Club du Theatre pour les Filles

So I started my Theater Club exclusively for my female students two weeks ago! I’m super excited for it. I was very impressed with the ideas and the enthusiasm that the girls expressed. We are in the process of planning for the Women’s Day this coming March. Our rough lineup includes a piece on Forced Marriage, choral reading, lipsync, personal speeches and traditional dances. We only have 6 weeks to prepare. It’s just me and the girls. Hopefully I can fine more help with the other teachers.

Other than the Theater Club things are normal here. The school was experiencing some difficulty but it has calmed down a bit now. There was a bit feud between the adminitration and the teachers which resulted in cancelling classes numerous times and having townhall meetings. Africa can be frustrating sometimes! Like Africa, teaching is sometimes frustrating. It’s a roller coaster ride. Albeits there are more downs and ups, the ups surely make up for the downs. I’m learning to be a better teacher each lesson. Wendy, if you’re reading this I want to let you know how much I wish you were here to observe some of my geometry lessons! You know how my semester of Geometry was a nightmare. Despite that fact, I think you would have been very proud of me. Like you, I put a lot of effort into my lessons and it’s frustrating sometimes to see that the students don’t understand all the trouble i go through for them. Currently i’m teaching central symmetry. I hand cut 240 little pieces of rectangle plastic for my students so they can see when two figures are symmetric in respect to a point. Not every student appreciates the coolness of it, but it was pleasing to see the amazement reaction from some students.Too bad not all my lessons went well like that one. But that is the beauty of teaching isn’t it? You give a horrible lesson. You reflect. You try hold your head high and you find motivation so you can improve your next lesson.

Back to the Theater Club, I would appreciate if any theater enthusiast out there has ideas for our little club. For instance, what kind of activities we can do, etc. I will give you updates soon!

Ghana Getaway

Whoa! What a great 3-week adventure did I just experienced. It all began roughly three weeks ago when I went to Ouaga for IST. Looking back, it is hard to believe that the 12-day trip to Ghana with 11 other volunteers went without major hitches considering the fact that we didn’t do much planning. We all got our visas and filled out our site absent form (which consisted of copying from o

ne another) during lunch break and (training sessions, shhh.) It was such a stressful task. So stressful that we got pulled over by the police. There were seven of us rushing to the Ghanaian embassy to apply for our visas. Traffic was horrible and it was impossible to find taxis. Finally, we were able to find one taxi, for seven people. We had two people in the front and five people in the back; I had to sit on Casandra’s lap. So to the Ghanian embassy we went. Until of course, the police whistled for the taxi to stop. For some reasons the taximan ( I never got the chance to ask him) continued without stopping. For a short period of time he was shaking violently. I thought he was on drugs! I was completely clueless for I didn’t know that the police had whistled for the taximan to pull over. Moments later the taximan finally stopped and we were approached by two policemen. We all got off the taxi and the taxdriver got questioned by the police. I somehow felt a little responsible for what happened. Thank goodness Julia was there to reassure me that it wasn’t our faults. While we were standing there searching for other taxis the police asked if we were going to help our friend, the taximan. Being nice people we are, we asked how much the fine was. The police spit out some ridiculous price, something like 25 000cfas which is a little over 50 dollars. Julia and I were expecting a few hundred cfas. We quickly walked away when we recognized that he wanted to extort money out of us. After this exciting epiosode things calmed down and everything was in place. We were set to go to Ghana.

We spent three or four days in Cocobeach with Christina’s friend, Megan. Megan and her Ghananian colleague were amazingly nice. They were wonderful hosts. The house was just a few minutes away from the beach. On Christmas eve we went on a sea turtle walk with Megan and Andy. It was a long and a tiring walk. We (minus Megan and Andy) stopped at the halfway mark and took a long nap. Midnight hit and we exchanged Merry Christmas to one another and happy birthday to me once they found out that it was my birthday.

We spent our Christmas on the beach again. Also, we spent the holiday by watching the IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. After the movie we went out to dinner. The group chipped in a paid for my birthday dinner. Awww, thank you guys!

We left Megan’s house on the 27th and took transport to Busua. We arrived to Busua and found our hotel. A dark dark place. The hotel owner came out and greet us. His wife rushed to light some candles, not because we requested to be welcomed with a romantic atmosphere but because the power was down. Not only the power was down but the water was cut off also. Imagine the 11 volunteers who just spent 5hours on transport arrived to their hotel and found out that there’s no electricity and running water. Thus we all got together and had a family meeting. After much discussion we decided to split into two groups. One group was to stay at the hotel and the other group was to find another hotel. I was part of the first group. So the second group took off. We later joined them for dinner. Arriving at the second group’s hotel, Alaska Beach Club, we learned that there are rooms for our group. Excitedly, we quickly walked back to our hotel to get our bags. We told the owner that we had found another hotel with better accomodation and therefore were leaving his establishment. He didn’t receive this news very well afterall, we made a reservation for 11 people for 3 nights. That’s a lot of money to lose. He and Megan got into a heated debate. I don’t recall much of the content of the argument but I can remember that I was very scared and again, feel responsible for the owner’s loss of business. Thankfully, Megan did a beautiful job at getting us to the Alaska Beach Club and away from the unhappy hotel owner.

We had a wonderful time at the Alaska Beach Club. I bathed in the sun and learn how to play in the waves. For the New Year’s celebration we went to the resort next door and enjoyed a declicious buffet and of course champagne. They even had fireworks! Just for us, i bet. The next day or so we all packed up to go to Kumasi where we were to spend a night and return to Burkina Faso. We left the Alaska Beach Club and went to look for taxis. We found some and negotiated the price. We agreed the price to be 5.5 cedis or 15 for one person. Ok, to truly understand this episode one has to know that Ghana has just recently redenominate their currency. The new currency 1 Ghana cedi is equaled to 10 000cedis. Now, when the guy said 15. We all believed that he meant 15000 or 1.5 Ghana cedi. So Julia, Casandra, Caleb and I hopped onto the taxi. We arrived at our destination and Julia handed the guy 5.5. The guy refused. He told us to add more money so we gave him 4.5 more. He refused. He said we had agreed for 15. We told him that we need to go check with the other group to see how much they paid. We went to the bus station and found the other volunteers. We learned that they paid their driver 10ghana cedi. Thus, we persuaded our driver to take the 10. He adamantly refused. Now, you just have to be there to really grasp the severity of the situation. We had a crowd of people surrounding us. Our friends were already on the bus ready to depart. I got a little scared (repeated motif here) I told Julia to give the guy 2 ghana cidi more. She refused. She explained that it was a matter of principle. Whether it was the matter of principle or not I felt that we had misunderstood the guy when we discussed the price of the transport. The driver became hysterically angry. He told us that he doesn’t want our 10 and he told us that he would take us back to Busua where he had picked us up. I told Julia to let him take us back and we could find another taxi with a cheaper fare. The driver got more hysterical upon hearing my comment. He grabbed my backpack and threatened to take us to the police. Being scared as I was, I felt really bad for the guy. I wish we could’ve given the guy 2ghana cedi more. I don’t think he was trying to rip us of. He was geniunely upset. I wanted to tell Julia to give the guy a break. Knowing that I wouldn’t do much to eliviate the situation, I sneaked off and boarded the bus. A few moments later the bus started the move and then i saw Casandra and Julia rushing on to the bus. It was the funniest getaway ever. The two safely got onto the bus. and I breathed with relief. The door was locked and we were on our way to kumasi. Well, not yet. Just when the bus was backing up, one of the guys from the crowd approached the bus and to Casandra to give the driver 2ghana cedi. Casandra said something along the line, “yeah right, you think we’ll give you the money now that the bus is moving?” And that’s the story of our Ghana Getway.

I’m lazy

Hi everybody! It has been four months since I last wrote to you. So much has happened in the past four months and I’m way too lazy to write about them! Sorry! I’ve been wanting to write about my experiences but each time I get too overwhelmed. I can’t believe Christmas is in a few days. Almost everyone in our group is going to Ghana for Christmas. That is going to be very exciting. I just finished teaching my first trimester. I love teaching! I thank the Lord for this experience every day! Take care everybody!

Swear-in ceremony and more part 2

Playing house

fast forwading to a few unexciting parts and we’ve arrived to the next part of the longest blog entry ever. so finally pcv an le has settled in her house. the following paragraphs you’re about to read or skim through consist of a story of a 22 year old femaile recent college graduate playing house.

so have you hear about my awesome house? It has a small peanuts farm. if it’s not for peace corps regulations prohibiting volunteers from earning money you would probably find me selling peanuts at the marche. In addition to the peanuts far, I also have two newly planted mango and papaye trees. My colleague who helped fulfilled this wonderful wish informed me that the mango tree needs at least 3 years to produce fruits while the papaye tree needs only 1. I was a little disappointed with the news of the former. Well I guess the voluntgeer who replaces me will be forever indebted to me. Despite having the peanuts famr the these two young trees; my humongous court yard seems very bare. I plan to get a banana tree and a guava tree and have a little garden of tomatos, cucumbers, and who knows what?

Okay, you have a little idea of the exterior of what my house is like. Now I’ll  give a brief descsription of the interior. my house has 3.5 rooms, a living room, a bed room,, a kitchen and a douche where I take my bucket baths. I’m becoming more and more attached to these rooms as each day goes by. my bedroom is semi furnished. I ordered 3 wooden crates to serve as my dresser. I’m sleeping on a cot. I just ordered a bed frame for my cheap twin size foam mattress. The carpenter told me that it’ll be 10 days which really means 30 days. it turns out to be 14 days. I am quite pleased with the bed. It has a ::: unfortunately the mosquito net is in the way making hard to access them. My salon is totally unfurnished. I hung the crucifix in the middle of the room. that was a very smart move on my part. I ordered some chairs and a table and they’re soon to arrive any time soon. Out of all the rooms the kitchen is the most furnished. I have 2 tables, one efor the gas cooker and one for the water filter. Then I have 2 large baskets for storing food and dishes. I have had many exciting adventures or more appropriately, experiments in this room.

The first few nhights in his house were the most challenging. since there’s no electricity in my part of the village it gets pitch dark around 19h00. Then, I didn’t have a battery powered lap so my only light sources were my headlamp, my bicycle light and a kerosene lamp. when it gets dark everything seems so much more frightening. the chirping of the crickets, loud conversations in a foreign language, the chanting of Arabic prayers over speakers the loud and obnoxious hee hawing of the donkey next door combined with my wild imagbination made every second dreadful. Thankfully I was able to get through these tough nights by reading and prayer. I finished the deathly hallows thanks to Lara.

I’ve never appreciated the sight of a crucifix and the sooth sound of Christian until I had to endure those scary nights. Also, I’ve rediscovered the power of the Holy Rosary. Praying the Holy Rosary not only fulfills my spiritual needs but it also calms all the unpleasant fear. I’ve been reciting the Holy Rosary in French. I’ve memorized the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and the Fatima’s prayer. Some nights I pray the Holy Rosary in English and some nights in Vietnamese. Praying in the latter makes me feel like I’m praying with my family. Then there are some nights I pray in all three languages.

Conquering the dark nights is only one of the many accomplishments that I’ve had for these first two weeks. Cooking near perfect rice is the other that I’m really proud of. I bet you’re a little surprised by that proclamation. Well, if you would allow me to defend myself. Back in the States we have this marvelous invention called the rice cooker. You see, all you have to do is put some rice and add some water. Then you press a button, leave and do whatever you heart desires for 15 minutes. You return in 15mintues and voila the sight and smell of perfect rice awaits your hungry stomach. Being spoiled that I was, I never had to cook rice without the rice  cooker. Well that was to change here. The first time that I made rice here I had to carefully read the direction on how to cook rice (several times in fact) from a cookbook that Peace Corps gave us. I followed the direction meticulously by adding 2 cups of water for every cup or rice. I then closed the lid and went outside to wash and peel some vegetables. 10 minutes elapsed. I went in the kitchen and found the pot overflowed with white liquid. This dramatic event happened really quick which makes it really difficult to recount all the details so I’ll just briefly summarize: I burned the rice, really bad. *gasp* Despite the fact that the rice was horribly burnt, I was so hungry that I ate every grain of the burnt rice, for dinner and for lunch the next day. It took me 2 days to scrub the burnt pot back to its near original condition.

Thus the following dinner burnt rice was taken off from the menu and Lo-mein was added, well An’s version of Lo mein anyway. I didn’t have all the necessary ingredients. Spaghetti noodle, cabbage, onions, oil, and soy sauce were the only available ingredients. And so I had to improvise. Ladies and gentlemen, the amazing and talented PCV An Le gives you, drum rolls please, NASTY BURNT CABBAGE AND SPAGHETTI NOODLE. I took two bites and gave the rest to my neighbor’s chickens. The good news was able to acquire some valuable cooking tips. Tip #1: Don’t use the whole packet of spaghetti noodle unless you plan to fee a hungry family of 4. Tip #2: Have all the necessary ingredients and a recipe before attempting to cook lo-mein. Tip #3: Don’t overcook the spaghetti noodle unless you’re cooking for your neighbor’s chicken. Wow, I’ve written so much! It’s now 14h01. I don’t know about you but I’m getting tired. Mais du courage An. Il faut continuer car il y a beaucoup à raconter. Dear friends and family, don’t worry too much. Your little An will be okay. The Good Lord and his angles are watching over her. Plus, she’s a quick learner. That I am. Only 2 failed cooking experiments and I am not only able to cook edible but near-perfect rice. In addition, I now know how much spaghetti noodle to cook for one person. For lunch today, I made a delicious version of Bun Rieu, one of my favorite Vietnmaese dish. It was delicious! I devoured the whole thing, not only because I was hungry but, well because it was deeeelicious!

Playing house is not bad at all. I especially enjoy feeling invincible and independent. I didn’t know that one can get so much satisfaction from putting up a clothes line and hanging up curtains by oneself. Also, I’ve never knew how much powerful I can feel just by holding a hammer in my hand. I didn’t expect to feel joy, peace, and a sense of accomplishment from sweeping the floor, washing the dishes and doing other household tasks. When I traveled to Rome by myself for Christmas, I thought I’ve achieved to ultimate independence. However, now, only a couple of weeks here, I’m beginning to think that maybe I was wrong.

In an unrelated news the ambassador of the U.S is going to visit me Friday. I’m very excited. I don’t know where she’s going to sit. And so to be continued…

Swear-in ceremony and more!

It’s 12h43 on Wednesday September 12, 2007 and I’m sitting here on the floor of my unfurnished living room drowning in sweat; sweat of joy, satisfaction, fatigue and of course sweat from the unavoidable heat. Ladies and gentlemen, I just cooked the best meal ever.

I’ve been living in my humble maison for a little over two weeks now. Although it has been only 16 days, I am certain that it seems like a year for I had to learn so much in such a short period of time. I’ll try to share this 2week adventure with little of grammar errors as possible (If I should fail, please understand that my personal editor is under qualified).

To create a more effective mood of this adventure I’ll begin story starting way back to the swear in ceremony “insert your favorite flash back music here”

The swear in ceremony took place 3 weeks ago and it happened like a flash. For 11 weeks, the 2007 Burkina Faso PCTs battled all types of demons so we could raise our right hand and swear to serve our beloved country, the US of A as education and girls’ empowerment volunteers. Of course, not all of the original 29 PCTs made it to August 24, 2007/ 11 intensive weeks of preparation for that one special day and it came and left like a thief in the night. It’s just not fair.

 

Regardless, at the ceremony every volunteer looked amazing in his or her tailored outfit. We took pictures with one another, with the fantastic Burkinabés that we befriended and with our adopted family members. Between the snapping of photos and the exchanging of congratulations we managed to take a few bites of fried fish and very chewy brochettes and drank spicy bissap and cold refreshing soft drinks. All of these festivities were going on and bam! We were told that we have 30 minutes to pack our stuff and go to the Gare for Ouaga. So obediently we packed our bags and rushed to the PC vehicles. Oh yeah, in all these frenziness we had to sign the Peace Corps oath. Deep breath. Yes! We made it! We all got on the bus. Sitting elbow to elbow and were on the way to the capital of Burkina Faso

Ouaga

Ouaga was a short and a semi calm trip. We stayed at the old Peace Corps transit house for 2 nights. While we were there we splurged on delicious and ridiculously expensive but so worth every cfas food and enjoyed the company of the newly sworn in volunteers. Then we had to shop for our houses. Shopping was overwhelming for we had to buy everything! I bought a lot of stuff but there were a few that I am very proud of. They are soy sauce, nuoc mam or fish sauce one of the most important staple in Vietnamese cuisine, banh trang or spring roll wraps and of course chopsticks. You don’t know how thrill I was when I saw that have those treasures in Burkina. And to think I planned to pack a bottle of nuoc mam with me to Africa!

To our villages we go!

Things to do

Shopping for site checked

Packing for site checked

Ready for site

Saying good byes

So one by one the volunteers packed their mattresses, propane tank and other newly belongings that they have recently acquired to depart to their sites. ‘see you in ist’ hugs; handshakes, and promises to remind each other to take the malariam pills were exchanged. Then one by one the volunteers were gone. Then it was my turn. I along with Liz had to catch a bus to our regional capital where we had to spend a night; and so we did. Monday arrived and so did my driver. I hugged Liz with excitement and anxiety. Here I come beguedo. The one hour drive to my village was almost a problem free voyage. Everything was going great until the vehicle came to a gradual stop. The pc vehicle along with several taxi brousses was stopped. We had reach a barrière de pluie. My driver Sanfo stepped out of the vehicle to inquire of the situation. He displayed a perplex expression when he learned about the predicament. the story was that it had rained the previous night and a little this morning; thus, as a safety precaution the barrière was lowered to prevent any traffic from going through the potholed dirt road. the man who was responsible for the delaying of my arrival informed sanfo that according to the protocal, the road was to be closed for 4 hours after the rain. sanfo argued, “ça ne fait aucune” sense or something like that. “you have to let us through. what happens if it rains again? do we have to wait for another 4 hours? Sanfo continued to bring some sense to this man but without any luck. So the frustrated Sanfo called his boss to remedy the situation. unfortunately for some unexplained reason he had to use my cellphone. consequently, I had to contribute some 700cfas to resolve this uncessary and time consuming predicament.

Words were exchanged between sanfo and his boss and between sanfo and the man or shall I say the culprit of the predicament. nothing happened. so with the permission of sanfo’s boss sanfo crossed the barriere by driving through the ditch. yay! the feeling of a moving vehicle! a 20 mintue bumpy ride brought us to beguedo. sanfo and a couple of my colleagues unpacked my belongings. they hooked up the gas cooker and carefully demonstrated how to property operate the thing. I nodded as a sign of comprehension, feeling satisfied sanfo departed.

Model School Rocks My Face Off

Three weeks later…

Model School will be over in 5 more days! Craziness!

You know what is even crazier? I’ve been sitting here in front of this monitor for 15+mins and all I’ve accomplished is these three pathetic sentences. My writer’s block is getting worse. But you know, it’s quite difficult to express oneself easily when one’s mind is overwhelmed with stories and experiences. There’s so much that I want to share to you all, but it’s a chaos in my head. So anywho, without further ado let’s talk about model school. By the way, if you want to read a good blog check out Liz’s blog. She’s a fellow Burkina volunteer of mine. She’s a heck of a writer.

Model School like summer school for the local kids and a big experiment lab for us volunteers. MS starts at 8 and ends at 12. There are 2 sections of 6eme, 5eme, 4eme and one section of 3eme class. We teach SVT (biology), PC (physics and Chemistry), and Math. Kids pay about 1000 f cfa to attend which is around 2 dollars to get a headstart of the school year and us volunteers get to entertain them with our fabulous french. The classes are relatively small compared to a normal Burkina classroom, except the 3eme class which has about 80 students.

I’m having a blast with model school. The kids, for the most part, are wonderful. I especially love my 3eme class. Their energy and their motivation for learning is incredible. I’m teaching them about square roots right now and what a wonderful concidence it is because my senior seminar presentation was on square roots. I’m very tempted to show them how to calculate square roots by hand. We’ll see if i can get the translation down. Dr. D, Wendy, I wish you were there to observe my class. Last Friday, we were learning the square roots properties of a product and a quotient and we did a few examples together. The class got so into it. It felt like I was showing them a magic trick. What I loved more was when a student approached me after class to ask about a couple of the problems that I assigned. Ah, how i love teaching math! I know i’m going to have a wonderful 2-year of math teaching.

So that’s it for model school.

One week later

Model school has been over since last Thursday or Friday. My memory is kind of week right now. We had a nice closure ceremony. We handed out awards to the top three girls and boys for each class. Also, each class had a representative who dance and lip synced to some of the current popular African songs. It was hilarious. Some of the performers even got some of the volunteers to join them. At then end, they played the Sake Sake song and everyone danced. Afterwards, a few of my students asked me if they could take a picture of me. And of course, being a polite celebrity I agreed. I even gave the my autograph, too. Just kidding. The closure ceremony made me want to look forward to moving to my site even more; which by the way is this Sunday. Even though Model school was only 5 weeks long and I changed classes three times, I became attached to my students at the end. Awww.

So the SE volutneers are moving out of their host family Wednesday morning. We’ll spend a couple more nights in the training site to prepare for the Swear In ceremony  (yayy), which everyone is very excited for. A cool Burkinabé outfit is waiting for each of us. After the swear in Friday we’ll go to Ouaga to buy stuff for our houses. Then, Sunday we’ll face reality and start our 2-yr adventure in our villages.

Writer’s block

When I was young I dreamed of becoming an award-winning writer. Fortunately, I was a rational kid so I trashed that idea. It is impossible for me to be an award-winning writer because: 1. I have no patience for writing. 2. I digress easily. 3. I have no English grammar and finally 4, I always have writer’s block. I’m discussing this predicament because I want you to pity me and thus pardon me for my low quailty blog. All of the other Burkina volunteers’ blogs are full of exciting stories and pictures. Whereas mine, three lousy posts so far. After much thought and struggles I have decided to post some links of the Burkina volunteers so you can be better informed of my, as i put it, “Peace Corps Adventure in Burkina Faso!”

A lot has happened since the last post. I will try to use my super memory to remember everything that happened; however if I neglect any detail please give me some grace.

Sunday 8 July

John, Garrett, Casandra, and I were the only ones who wrote on the “other bus.” Like protocols-abiding peace corps volunteer we all sat in the back. The two and some hour trip was disappointedly uneventful. There were no faux-types, baby peeing on our laps, or smelly and noisy goats. Nothing “blog-quality” happened. So we arrived in Ouagua safely. We checked in our 3-star hotel and went to search for some food because Casandra said she would die of hunger toute de suite. We walked and walked for, who knows 30-60 mins. *Fast forwarding to 2 hours later* We found an Italian restaurant and ordered some ice cream, yes ice cream yummm, and pizza, yes pizza yummm. This restaurant was pretty expensive as one would have imagined. It cost 500 cfa which is a little over a dollar for one scoop of ice cream. A medium thin crust pizza was 3000 cfa, which is a little over 6 dollars. The sejour in Ouagua was like for many of us, a vacation. We spent a lot of money and we ate a lot of non-Burkina food. Some of us wanted to take a break from rice. One other event that I think deserve to be on my blog is my near-drowning experience. There was a pool at the hotel that we stayed at. A bunch of us wanted to swim. I didn’t want to swim because I don’t know how to swim but hey, I bought a swimsuit for a reason. And so I got in my swimsuit and got in the pool. I asked Liz and Julia where the dropoff point is so I can avoid it. They told me. I went in the pool and walked around and walked right to the dropoff point. I’m going to take a break right here so your imagination can get to work. Okay, I’ll give you a little help. Basically I struggled and struggled to stay afloat. I had to grab onto Julia and Liz. Thank goodness Liz is a certified lifeguard and Julia is a former synchronized swimmer. They successfully pulled me to the safezone. So I’ll stop here because talking about this brings back embarrassing memory.

Wednesday 11 July

I met my counterpart at the counterpart workshop and we went to our village. We took a bush taxi and let’s just say that the 2 some hour voyage was unpleasantly uncomfortable. Again we made it safely to our village. I saw my house. It’s very cute. It has 3 rooms: 2 bedrooms, one living room/kitchen/dining room. I was super excited when I found out that I have room in my house to take my bucket baths. Also, I have my pit litrines outside. I think I have 2 (?). I’ll confirm this later in September. I have some of pictures of my house which I will try to post later. The computer I’m using is using Linux and I’m not familiar with it so…

My counterpart took me to meet all of the important people in our village which include the chief, police chief, gendarmes, and etc. The meetings were brief so I don’t have any interesting stories to share. Let’s move on. My village has cellphone reception which means you can call me! I don’t have running water or electricity, as expected. However, there are some parts of the village that have electricity so I can still get cold drinks and recharge my phone. It gets really dark really early. I was alone in my house around 7 and it got pitch black. I was so scared and you know it doesn’t help that i have a wild imagination. I had to go use the pit litrine and when I reentered the house I used the flashlight to make sure that no one got in the house. I checked the living room, the bedrooms and the bucket bath room. They were cleared. No one broke into the house while I was taking care of business. One of the things that I love about my village is that I can get an awesome view of the starry sky. It’s amazingly beautiful here at night. I’m going to pick up astronomy when I’m here.

And I think that’s a good stopping point for this post. I’m going to be ambitious and write another post and uploaad some picture this week. Model school started last week so I guess there are some decent stories to share. Peace and Love.

One month down, 26 more to go.

Yayy! I’ve been with Peace Corps for a month now and so far I don’t have any complaints against Burkina Faso. I guess I’m still in the “honeymoon” stage of my service. Amazingly I’ve not had any thoughts about terminating my peace corps service. Speaking of terminating, 3 people from our group have returned to the U.S, permanently.

My adopted family is still wonderful. I’m still having minor difficulties with the communication, but it can be beneficial especially when i don’t feel like speaking french; I can just pretend I don’t understand them and don’t respond. One thing that really bothers me though is listening cluelessly to my family members when they speak in their local language, Moore. There’s not much to do at home. I don’t stay in my room much because it’s boiling hot in there and there’s no place to sit except on my bed which is covered with a mosquito net. The family’s activity is watching TV, which has only one channel. There’s this one Brazilian or Venezulean(?) soap opera that i watch religiously with my adopted sisters.

So here’s my typical daily routine. I wake up around 6:45, take a quick buketbath and eat breakfast with my adopted mom and sisters. Breakfast is consisted of bread and butter and tea with milk. If i get really lucky, I get bread and butter but that has only happened twice. I leave for peace corps training aorund 7:30. Training is consisted of language , technical , health , safety and security and cultural training. Each day covers a variety of topics.

Regarding language training, I don’t think i’ve made any improvements. It’s hard to concentrate in class because we usually bike to somewhere to have our class. Most of time I would be too tired, too hot, too hungry or I really have to go to the bathroom to have a productive learning session. Today we had our second language placement interview to see if we had made any progress. I did not do any better than my first interview. I guess I’ll find out the result next week. Despite the lack of improvements, i thoroughly enjoy my language classes. I have a wonderful teacher and two awesome classmates, shoutout to Julia and Liz. I am going to be very upset if we get separated as a result of the second language placement interview today.

What i detest (ouch too strong) is techical training. Having spent ~4 years preparing to be a secondary teacher, it’s difficult to listen to people lecture about writing lesson plans, instructional strategies, classroom management, learning styles, and etc. Fortunately, things are getting a better because we get to teach to real students in french soon! Last week i had to give a 15mins lesson on fractions in french. I had a blast. I don’t know if the students did or not. What i know for sure is that they probably couldn’t understand my perfect french very well

Hmmm, what else was I going to blog about. Oh yeah, just this week I went to two muslim baptism. I learned that when newborn babies are a week old, their family will have a baptism ceremony to give names to the babies. It is a big feast and there’s a lot of food. At the first baptism that we went I had fish spaghetti ( yes, you read it correctly) and drank fanta. Liz, Julia, and I all got sick from the food. keke. There wasn’t fish spaghetti at the second baptism but there was chicken and this local dessert called denga. The three of us ate that and all got sick. Don’t worry. It wasn’t any major. It was just simple stomachaches which we are so accustomed now. Overall, muslim baptisms are fun to go to. The babies are so cute! That’s always a plus and the hosts are so kind to you!

Okay i’m going to switch to a different subject now. sorry for the poor transitions. Tomorrow all of the secondary education trainees will go to the captial to meet our counterparts. We’ll spend 2 nights there and then go to see our site. We found our sites last Weds and it was a thrill. Everyone is so eager to see their site. My village has a catholic church and that’s all i need! I won’t have electricity or running water, as expected. I’m also psyched because i live near two other volunteers from my stage.

Everyone is a little bit nervous because we had to take the public transportation of Burkina. We had heard so many fabulous stories about these tranports and can’t wait to experience ourselves. We have to be at the bus station around 5:45 tomorrow which means that we should have a wonderful night of sleep tonight. Wish us the best of luck and see you next time.

The first week

Disclaimer: please ignore any grammatical errors!

My experience in Burkina Faso so far has been wonderful. I’ll just share some of the highlights that I have had. First, the people here are wonderful; especially the children. They treat the voluteers like celebrities. Whenever they see us, they call us ‘le blanc’ or ‘nassra’ which means ‘white person’ in french and in moore, respectively. They’re adorable though! It breaks my heart to see them in their tattered clothes, malnourished bodies and dirty faces; however, their bright smiles and lively eyes give me so much inspiration. The other day when a group of us were having our french lesson, a bunch of kids gathered around us and watched us intensively. I shook hands with one kid and as soon as the other kids saw that, they ran to me and shook my hand. They didn’t want to leave us alone. The adults had to shoo them away. A few moments later one boy brought a piece of paper on which he had written a ‘wish list.’

I wasn’t able to understand what he had all written but i understood that he wanted a ball, soccer jerseys for his soccer team and notebooks for school. It was touching but i had to explain that we are just volunteers so we don’t have money; he left us disappointedly. Most of the kids that I’ve talked too either asked us for notebooks or pencils for school.

Last Sunday we met our adoptive family for the first time. When they called my adoptive dad up he did the sign of the cross. As soon as I saw him doing that I did the sign of the cross too. For some reasons that made everyone laugh! So I am super excited that my family is catholic. There are five children in the family and one of them is in the seminary to become priest. Since I’ve been here, I’ve went to mass 3 times already. The first time I went was with my mom. We went to a daily mass which was at 6 am. It was in Moore so it was hard to follow. The next mass was a daily mass but this time it was in french. I was able to follow it a little bit. Now, the Sunday mass I attended last Saturday night as wonderful. It was in Moore but some of the songs were in Moore. It was packed with people and it was very hot. Everyone was sweating!

In addition to the heat, I’ve also experienced ‘dust storms’ in burkina faso. The first one happened last saturday. we were having dinner outside around 9 30 then my sister noticed the sky was turning orange. This orangeness was the result of the strong wind and the dust. Everyone hurriedly bring everying inside. Then, the wind came. It was very loud and dusty. The lights went off so we had to use a flash flight. We could see the dust on our skins and on the furninture. A few moments later, the lightning and the rain came. It was so weird because it was the first time i’ev experience something like that and yet i was able to remain calm. i think this was due to the fact that everyone in my adoptive family was so calm. this was normal for them. This morning (tuesday 6-19) there was a similiar storm. Our language group was getting read to go to a high school for our language lesson. On our way we saw the orange dust. We thought we would beat it but it was too windy and to dusty for us to ride our bikes so we took refuge in one of the group members’ house. we stayed there for an hour then left for our language lesson.

So far, I love it here. I love the people! They have such awesome hosptiality. We saw a few children at the school we went today. When I saw one of the girls with peanuts, I put my hand out to ask for some. She graciously handed me some peanuts. You have to be here to appreciate this generosity. All the children were in tattered clothes. Their whole body from head to toes was covered with dirt. They seemed like they have nothing and yet when asked for some peanuts, they did not hesitate for a moment.

I am getting more and more used to Burkina everyday. The pit litrine does not gross me out any more. I enjoy the bucket baths outdoor. I love riding my bike and greeting the children. I don’t mind eating rice ( with the same sauce) everyday. I don’t mind feeling all grossed out and sweaty when waking up. I love my adoptive family. They are wonderful to me. I love going to the marché. I haven’t been taking a lot of pictures since i’ve been here but i will start doing that. I’ve been in Africa for only a week and a half but it seems like it’s forever. Hope everyone is doing well. I am doing well. I haven’t gotten terribly sick yet. I had nosebleeds for a few days and had to go to the bathroom more frequent than i wanted but other than that i’m good. Wan na kond nidarre. See you later.

Here goes nothing…

In less than six hours I’m going to depart for Peace Corps. AAAAaah! Well, I have to say that the last three weeks have been some of my best weeks ever. As a wise person I am, I listened to all of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and indulged in as many “things that you can only do in the States” as I could. It’s great to have older sisters who can make great Vietnamese food. It makes indulging in good food an easy task. In addition to savoring the delicious cuisines I also played lots and lots of tennis. I wonder if I’ll get a chance to play tennis in Burkina Faso. *sigh* I’ll miss you tennis. Ah, I’m putting way to much thought on this post. It’s 12:27am. and I have to wake up at 5:00am. Oh, well. I don’t know if I’m able to fall asleep. Anywho, back to “things that you can only do in the States.” For a few of you who know that I’m a k-drama addict, I’ve been watching k-dramas like crazy. Aaah, I’m going crazy with the fact that I won’t get to watch them anymore. But I guess it’s a good thing. Those k-dramas sure waste a lot of time. Now, let’s discuss some meaningful activities that I’ve partaken in for these last three weeks: family and friends. I realized that I’m going to miss out so much. My two nephews will receive their First Communion next Easter. One of my nieces will start pre-school next fall. My sister is going to graduate from high school and will be going off to college next spring; she promised me that she’ll go to Central. Go Dutch! And one of friends will get married next summer.

Craziness, let me tell you! When I started listing these things out, for some reasons, I felt selfish. I felt that by choosing to do Peace Corps, I’ve chosen to be selfish. I’m going to miss so much of my friends’ and family’s life to have this wonderful adventure in Burkina Faso. I know that I’m going to gain so much from this experience but what will others get? I hope that this is not the case. I hope you, my friends and family will also gain something from my Peace Corps experience. Ah, is that too cheesy? Do you understand what I’m trying to convey? We shall see huh.

One last thing, I don’t know if you noticed but I left one important activity out. An activity that I failed to during these past weeks: praying! Yes, I prayed. However, I’m very disappointed in myself because my mind heart was elsewhere. I was so occupied from spending time with family, friends, food, tennis and k-dramas that my mind and heart couldn’t have a decent conversation with the Lord. Don’t worry, I won’t let that happen. I know I’m going to have a lot of downtime and critical time where those conversations are a must!

Again, I ask you to keep me in your prayers. I also request that you keep my family, especially my aging parents, in your prayers. I don’t know if they can handle my absence! *hic, hic* Okay, instead of keeping blah and blahing, I’m going to sleep so I can catch a few Zzzs before the flight tomorrow morning. Good night everyone! Je vous manquerai!! I will miss you all!