on the other end to fall over onto the floor humpty dumpty style. When I walk in I greet everyone good morning or afternoon. Walking in to a classroom of 150 adults stopped being intimidating after about 5 minutes, however its still very exhausting and mentally draining. The students are supposed to stand until the teacher tells them to sit down. Many times people in the middle or back are not standing up, so I specifically go over and say hi to them, and they snap right up. Again, in sixth grade, I spend about 10 minutes walking around the room getting everyone to sit down. There is never absolute silence in my class. I don't expect there to be-there's just too many people and I can't stare at them all at the same time. The first question I always ask is “what's the date today?” I've asked this question every day for 5 months and there's still people that don't know what I'm saying. Then I choose someone to write it in the corner of the board. Not a day goes by when someone writes it on the first try. It's not even that they make mistakes, which they often do, but its because if it is not absolutely perfect the first time, they have to erase the entire thing and start over. There is a large amount of heckling during the writing of the date. Everyone who didn't have the courage to volunteer to write it sits there and comments on every little thing the person is doing. To start the lesson, I write the heading-English Language on the board. About 100 or so students feel the need to say “english language” everyday. At least they're practicing. Then I write the topic of the lesson. Reading comprehension lessons are the most difficult to do therefore I usually do grammar lessons. I am becoming pretty good at English grammar. Pretty good-not an expert. It's difficult when you know what the correct rule is but you have no idea why it's correct. Reading comprehension lessons are difficult because of course only about 5 or so students actually have a textbook. So you can pay to have photocopies made, write it on the board (which of course takes a long time because they also have to copy too), write it on paper beforehand (which costs money and time) or pay to have copies made. The other problem with photocopies is that they have to share (160 copies is too much money) and they go nuts when there's copies and try to hoard them, hiding them and asking for another. Fights have also broken out over photocopies. Horrifyingly, I think some of the teachers just read out loud passages to the students, who obviously will not understand anything. Except for my seniors, I usually just write a paragraph or two on brown paper for a reading passage because there's not enough time for much else.

Lovin these bucket baths but one night I came home after a god awful, long meeting at school (3pm-9pm. (it didnt actually start till 4)) so I have all the lights in my house going and I plug in my trusty water heater. A few second later the lights flicker and then I notice that the power strip that it was plugged into is no longer lit. Ok, I think, maybe its a fluke. So I move the bucket fill of water into the living room and plug it in there. Immediately all the lights in my entire house go out. I look next door to my neighbor's and their lights are out. Ok, I think, maybe its a fluke. So I went to bed dirty, cold, and feeling slightly guilty about my neighbor's. The next morning everything was fine! But now I make sure not to have too many things plugged in at once. And I only take a bucket bath every other day.

I feel very integrated this week. I got excited about a bucket bath because it has been soooo cold here (in the 50s in the morning and up to the 80s or 90s in the afternoon) so I have not been liking cold showers at night. Basically I hadn't taken a full-on shower in a couple weeks. Then I remembered that the guy that lived here before me had left a water heater. I had been avoiding it because I didn't know what it was when I moved in and electricuted myself testing it out. 7 months later, I know what a water heater is and understand why it is needed in the middle of the savanah. So I cautiously tried it out last night and wow was that the best bucket bath I've ever had! I basically plugged it in and put it in the bucket of water for 15 minutes and voila! Warm water for my bath. So today I went to the gas station to search for gas for my bottle again. No gas. We are waiting moment to moment for gas. There's probably not gas in Maroua either (I checked-there's not). So I got the gas station guy's number and I can call him to check instead of walking 2 miles. I might have to ask my neighbors how to cook over an open fire. That's what most people do here. They have an outdoor kitchen and have a fire going all day which they cook on. People sell wood for it in the street. Then my friend's water went out and we wanted to boil potatoes so we went to the well and then we carried it back on our heads. She dripped it all over herself.

New years was amazing! A guy here organized a real fete with food, drinks (so many drinks) and a moto driver to drive anyone that needed a ride. It was the usual crazy new years madness, I won't go into detail except for one incident in which my dance moves went awry. It was about 3 am, and I went to dip my friend but she was very intoxicated and she face planted into the floor, breaking open her chin. It was bleeding pretty bad, so we took her to the bathroom, where we discovered that she was beligerent and I should not have been performing dangerous moves like that with her on the dance floor. This also reminds me of a similar time with Coll Will (You know what I'm talking about Coll.) So my friend (who shall remain nameless) decided it was a good idea to splash water on the cut, which just made a bloody mess all over the bathroom and her shirt. Right about this time, someone came to tell her that it was time to leave for the bus (they were catching the 4am bus because its an 8-10 hour ride). Timing couldn't be better. So it was time to pull ourselves together. We took her into the bedroom to change her shirt. She was so drunk we literally had to dress her. She also insisted on wearing her “travelling skirt,” so it was a full outfit change. The light in the bedroom was burned out so we were stumbling around in the dark and woke up the person sleeping in there, who was like “Wtf are you guys doing.” Then we sent her off on a motorcycle with her luggage and a fresh outfit, crossing our fingers that she made it to the bus. So today I got home and there were a couple surprises waiting for me: a dead lizard in my sink, my fridge was completely covered in mold, and my cat was bigger! Also, right before I left, my gas tank (used for cooking) had run out (I was living off peanuts for a few days there) and there was no gas in town today, so still can't cook. Will try again tomorrow! 2011 is going to be great, at least that's what I keep telling myself ;)

So on xmas eve we started climbing the mountain. I stopped having fun after about 2 minutes. It was so hard and steep and the guides didn't want us to stop because our muscles would cramp. We started around 8:30 am. I called it quits at 12:30. I made it up 2,000 meters to the end of the treeline. It took three hours to get down. I was disappointed not to reach the top but I felt like I accomplished something, since I've never been mountain climbing in my life and I did a full day. So on the way down the mountain I called my friend who was at the beach. I didn't have any money or clothes except for a kaba (a moo moo) and a tracksuit, because I had planned on just climbing the mountain then returning to the city. My friend offered to borrow we money and clothes so I immediately set off for the beach, only a 30 minute bus ride away. I was amazed when we started driving without the bus being full, but somehow we were driving down the street and people were just hopping on as we went along. Then I spotted a child selling cotton candy, so of course I bought some out the window of the bus. About 2 km from our destination, the bus broke down. I was able to squeeze (literally-there were about 20 other people) into another bus that appeared on the side of the road. I also had to transfer my backpack from the top of one bus to the other. Finally I made it to Limbe. Then I spent about 10 minutes negotiating the price of a taxi. The driver ended up dropping me off outside the botanical gardens when the hotel was inside somewhere. So there I was walking around in my mountain climbing outfit, covered in brambles and dirt (from falling as I was going down-its steep!), sunburned, smelling to high heaven. I finally asked someone where the hotel was and he said I had passed it. So I backtracked and made it right at dusk. My friends were sitting in a little cabana right by the ocean and it was wonderful. I sat down for a bit and we had cotton candy, then they asked if I wanted to take a shower (I smelled REALLY bad). The next day, Christmas day, we went to the beach, which was glorious. I had the BEST fish for lunch. It did not even need any seasoning it was so good and fresh, huge too. They serve it whole and we eat it with our hands (its easier that way I swear). In the morning, Claire had texted me that she was coming down the mountain as well. I told her to come to Limbe. She made it the next morning. Right when she got there, we realized we did not have much money between the two of us, so we went to the atm. Of course it wasn't working. So I borrowed money from Louise to pay for the hotel and then we headed to the beach. We pooled our money between us and figured out we had enough to get to Douala where there are more atms. So after a nice morning at the beach and a dip in the ocean, we headed to the biggest city in Cameroon. We took a bush taxi. This is a small car, about the size of a geo or a toyota tercel. There were 6 passengers, 4 in back and 2 in the passenger seat. They were all adults of course. Needless to say, it was a tight fit back there. The worst part about these situations is where to put your arms. It usually ends up with some people putting their arms around the person next to them, leaning forward and putting their arms on their knees, or some type of layering effect with the arms in which the person whose arms are in back has trouble moving them people the other persons arms are resting on top of theirs. At one point in our voyage, the lady next to Claire said, “Why are you breathing like that, are you asthmatic or something?” and Claire responded in her sweet little voice, “No. I'm just really squished.”

So on xmas eve we started climbing the mountain. I stopped having fun after about 2 minutes. It was so hard and steep and the guides didn't want us to stop because our muscles would cramp. We started around 8:30 am. I called it quits at 12:30. I made it up 2,000 meters to the end of the treeline. It took three hours to get down. I was disappointed not to reach the top but I felt like I accomplished something, since I've never been mountain climbing in my life and I did a full day. So on the way down the mountain I called my friend who was at the beach. I didn't have any money or clothes except for a kaba (a moo moo) and a tracksuit, because I had planned on just climbing the mountain then returning to the city. My friend offered to borrow we money and clothes so I immediately set off for the beach, only a 30 minute bus ride away. I was amazed when we started driving without the bus being full, but somehow we were driving down the street and people were just hopping on as we went along. Then I spotted a child selling cotton candy, so of course I bought some out the window of the bus. About 2 km from our destination, the bus broke down. I was able to squeeze (literally-there were about 20 other people) into another bus that appeared on the side of the road. I also had to transfer my backpack from the top of one bus to the other. Finally I made it to Limbe. Then I spent about 10 minutes negotiating the price of a taxi. The driver ended up dropping me off outside the botanical gardens when the hotel was inside somewhere. So there I was walking around in my mountain climbing outfit, covered in brambles and dirt (from falling as I was going down-its steep!), sunburned, smelling to high heaven. I finally asked someone where the hotel was and he said I had passed it. So I backtracked and made it right at dusk. My friends were sitting in a little cabana right by the ocean and it was wonderful. I sat down for a bit and we had cotton candy, then they asked if I wanted to take a shower (I smelled REALLY bad). The next day, Christmas day, we went to the beach, which was glorious. I had the BEST fish for lunch. It did not even need any seasoning it was so good and fresh, huge too. They serve it whole and we eat it with our hands (its easier that way I swear). In the morning, Claire had texted me that she was coming down the mountain as well. I told her to come to Limbe. She made it the next morning. Right when she got there, we realized we did not have much money between the two of us, so we went to the atm. Of course it wasn't working. So I borrowed money from Louise to pay for the hotel and then we headed to the beach. We pooled our money between us and figured out we had enough to get to Douala where there are more atms. So after a nice morning at the beach and a dip in the ocean, we headed to the biggest city in Cameroon. We took a bush taxi. This is a small car, about the size of a geo or a toyota tercel. There were 6 passengers, 4 in back and 2 in the passenger seat. They were all adults of course. Needless to say, it was a tight fit back there. The worst part about these situations is where to put your arms. It usually ends up with some people putting their arms around the person next to them, leaning forward and putting their arms on their knees, or some type of layering effect with the arms in which the person whose arms are in back has trouble moving them people the other persons arms are resting on top of theirs. At one point in our voyage, the lady next to Claire said, “Why are you breathing like that, are you asthmatic or something?” and Claire responded in her sweet little voice, “No. I'm just really squished.”

So 3 days after arriving on the beach, I fell very ill. It started with explosive diarrhea and then the fever came. I tried to get out of bed, but I would get nauseous after being up for a few minutes. I went to the hospital with a couple other people that were also sick. That's always fun here. I can never perform under pressure (stool sample), but I was diagnosed with malaria and dysentary. It was awful. I couldn't get out of bed for 2 ½ days. My head felt like it was going to explode. I sh*t my brains out for 3 days.

There was a festival going on at the time, so when we left the hospital (a Peace Corps driver drove us thankfully), we drove into a parade of drunk people that were none too happy to have us driving the wrong direction into their parade. There were some angry people pounding on the car.

And then of course while half of us were sick in bed, the other half got robbed at gun and machete point. No one was hurt seriously. It could have happened at any popular tourist city (minus the machetes maybe).

Hi Friends/Family/Random people reading my blog,

So at 2pm today I started my journey to the beach! If all goes well I'll get there on Sunday. Hopefully the train won't derail. We have a conference from December 12-18 in Kribi, which is on the coast. Then I'm going to stay at the beach until December 24th. From December 24-26, I will be climbing mount cameroon. Now it might not be the best idea to start my mountain climbing career on a big mountain, but I'm going for it. I'll be back up in the Extreme North for New Years. So I may not post anything for a while, but don't worry I'll take lots of pictures :) I'll miss everyone during the holidays, but I think it won't be too bad when I'm on top of the mountain on xmas day. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

straddling my coworkers when they give me a ride home on their motorcycle haggling for everything you buy sweeping the dirt in front of your house every morning people going through your garbage having to burn the rest of my garbage on the side of my house

“I love you” “I'm not black. I'm a chocolate girl.” “Do you like black people or not?” of course I told them that the person they're writing to could be black, but they did not believe me!

the availability of phone credit listening to snoop dog while taking a bucket bath being able to cut in lines because they don't do lines being able to tell anyone off, anytime (usually for giving me white man's prices) being able to curse anytime because no one understands you anyway eating a whole chicken cooked on the street street salad We are together getting called mama from random people and being able to call people mama all the white people in the world are my brothers and sisters repeating things numerous times (cent cent francs) speaking three languages in one day anything from nigeria (even phone reception) walking anywhere is considered doing sports people saying good morning to me at 10 pm eating with my hands laundry drying in 10 minutes people taking naps outside people being so happy when i say hi to them that they clap

So the day after tabaski I ate sheep for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At one point I was pulled off the street by a neighbor to eat sheep with them. Then they were surprised that I “already knew” how to eat it. But when I got to school, my students told me there was poo in the classroom again. Enraged, I asked them to show me the damage. This time, it was not only on the floor, but some deranged child had smeared in on the chalkboard as well. I decided I didn't want to deal with another hour clean up job, so I told my class to go to the next classroom over, since there's always classes whose teacher's do not show up. But the culprit had struck there too! Third times a charm though, and I had class in the next classroom I checked.

So the day after tabaski I ate sheep for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At one point I was pulled off the street by a neighbor to eat sheep with them. Then they were surprised that I “already knew” how to eat it. But when I got to school, my students told me there was poo in the classroom again. Enraged, I asked them to show me the damage. This time, it was not only on the floor, but some deranged child had smeared in on the chalkboard as well. I decided I didn't want to deal with another hour clean up job, so I told my class to go to the next classroom over, since there's always classes whose teacher's do not show up. But the culprit had struck there too! Third times a charm though, and I had class in the next classroom I checked.

All week the sheep around here have been running a muck, bahing all night long and keeping me up! These aren't the small fluffy sheep either. They're like big goats. It's ok though, they were sacrificed today for the Muslim celebration Tabaski. At 9 am, everyone went to the stadium to pray. This was one of the most beautiful things I've seen since being here. There were hundreds of families walking up to the stadium, dressed in their best clothes. The men wear brilliant solid colored long robes with pants and small hats on their heads. The women wear multi-colored fabric made into pagne or wrap skirts, shirts and shawls that wrap around their head and upper body. Many of my students were there and they greeted me. I took pictures with a couple of them. The men and women pray separately, so the men lined up in the front and the women and children in the back. I took a seat in the back to watch. The prayer readers' words in arabic drifted over to me , and I watched all the people move in unison to pray. After the prayer, I went back to my compound. I waited in anticipation for the killing of the sheep. Two days before, my neighbors had purchased a large sheep that, after a struggle, they tied it to a tree in the yard to await its demise. Finally around 10 am, some men came and brought the sheep over to the designated place, right in front of my house. They dug a small hole and cut the sheep's throat over it so the blood would pour into it. Louise, my two neighbor girls, and I watched from front row seats- my porch. When the men were finished, we went over to the scene. The sheep wasn't dead. It was twitching and writhing, even though it's neck was cut open so much I could see into it's esophagus. I took a picture of all the proud kids and the sheep. After a couple minutes it stopped moving. Then they moved it on top of some roof tiles and proceeded to skin and disembowel it. This took over two hours. About an hour into it, we ate lunch. Sheep meat, sauce and rice of course. My neighbor's proudly presented me with two choice pieces, which I cooked that evening with some steak marinade I brought from home. The rest of the day, I visited people around town. They were all hard at work preparing their sheep as well. Looks like i'm going to be eating sheep for the next few days. It was a very nice day and I think I like the fete de mouton even better than Ramadan.

Do you know how you go down a mountain on a motorcycle? You turn off the engine and hope for the best. I know this because I did it twice on Thursday.I went to visit my friend in a neighboring village to watch one of her classes. This is what happened: At 7:30 am I called my moto driver and he came to my house to pick me up. I told him I was going to Meri and he asked when I was coming back. I said later that day. So he said he'd just stay in Meri all day to take me back too. He was going to make a lot more money on this aller-retour then he would if he went back to our village. So we set off. The trip was pleasant with a nice breeze, since we were doing about 60 km, through the countryside with the mountains in the distance. It gets a little disconcerting when the driver weaved around to avoid potholes, but it was ok. About 30 minutes into the trip, he pointed at a mountain and said we were going to go up that mountain and back down it to get to Meri. I thought he was joking. He wasn't. It's not like there are roads on the mountain. They're kind of dirt roads, but with big stones sticking up too. I'm really surprised we didn't get a flat tire. Going up the mountain was slow going because there were two of us on a little moto driving on these stony paths. Going down, yes my driver just turned off the engine and I closed my eyes. The village was very nice with many traditional houses. It was also in the mountains, so there was not too much shade. After being there for a while, I realized I had no cell phone service-they only have the company that I don't have. That became irrelevant when my phone died anyway. Was I at any point worried that I would not be able to find my driver again? No, not at all. In the afternoon, we asked a couple kids to go find my driver. An hour and a half later, he drove up and we went back home. All in all it was a successful little field trip.

So I'm paired up with French classes at Uplift High School in Chicago for a pen pal exchange with my students. I just received the first batch of letters from them (sent on 10/5) and they're great! My students will love them and the american students will learn a lot about how lucky they are.

Some of the letters are hilarious, let's do a few highlights:

“Hello my name is Andrew now I know this is your first time meeting me but don't be shy its all cool. But what do you like to do for fun? I like basketball, do you? How do you like your neighborhood, because my neighborhood its fun around here you and your school should come visit us at our school. but anyway How do you look? I look like a tall guy dat's skinny but I play ball so its ok and plus im 5'10 almost six feet with a mean shot from the three point line mabye you can play me one day but until then au revoir.”

“What do you prefer to eat? I prefer, chicken, corn and cornbread.”

“I'm not really an A student but I'm no fool.”

“I live in Chicago, Illinois, also known as the windy city and trust me it lives up to its name.”

“I like school but I don't love it to death.”

“Is English hard and overwhelming like French is to me?”

“And how do you say sorry, live, laugh, love and forgive me I made a mistake?”

“I play a lot of sports but my favorite is volleyball; I am a star player.”

“ I would like to know what your daily life is. Mine's going to school, doing homework, and hanging out with friends.”

“I'm also a very curious person and I tend to ask a lot of random questions. Do you?”

“Deuces!” Did I miss something?!?

“What do you eat? I eat food like pizzas and burgers.”

“Are you guys traditional?”

“Do you be having to fight in school because people be tryin to talk about you?”

“Do you know Kobe Bryant?”

“My favorite color is blue and I am tall.”

Monday when I arrived at school there was a commotion outside my class. I went into the room and discovered that an animal had gotten into the room and crapped all over the floor. The room stank to high heaven. Cleaning the floor was a complicated operation. First we had to cover the piles of steaming dung with dirt so we wouldn't pass out from the stench. Then we had to find brooms. I am referring to traditional brooms, which are basically sticks tied together. Then we had to look on the list of people who are supposed to sweep on Mondays. Then we had to find these 10 people out of the 114 in the class. Surprisingly, no one was coming forward when their names were called to sweep up the feces. Then they swept the room. They poured water on the dung and swept that too. So instead of learning english, we spent 45 minutes cleaning the floor. When we finally started class, the room still stank but what could we do? So I taught english with kids wearing bandanas and things over their noses.

hey just so everyone knows i feel fine now!!! no worries. I want to tell you about our teachers' day celebration. So, school was cancelled of course. They make special clothing material for the holidays here so all of the teachers buy the teachers' day pagne and get an outfit made. We were supposed to meet at the place des fetes at 8 am. Of course, it was raining at 8 so I knew no one would be there. I headed out around 8:50 when it stopped. I was the second teacher from my school to arrive. It was a little chilly (and by chilly I mean upper 70s) so the teacher was wearing a coat, long sleeves and shivering. I was in short sleeves and his teeth were chattering. Another one of my male coworkers came draped in a shawl. The celebration did not start until 10:15. There were teachers from many schools from the neighboring towns. We all lined up and listened to a few speeches. Then we marched to music, in a parade across the field and in front of the “grands.” These are the important people. There were also about 5 photographers, i have no idea where they came from. This ended at 12.Then at 1 we went to the women's center for a luncheon. I was with 2 other volunteers. First we sat down by the other teachers. Then some random guy came and told us to sit in the room with the grands. Then they set up a buffet and served us warm sodas. As we were about to serve ourselves at the buffet, someone told us we needed to go to the other buffet with the commoners. So we were demoted. After we went through the buffet line there, in which numerous arguments took place of course, we went to get our belongings from the grands room. On our way in, someone asks where do you think you're going? ugh it was so confusing. we were like wtf is going on. So then we sit with the other teachers. First one comes up to us and keeps asking questions like “how long are you people here for.” Then it got weird when we said we weren't married and he asked is that why we became teachers, to attract a husband. So then he left. Another guy came over and was nice and chatted for a while. He parted with the tried and true saying they love to say here “we are together.” Yes, they say it in french and english and probably fulfude and mandara too. We are together. I left this fete around 3 to rest up for the next one at 4. I was mislead into believing this was another fete. Really it was a meeting of our social club. Social may imply fun but this meeting certainly wasn't. Oh mon dieu. First of all the meeting started at 4:40 not 4. Then they argued for 45 minutes about whether we should buy track suits or pagne for our uniform. Yes, apparently this teachers social club wants a uniform to wear to each meeting. They were embarrassed last year when they had a joint meeting with a neighboring school and they all had uniforms but our school did not. So they were determined to get uniforms this year. For those of you thinking a track suit is a bizarre choice, just think about the traditional african clothes they get made here for very cheap prices. The “western” style clothes are much more expensive and are high class. So here even jeans are considered nice dress because not everyone can afford them. So track suits are also coveted. Anyway, so we finally decided after a vote that since we were pretty evenly split, those who wanted pagne would get pagne and those who wanted track suits would get track suits. I voted for track suits because this is going to involve not only sewing our logo on the front, but yes, our last names on the back. This is going to be a keeper. Then three out of the four women teachers, me included, were told to go prepare the sandwiches. So we missed most of the meeting to fill 100 pieces of bread with ground beef and sauce. I'm not sure what the rest of the meeting was about because by that time I was so tired I could not listen to anymore, especially in french. Also, the power kept going out. So we sent someone out for candles and continued the meeting by candlelight. Finally it ended at 7 and we ate and drank and then someone drove me home on their moto because it was pitch black with the moon behind a cloud and the power out. I would have never made it home. I think my first teachers day was a success. We are together.

So this morning I woke up at 3am with horrible abdominal cramps. This wouldn't be the first time, so I laid there until it passed, thinking about what I had eaten the day before. Then at 6am I woke up for school and like usual, had some water and cereal for breakfast. In the next 20 minutes I had watery diarrhea about 4-5 times. This is a sign of cholera. Also, everytime I take a sip of water, I get nauseous. Vomiting is also a symptom. By the way, I live in the heart of the cholera outbreak (yes the disease from Oregon Trails). So I call my friend who's a health volunteer and she says I should go to the hospital. So I go there at 7:30 am. They open at 6am but the doctor wasn't there. I spoke with the janitor in fulfulde/french and he told me that the doctor usually gets in around 8 or so. So I waited in the waiting room, as it started to fill up. Around 8:45 the doctor showed up and even though I was the first person there of course 2 people cut in front of me. When I finally got to talk to him, he said it was probably not cholera because I wasn't projectile vomiting but he said to go get medicine and come back to see how I feel. So I went to the pharmacy to get one kind of medicine. The other stuff I needed was at the clinic. After getting lost on my way to the clinic (again the problem of not having addresses or streets), I finally got the other pill. As I was walking back to the hospital, I took it on the street. Bad call. I immediately felt it start coming back up. I puked numerous times by the side of the road. As I pulled into the hospital again, the principal of my school rolls up in his car. Ca va? no ca va pas. We go talk to the doctor again and he says I should get an IV and stay awhile. The filing system here is basically they give you a little notebook that you keep and everytime you go to the doctor you bring it and he fills in notes. So my brand new notebook says “suspicion of cholera” on the front page. Meanwhile I talked to the Peace Corps medical office and they were in agreement with this plan. So my principal had brought along the school nurse, so she stayed with my in my hospital room. 4 months in Cameroon and there are still surprises. I've come to be able to recognize when a place is clean by Cameroonian standards. This hospital room was definitely not. It was your typical cement room. There was a small metal bed frame circa 1910 and a mattress. No sheets- you bring your own. I was SOL since I didn't know this. There were flies, mosquitoes, spiders and grasshoppers in the room. The walls were filthy. There was a bathroom- no toilet seat, soap or toilet paper. After I purchased my IV supplies at the pharmacy ($15), they hooked me up. The day passed as they came in periodically changed bags and I tried to nap. At one point the school nurse took some of the pills I had bought (no idea why) then disappeared for an hour. Apparently she threw up from them too. Why should took them will remain a mystery to me. Finally since I didn't throw up or have diarrhea anymore they let me go home, instructing me to change my clothes and shower when I got home. I just ate a PB and J sandwich so we'll see how I feel......

So I'll describe a typical day of teaching. Thursday, class started at 7:30 am. I was teaching sixieme, which is like 6th grade, so the kids are young and still small. We have not received our order for desk yet, so half the class sits on the floor. They bring little pieces of cloth or scarves to sit on. There's over a hundred students. This is my best class because I'm starting from scratch (they're the youngest) and they are motivated to learn. So I taught how to say and spell their names and where they're from. Two hours for this class gets really long. It's already hot by 8 am. At 9:30 class ends. They scheduled our school meeting for noon, so my 1:15 class gets cancelled. The meeting was originally supposed to be on the 8th but was cancelled due to Ramadan. The meeting starts promptly at noon thirty. It lasts for 5 hours, and includes a summary of pretty much everything that happened the year before at the school. Apparently they have a problem with so called “clando students.” These are the students that do not pass their grade and so they are stuck in the same class. But they refuse to be held back so they go to the next class and do the work, tests for that class. But when its time to do report cards, they do not get a grade for the work they've done in the wrong class, and they fail the class they're supposed to be in. Not to mention the time the teacher spends disciplining them and grading their papers. Students also do this when they have not paid their school fees. At the meeting cold water was served. There was one glass that everyone shared. Then we ate a meal of beef, sauce and manioc (no knife) and drank fanta.

September 9th, 2010 This concludes my 3rd week at post and my first week teaching at a real Cameroonian high school. About 2 days after getting here I came to the realization that I was going to have to get used to a lot of “me time.” I'm in a city- a district capital. This mislead me to believe that there were going to be things to do and food to eat in my town. The center of town consists of about 25 little tiny shops with the exact same products-pasta, cookies, unscented bar soap and toilet paper. Then there's street venders selling tomatoes, cucumbers, leaves, peanuts, and eggs. I have discovered 3 restaurants in town. The first one I found because I was walking through town with another volunteer that came in for the day and a shady guy came up to us and was like “hissssss hey white girls, there's a restaurant over here.” So of course we follow him through an alley and lo and behold, there was a restaurant with a chalkboard menu and everything. I asked if they had cold drinks and he said yes they have fish. I love language barriers. So we sit down. When ordering drinks, it turns out they only have ginger juice, which is fine because it's delicious. Then my friend orders fish and I order chicken. They're out of chicken. Beef? no they're out of that. Ok fish it is. The fish was good and the elation of finding a good restaurant lasted until my friend and I had a case of the runs when we got home. Not gonna lie, I'll probably go back.

So this week was the first week of school. I was told to be there on Monday at 6:45am. So of course I got there at 6:40 and there was not a soul in sight. The first people started coming in about 7:20. The principal rolled up at about 8:15 in a car, the only person who has one. All the teachers gathered in his office for a meeting. He gave us all a pamphlet on Cholera and said that the ministry requested that we teach our first lesson on cholera. I'm the only female teacher. The only other woman working at the school is the secretary. The new people that just got transferred are not even here yet. So the first day I introduced myself to my classes, which had about 15 out of 100 people present. This week was the last week of Ramadan, so many students did not come. Others didn't come because they did not know that school was starting, so we told people to tell their friends. No one this whole week showed up for afternoon classes. I was told by numerous people that it was because of the sun. Don't get me wrong, if I was fasting I would not want to come to class either but really? the sun in africa? All week, the date of Ramadan was unsure because it goes by the moon. So if it ended up being Thursday we would not have class Friday. Well, it turned out to be Friday, but only about 20 out of 2800 students showed up for class on Thursday (must have been the Christians) and so class and the general meeting were cancelled. The classes I did teach went fairly well. The students are far below the level in English that they need to be, but I was expecting that. It's just also really hard to teach people vocabulary about 'The News' when you can't even buy a newspaper in the town and most of them don't have TVs. I have to teach them the concept and then the English which puts a wrench into things.

On Tuesday I felt up to the challenge of riding my bike to visit my friend in Tokombere and checking out the market in her town. I didn't know exactly where I was going or how far it was. I knew that other volunteers made the trip and it took them about an hour. So my friends directions were as follows, turn right, its far down that road, go over two bridges which may be full of water but maybe some people will be there to direct you, and then the paved road turns into a dirt road, pass some villages, then the road becomes paved again and you will see the place des fetes. (On a side note, this is how directions are in the rural areas. There are no street names, no names of businesses, nothing). So I venture off at 8:50 am with a water bottle, some pretzels and a vague sense of where I am going. It takes about 10 minutes to ride out of my town. Once I am on the open road, I feel great. The sky is blue, the mountains are all around me. I pass many people on bikes as well, even a couple women. They are not on pleasure rides, though. They are transporting goods like huge sacks of rice or big containers of water. Or another person on the little basket in the back. About 45 minutes into my trip, I start to get tired, which is not surprising considering I have not done any exercise except for a couple of yoga classes in the last few months. So I hope that I am at least half way there. Then my first hill comes. I'm going uphill of course. By the time I get to the top, I want to keel over. Did I mention that I am biking in the desert? Yeah by this time it is hot, I'm an hour into my bike ride, and I'm not sure how long it will take me. Finally I get to the turn off. I try not to think about how she said its a long way off once you turn. The sign said 14 kilometers, which I think is about 10 miles. I'm hoping everything is relative. No, an hour later I am seriously considering pulling over and taking a nap by the side of the road. At this point other bikers are passing me like its their job. I haven't even reached the dirt road yet. Who knows if I'm even going the right way. I've been riding for 2 hours. Then up ahead I see a crowd of kids. This isn't going to be good, I think. Yep, its the first bridge. And there's rushing water going over it. I try to fight them off and say I can carry my bike myself, but they are stubborn. So about 15 boys help me and my bike across the river. Then they say they will take euros or dollars...really?? Next they see that my front tire needs air so they pump a little in it (yes we have little pumps attached to our bikes). So I give them some cfa and continue on. 45 minutes after that, I seriously think I am headed in the wrong direction. How can this be taking me almost 3 hours??? Should I just pull over and have my friend send me a moto? Finally I start to see something like civilization, and I ask someone if that is Tokombere, and she says yes. By this time I am so exhausted I don't know how I'm still pedaling. My muscles are not only sore but so tired they barely work. It seems like forever until I finally reach the place des fetes and call my friend. The first thing I say is I'm taking a moto back. I would like to say I feel a sense of accomplishment from finishing my bike tour, it turns out it was only about 25 kilometers, which I think is about 18 miles. And it took me about 3 hours which is terrible time. I don't know if I'll ever do another bike tour. I did feel good after 3 hours, chugging water, and eating. I had my first salad in 3 months. My friend Claire and I went to the market, which is an experience. The first lady we go up to doesn't speak french, and we dont speak enough fulfulde yet. Some young man says, “you look like you need help” in excellent english. The whole time we were at the market a group of children, also known as pickpockets, were following us. We bumped into everyone Claire knows of course. When we got to her house, we soaked the lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and onions in bleach water (to prevent cholera). Then I made a vinaigrette dressing and it was one of the best things I've eaten here so far! So then Claire's friend said he would book my car back to my village. I give him the money and he comes back and says they're leaving in 5 minutes! So I rush over there and pack into this conversion size van, with 25 people. There is a chicken by my foot that is thrashing and I don't want it to bite me. Each time the driver needs to start the car it takes 3-4 tries. We get home about an hour later and I ride my bike back to my house. I figured if I didn't want to be sore the next day I should do some yoga. It was really nice out so I put my mat down outside. My neighbors stared at me the whole time and the little boys tried doing it with me. Then I went inside to take a shower. After my shower, I go into my bedroom and see that there is an inordinate amount of termites. Don't get me wrong, there's usually a bunch, and when I first got here I had to destroy like 5 of their little sand houses. So I follow them to the source and see that there is about a million behind my bed and I had missed one house. So I spray them all with insecticide. I made the mistake of coming back into the room 5 minutes later, because I heard the sound of a million little termites writhing in pain and dying. Not a pleasant sound. Still haunting me. 10 minutes later, they are dead. And do you know whats almost as bad as a million termites in your room, a million dead termites in you room. I spent the next 20 minutes sweeping the dead lifeless carcasses up. I slept like a rock that night. I don't know if I'm cut out for this whole bike tour thing.

Today was a rainy day, which means we spent most of the day waiting for the rain to stop. The afternoon was a performance for all the clubs to show what they worked on during model school. Since it was raining, first of all half the kids didn't show up. We started about an hour and twenty minutes late, typical african time. The performance was outside too. So we were sitting in desks on mud. It was awkward. Then halfway through the performances (girls club was awesome btw) it starts to really pour so we go into the teachers room or on the porch. So its about 100 people packed into one classroom. Don't worry I took pictures. Basically everyone at this point was waiting for the rain to abate for a few minutes so we could go wherever we wanted to go. Just as we started to get really bored, the glee club performed. AWESOME! I slightly regretted not doing glee club, but my girls needed me. They even wrote a song. It perked everyone up so much that we left afterwards even though it was still raining. In the morning we had finished our presentations in french, which was basically the last piece of work we need to do for training. So, at this point we headed to the bar. We proceeded to pass the next four hours just shooting the shit, doing silly things and taking pictures (which will be posted on facebook). It was basically one of the most fun days here so far. It ended with us buying a huge pot full of week old popcorn for $4 and eating ourselves silly then going home before the 7:00 curfew of course. The fun continued at my host family's house. When I got home, my bath bucket was sitting outside collecting rain for my bath. Yay, rain water instead of well water! (Less likely to get eye worms from rain water) But it was sooo cold...the water and the fact that it wasn't too hot out...brrrrr..My host brothers told me that they were stuck inside all day because of the rain and they couldn't play at all!! So they asked me to tell them a story. I don't know any stories in french, so I pull out the one french novel I brought, entitled, Un Caprice du destin (A twist of fate). Its a harlequin romance. I thought it would be ok to start reading to them because the riské parts were probably far into the book....um no the first page started to describe what the guy was wearing and I was like ohhhhh noooo. Luckily then they said they would tell me a story because mine was too long (its not a reading culture) and I was like ok! and he told me the story of the tortoise and the hare. Then while I was eating dinner the power went out. Of course this happens on the night that I drink coffee with dinner (because its a cold day...in the 70s)...greeaaat.. so thats why I'm writing this blog post now with the remaining battery on my computer. I'm all hopped up on instant nescafe coffee (so delicious after not having starbucks for 2 months!) I felt like I should share this day which is typically african but sooo not american because I have the feeling there will be many more like this to come in the next two years....Surprisingly, I'm kinda looking forward to more rainy days...especially since I'm moving to the desert next week.... xoxo Liz

It is still really overwhelming here so I find that I am not able to write a coherent narrative. I will just continue giving you little tidbits of what training has been like.

Cooking lunch for my host family: First of all, on Friday I told my host family that I would cook something for them tomorrow since I didn't have class, and they say, “It's about time. We've been waiting for you to do that for so long.” They're pleasant. On Saturday I walked into town to get a couple things I needed and to buy ingredients to make lunch. I was going to make mac and cheese but they don't really eat cheese and the only cheese available in this town is Laughing Cow, which doesn't have to be refrigerated, alerting you to the quality. And they use powdered milk here, but I digress. So I decide to make a tomato sauce because they like tomatoes. So I put tomato paste, fresh tomatoes and basil, garlic onions and salt and hot pepper into the sauce. They love hot pepper and I myself enjoy a good arrabiata sauce. But then they also insisted I put sardines into the sauce, because that is what they're used to. I like sardines so I was like ok get sardines, they didn't make a big difference anyway. Then they told me to add water. They looooove their sauces watery as hell here so I was expecting that. Except I have to be really careful with the water here, so I added some at the beginning of cooking which would be fine. But at the end when the sauce actually had chunks in it and was not like water they kept trying to add more and I was like stop! I will get sick (because we weren't going to boil it anymore). Also, when I was making the garlic bread, the people that put piment on everything complained that garlic is spicy. Really? It just goes to show you different cultures tastes. To make the garlic bread, I slathered the butter flavored spread (that doesn't get refrigerated of course) on baguettes and put fresh garlic on them then toasted them in a frying pan because they don't have an onion. That was one of the best meals I've eaten since getting here, so I am really looking forward to cooking my own meals when I get to post (August 21st!!). My family said, “its good, after you add Maggi and hot pepper to it.” Maggi, oh maggi, don't get me started on maggi. My whole foodies will love this. Its basically MSG, which is sold in liquid or cube form here. They love it and put it on everything. Then my family proceeded to have a conversation about how white people don't like a lot of seasoning. Overall, a typical Saturday afternoon :) So later that day I went to my first Cameroonian nightclub. And by later I guess that means Sunday morning, because the clubs don't get bumpin till 3 am here. But let me start by explaining that typically we have a 7pm curfew. Most Saturday nights we get that extended if we are together and tell our director. He gave us permission to go to the club, and told us it would be safer to stay all night like the Cameroonians do and walk home in the morning. So we had a sign up sheet and you had to write your name and then what time you were staying till. I signed up for “all night long.” Love it. So there's 43 of us in the group and the fantastic 4 of us actually made it to the club, along with some current volunteers. We danced the night away, including some salsa (thanks for those moves mar and meli) and it was actually funner than I thought. The club was really nice and the drinks were 3,500 cfa which is outrageous because they are 500 at the bars!!! There were 2 dance floors with mirrors of course and the Cameroonians loved dancing with their reflection in the mirror. One person said its because they don't really have mirrors in their houses, so its the only time they see themselves. I had one of my funnest moments here so far when we were all dancing and the Shakira world cup song came on. I don't know if you guys know it but it says this time's for africa, so when they played it, it was awesome dancing with cameroonians and singing “This time's for Africa” with them. It was great. Then I had this guy that kept coming over to dance, but then his girlfriend would come get him. I knew that was not going to end well. About 4 am we called it quits (it was still packed) and crashed at a friends house until sunrise. Of course I tried to take a shortcut in the morning and got lost. This is one of those things thats going to be hard to explain because its really so different. But I will try. Most of the roads here are packed dirt and full of potholes. A shortcut basically means walking through a path in the bushes, like nothing you would ever walk on in the US. Plant-life everywhere, its great. But hard to navigate. So I had to turn back and take the long way.

So one thing that I would have never thought of about being here is that there are no streetlights or anything. So when you walk around at night its pitch black and everyones just walking on their way. Even to go get water from the well at night, I can't see anything. I could take a flashlight but I want to get used to the Cameroonian way. I just never thought of this adjustment while I was in the states. So, this week has been hotter than hell but other than that the heat has really been the least of my worries and the easiest adjustment to make. However when I go to post that might change because it gets up to 140 degrees there...

So I'm leading Girls Club with 2 other people, and we have played soccer, volleyball, had a martial arts guy come to teach them self-defense, and did self-empowerment activities. Next week at the end of Model School all the clubs are performing, and we are going to sing Beautiful by Christina A.

I have gotten many outfits and dresses made and I am loving everyone of them, especially the one made out of specially made Peace Corps material. Its a keeper. I also got a purse made, its pretty great.

So Sunday night I got a horrible sore throat and lost my voice so teaching has been rough this week. I have to resort to a lot of hand gestures. Good thing its review this week.

Alright I think that's all my updates for now. xoxox Liz

hey guys i put some pics on facebook you should check them out!

So I survived my first week of teaching in Cameroon. There were tears, and there was laughter.....j/k i didn't actually cry although it was one of the hardest weeks of my life. For 6 out of the 8 hours I taught I had Quatrieme, which is the equivalent of eight grade although the ages of the students vary greatly because they don't always start school on time or pass the grades. There were ups and there were downs. Sometimes they would surprise me by getting all 5 of the true/false questions on the reading correct, and sometimes they did not do their homework because I gave them an assignment which was way too advanced for them. The biggest struggle is that there are about 5 kids who actually know what I'm saying and the rest are lost. They also constantly talk in class, which isn't surprising because they don't see the value of learning English in eight grade. There is also the fact that the classrooms here are all like separate buildings or rows of classrooms. They do not have electricity or windows or anything, just holes cut in the walls for ventilation. The only thing in the classrooms are wooden desks which consist of a bench for sitting and a bench for putting your books on. The teacher's desk is a little table built into the wall. The only other thing in the classrooms is a small chalkboard. Students cannot afford books here, so we as teachers get a copy of the book that we can hopefully photocopy or get other materials from the internet. The only resources provided are brown butcher paper and markers to write out exercises or readings before class instead of taking the time to write them on the chalkboard. The classrooms are literally falling apart. They are made of cement but they are crumbling and full of holes and cracks.There are 3 latrines for the students to use, but most of the time they just do their business in the field out back. The school is one of the only places that has garbage cans. The students that come late spend their first hour at school picking up garbage and putting it in the garbage pile by the field, which they burn periodically. The boys also cut the grass with machetes as punishment. Many students are late because they have work to do in the morning, like fetching water, cooking, cleaning, or selling beignets in the market. At lunchtime some mommies from the community sell goodies like fish pockets, spaghetti and avocado sandwiches (my favorite) or omelets. Sellers also come around carrying boiled eggs, peanuts and other things on their head. So I had two stories that should probably be shared....one was wednesday when I went to school wearing one of the african shirts I had made. Well, the zipper in the back decided to break during class so my whole back was exposed to the class when I was writing on the board. A group of girls in my class came over to try to help me but it was no use. So I had to wear my backpack to cover myself and I went home to change over the lunch break. Another good one was when I taught premiere, which is equivalent to junior year, so they know english pretty well. The topic was science so I found an article on yahoo about the position of peoples belly buttons explaining why black people are good at running and whites at swimming. Then after we read the article the first question they asked was what is a belly button. And the second and third questions were whats an innie and whats an outtie---I'm teaching the future of Cameroon here! I hope this gives you a little glimpse into what a Cameroonian school day is like and where I will be working for the next two years.

For those of you who don't believe you can gain weight while living in Africa, picture this: spaghetti sandwiches.

Also, I started learning an African language yesterday, fulfuldé, which is pretty much blowing my mind because not only is pretty much everything here new, but also because we're learning it from french to fufuldé, not english. I'm pretty sure that my head exploded like 4 times since then. Fufuldé is the language of the Grand North part of Cameroon. In my town they actually speak something different as well called mandara.

Here are the 2 articles I wrote for our training newsletter:How To Kill A Cockroach by Liz Adamo

I hit the pavement on Tuesday with one mission in mind: to discover the best way to kill a cockroach. Having never encountered one until I arrived in Bafia, I was unsure how to handle the disposal of these creatures that I like to refer to as “big beetles.” One day, one silly specimen, which was apparently living in my bedroom door, did not make it back to its home in time before I shut the door on half its body. Surprisingly, it was still alive, which I discovered when I pulled the other half of the body out of my door frame. A novice to the slaying of cockroaches, I smashed the little critter, only to discover that when you do so, a good amount of what can only be described as goo oozed out of the body. Not wanting to ever repeat this experience, I interviewed a few trainees to see if they had any ideas of their own. This is what they had to say:

Jeneca described three methods in detail. The Shoe Method, in which one whacks the cockroach with a shoe. The Bugspray method, which she says you can purchase at the supermarché. Finally, she mentioned The Starvation Method, in which one traps the roach under a glass and waits for it to starve to death.

Claire had another unique method. She said the best way to kill a cockroach would be to first flip it over. Then make a tissue sandwich with it so when you smash it the guts do not get all over.

Ben had some other ideas. He said smash its head, use insecticide, or eat it.

Allison described a method in which her host brother use a broom to flip the cockroach over. Then her siblings play with it and never really kill it at all.

Finally, Christina says you should just throw something at it.

It is up to you to decide which method works for your lifestyle. Good luck!

Les poules ne se perdent pas au Cameroun

La caractéristique qui me frappe la plus forte au Cameroun est que la vie me semble de passer lente. Aux états-unis, on dit que la journée n'a pas assez d'heures. Les américains ont tellement d'activités et choses matérielles pour occuper le temps. Mais il me semble que parfois, les américains ne prennent jamais le temps pour vivre, sans la télévision, l'ipod ou l'ordinateur. Mes voisins camerounais passent les jours assis sous un arbre à l'extérieur de leur maison. Ils y cuisine, se bavardent, et soignent leur petite bébé. Cela ne passent jamais aux états-unis. C'est vrai qu'on y connaît l'importance de la famille, mais on ne passe pas chaque jour dans cette manière.

Un jour, j'ai vu les poules de ma famille d'accueil pendant que je assoyais au porche avec ma mère. Je l'ai demandée, “Comment est-ce que les poules rentrent chaque nuit?” Et elle a répondu, “Les poules ne se perdre pas.” De même, aussitôt que les américains modernisent de plus en plus, et mettent tellement de l'importance sur les choses matérielles, leurs maisons deviennent de plus en plus obscures.

Translation:Chickens Always Know Their Way Home in CameroonThe most striking characteristic of Cameroon that I have noticed thus far is that life is lived slowly. In the United States, we say that there are not enough hours in a day. Americans have so many activities and material things to occupy their time. But it seems to me that sometimes they never take the time to just live, without TV, an ipod, or the computer. My Cameroonian neighbors spend each day sitting under a tree in their front yard. There they cook, chat and even care for their little baby. This situation would never be seen in the United States. I'm not saying that we don't know the value of family, but we also do not spend each day in this manner.

One day, I saw my host family's chickens while sitting with my host mom on the porch. I asked her, "How do the chickens get back to their house every night?" And she responded, "chickens always know their way home." In contrast, as americans become increasingly modernized, and place more and more emphasis on material goods, their homes are becoming increasingly obscure.

I only have 1 hour left on my computer battery so I'll jot down some tidbits about my site visit this week. I'm posted in the far north region and the trip takes 3 days. (email me if you want to know the town I'm in). So we were supposed to leave Tuesday then they told us wednesday. Tuesday morning we show up and theyre like surprise, you're leaving today at noon, go home and you have 20 minutes to pack. That was the beginning of this long voyage: 2 hour bus ride, 16 hour train ride (overnight) and then an 8 hour bus ride and another 1.5 hour bus ride. So the first night I finally got to my town, i was with a few other volunteers from the area. They took me to their friend Patti's bar, which was really just a lady's front yard. All of a sudden a storm rolled in so we went inside the house. She then preceded to pull out mattresses for us to sleep on because obviously we were not going to go home that night. So I laid down of course. We ended up going home later. Except for the big cities the taxis are motocycles here. So we took motos home on wet unpaved roads. We only fell off once.I also forgot to mention that on one of the bus rides we ran over a goat. I saw it coming and the bus driver did not slow down. Then I looked back and the baby goat was on the ground disappearing behind us....Animals such as chickens, goats and sheep run free here. My friend even has a turkey at her house. Somehow they belong to people tho (more on that later).So I went up north with 4 other girls. We were all sick by the trip back because we had no notice and we did all this traveling to spend 1 day in our town. then we had to turn back and do it again. everyone was on the bus feeling sick, people were puking on the bus or in bushes at the side of the road. These french people came up to me during one of the stops and were like are you guys ok? I was like its been a long week. So when you are traveling by bus there is no bathroom. you have to go by the side of the road when the bus stops. but the bus always stops at a town, so it gets weird. people usually end up seeing you do your thing.on the 4th of july we stopped at someone's house for a party. they grilled burgers and made mac and cheese potato and fruit salad. then people obnoxiously read the declaration of independence and various other american documents. it was pretty funny. At a bar the other night I ordered fish and of course how do you eat it? with your hands. thats why hand sani is really useful here....So today we had the opening ceremony for the summer school we're having here (for us to train) and we had to sing the star spangled banner. I took the high note at the end there...it was great. i knew ms hansons teaching would come in handy in africa.Thats all I can think of for now. we have internet at the site now so I will be able to update more. let me know if you have any questions. xoxoxo Liz

I have no idea where to begin with this whopper. At the end: I'm still in NYC. Or at the beginning? Wednesday's orientation went fine. Everyone seems really nice. Then came Thursday: one of the top worst of my life. We went to get yellow fever vaccinations first thing in the morning. Then I thought it was a good idea to drink a big cup of coffee immediately after, as we were going to be traveling for the next 24 hrs. Next we took a bus to NYC because we were flying out of JFK. Towards the end of the bus ride I started to get nauseous. I just thought it was a little car sickness since it was a bumpy bus ride. When we got to the airport, I was feeling really weak so I asked one girl for some water. I still didnt feel right so someone gave me a granola bar. Even though I wasn't feeling too bad, I could tell something was not right. I hoped that the water and granola bar would help, but I few minutes later I felt like I was going to pass out. My heart started beating so hard, it was racing. I told the people in my group and they said I should sit down. My heart raced and raced so fast I thought I was having a heart attack. People gave me more water and I started to feel better. But then the feeling came back a few minutes later. Now I was panicking because I knew I needed to be in good shape to get on a plane. But I felt so weak and my heart wouldnt stop beating so fast. My "group leader" called the Peace Corps medical people and they said I should go to the hospital. So he went to search for some help. A cop came over to talk to us and he went on to say that I didnt want to go to the hospital because it was "a nasty place." Needless to say, that made me feel a whole lot better. After a while, the paramedics got there. They said that even though my blood pressure was pretty high, there was probly nothing wrong and the only thing the hospital would do would give me an IV. We debated for like 20 mins until they were like there's 2 other calls waiting for us....we finally decided I should go because I wasn't feeling like I could get on a plane. So, my group sent me off in an ambulance with all 3 of my bags to Jamaica Hospital. They said hopefully, "we will see you in Cameroon!"So, we get to Jamaica hospital, which is as good as it sounds. It takes about an hour just to register because everyone that came in was more sick than me so they would take them first. I was starting to feel better. After they finally got me in, the emts tried to hide my luggage (unsuccessfully) behind my hospital bed. My huge backpack couldnt fit, so it was on the bed with me.I need to mention that this whole time I'M WEARING MY SAFARI HAT. It took about 2 hours to see a doctor. One cardiac arrest went whizzing by. They took an EKG, blood and urine and everything came back fine, of course. The doctor said that since there was no localized reaction to the vaccination, it was not a bad reaction. He said I had an anxiety attack. It was really weird because I've never had one and I wasn't even nervous. Everyone was on the bus talking and stuff, its not like I was freaking out. Since I spent 5 mins talking to him, I don't think his diagnosis was right. And theres also the fact that now there is a huge red mark where I got the shot. The Peace Corps was great the whole time and called to check on me, etc. The first thing they asked me was, "do you feel safe where you are??". ha. But the best part of the hospital visit was when the nurse came over and our conversation was this: "I have your pain medication." "Pain medication??" "Yeah, the morphine" "MORPHINE??" "Oh wrong person, sorry."That would have been bad. So, 4 hours later I was discharged. By this time, I had missed the flight. All 40+ people in my group were gone. The Peace Corps booked me at a hotel by the airport. I was hoping for a flight on Friday, but alas, my bad luck continued. Not only did I have to get a doctors note from the hospital saying I was medically able to fly (my name was flagged for medical reasons!!!) but the next flight they could get me was for Monday.So here I am, enjoying as best I can a long weekend in NYC, Queens actually, by myself when I should be in Cameroon. I will be 5 days behind when I get there which isnt so bad because training is 3 months. So Saturday I went to lunch at an Austrian cafe for some bratwurst and the best apple streusel ever!! Then I went to the Frick museum. Today I went to the statue of liberty and ellis island. My underwire set off the metal detector at the entrance. great.I've got to say, Queens is growing on me ;)Will update from Africa (hopefully) soon.

So I have 2 weeks to not only pack to move to Africa but also to learn how to blog. Awesome. It's always good to learn new things.....thanks for checking out my blog though, you're so sweet. I have never even written a journal or anything so this is a new experience, and you are along for the ride! I guess I will just ramble on and if you want to know anything specific, leave a comment. I am definitely open to suggestions. For those of you who need it in writing to make it official, I am leaving on a 6am flight on June 2nd. I will fly to Philly for a day of orientation. On the morning of June 3rd, we go get some shots and malaria meds and then we are off!! I will fly through Brussels to get to Cameroon. What am I up to you ask? Well, Sunday was my last of work at Whole Foods, which was sad because I made a few good friends there, but we will keep in touch so no wouris. By the way, whoever figures out where I got the title gets a prize ;) so for the next two weeks I am going to do the following: EAT EAT EAT until my ears bleed. the food in Cameroon is supposed to be good, since I will be cooking it for myself most of the time but from what I can tell there is no mexican or italian or sushi--yikes! See friends and family-apparently I am getting kidnapped to an unknown destination on Saturday.....I was told I would be out all night and to take a bag.....awesome. Also, going away party at my house on the 29th for those of you who haven't gotten the memo I'm taking the GRE on the 28 because I like to torture myself and I plan on applying to some really cool grad school programs while I am in Cameroon, some of which involve not coming back to the US. but let''s not get ahead of ourselves Pack and make my arrangements, lets just say, for leaving for 2+ years That's all I got for now. Comment comment comment and pass this link around. thanks love ya