I know it's been awhile, but keep in mind I am in Africa and sometimes it just isn't convenient to get to a computer. I have been away for the last several days visiting the site where I will be spending the next few years, and there isn't any internet in my village, or electricity, and I have to pull my water up from a well (but actually I will probably get some kid to do that for me). But, I am located in the beautiful southwest region of the country, where the rain is plentiful and from what my host mom tells me there is grass everywhere, and the mosquitoes are as fat as flies! She was right, there is a ton of grass, and I counted over 30 bites on just my legs, so I am a little miserably itchty right now. I'm just waiting for the malaria to hit. But, I'll take the mosquitoes since it means I get more rain, so it is cooler, and tons of beautiful trees and grass and even some mountains/hills. Going to the southwest is kind of like going to paradise, but of course that's "paradise" relative to Burkina. But, I will live only 7 km from a huge hippo lake, 40 km from Bobo, the second largest city in Burkina so lots of stuff and internet, and not too much farther is a waterfall where I hear one can easily contract schistosomiasis, a horrible thing to have. My house is pretty big in a huge courtyard shared with a family of 25 to 30 people, my village has a market each Friday, and there is a little buvette across the street from me that has a generator so the have cold beers and soda (jackpot!). A bush taxi to Bobo takes less than an hour, unless something crazy happens, which it usually does. Last week I was in the back of a bush taxi with three goats, one who kept licking my toe and the other who pooped everywhere. Then, we stopped to load some eggplants, which filled the entire back of the truck, so the goats went on the roof and I sat on eggplants with my feet straight out for the rest of the 45 minutes to Bobo. It seems like the bush taxi is always an adventure; I think I will be riding my bike to Bobo as often as possible.

The French is coming well. I just tested into the intermediate high group, so I've already reached Peace Corps requirement for staying in country. So, since I finally feel like I can take a breath and relax on the French a little, I of course have to start working on another language-Jula, the language spoken in my village.

So yeah, I finally ate tô. It's really bland, kind of the consistency of jello, but white. It's too bland to be offensive to the taste buds, but then you put this sauce on it that is the exact consistency of snot. So, I literally gagged down an entire plate. It's eaten a lot, especially in village, like everyday, so I hope I can get used to it.

I am holding off on listing the things I would like to have for the school year. This week we start model school, where we teach class in front of actual students, so I will get to know the cirriculum a little better in the next month or so, and then I will have an idea of what I could use. I also don't really know what resources my school has, but I'm pretty sure they're slim to none. My school has 4 classrooms, one for each grade level, and there are about 100 kids in each grade. And only 3 teachers, including myself. So, maybe in a month and a half I will have a better idea of what type of things I could use for my students.

So the first pic is of the spider that lives in my room. I'm afraid to go near it, so it just hangs out in the corner and I make sure to tuck in my mosquito net really well every night. The other pic is my little host brother, Faris. He dances around my room all the time. Maybe I'll ask him to kill that spider. The other pic is of a glass of dead flies. Catching flies in a little bit of beer is a favorite Burkina pasttime. It may seem disgusting, and at first it kind of made my stomach turn, but it's incredibly satisfying to see all those flies who land on your food and rub their front legs together so sinisterly, trying to spread e. coli to every person they can, dead in a glass. Don't think it gross, you would enjoy it too if you were here. I am going to try to load all of my pics onto kodak or something in the next few days, and I will put a link if I can get that to happen, but it takes too long to put them onto the blog.

Yesterday I had a ton of mail, and it was sooo exciting! Thanks so much to my mom and dad (who send me mail all the time), Aunt Ruthie, Aunt Janie, and Aunt Lou for the card, and Jake Cherry for the postcards from around the world.