Hello again! Hope everyone had/is having a great 4th of July weekend. Yesterday we had a bash for the 4th and it went really well and was a ton of fun. We celebrated the 4th American style, well as American as it could be in Burkina, substituting mango pie for apple, of course. We feasted on the sheep that was given to us by the village chief, and it was amazingly delicious. Hamburgers and meat sticks...yummm. We also made mashed potatoes, sweet potato fries, fruit salad, and even had watermelon. There were cold beers (although mine was warm) and delicious limeade. It was definitely worth the 3 hours of cutting vegetables and prep. My hands may be blistered, but my stomach was satisfied. We even listened to the national anthem, well at least a jimi hendrix style version of it. Then, we had some local musicians play music for us and it was an amazing time.

Not a whole lot new has happened. I met the neighbor's little boy, he is one year old. When he saw me, he screamed in horror and clung to his mom. Everyone thought it was hilarious, of course, so now whenever he is around someone picks him up and brings him over close to me to hear him cry. I have to admit, it is a little funny, but I feel kind of bad for the kid. Apparantely I am a very scary white girl. I went and saw a movie with two of my neighbors a couple of nights ago. That was pretty fun, although the movie was West African made and in French and the quality was pretty lacking. I also got about 30 mosquito bites, and drank water out of a bag that I am about 95% sure was safe for me to drink, so I may have contracted malaria or some gastric disaster, guess we'll see in 2 to 14 days. My health is good now, although I had a rough couple of days this week. I won't go to into detail, I'll just say I am very glad I got to perfect my aim over the hole before I got sick.

Today I was sweeping my room and my mom yelled at my dad and said look at ashley, she knows how to sweep, then she told me I sweep like a Burkinabe. She got a kick out of it. I guess up until now I have been sweeping like an American. I really like my host family, they are amazing. I think I am going to try tô for dinner tonight for the first time, my mom was telling me about it today. I am excited/nervous, I will let you know how it goes.

Well I have been on the computer for almost 40 minutes and it is pretty slow to upload these images, so that's it for today. The one is of my bedroom, I sleep under that very hot mosquito net every night, and you can see my bucket for my bucket bath on the floor. I have my own clothesline, that's my pagne hanging up, it's something the women wear when walking out to the shower, although my shower is in the house I still use one. The pink thing hanging is the Burkina version of a loofa. I think it's better than the American version. The next picture is of me and some other volunteers, Jen, David, Amy, and Chris, preparing the sweet potato fries. I am willing to bet that you have never seen a sweet potato as big as the ones are here. And the last is the guys who played for us on the 4th of July. They are amazing. I would love to be able to play that xylophone thing, it is really cool. Next time I will try to upload some more images, apparantly people are too bored without picture distractions, but the uploading is really slow going. Happy 4th of July! If anybody has the time, I can't say how exciting it is to receive a letter here, so feel free to write. It's really expensive to mail to the US from here (it costs the same to mail one letter as it does to eat lunch for 2-3 days) so I'm not promising to write back, but I will try if I have enough extra money.