Wednesday, August 27, 2008

What I Did During My Vacances (or, How many times can I say "cool" in one post?)

Where are the pictures? On FB (see links at right) and Picasa. BTW, Finally got B's pictures from March uploaded online.

Well, I haven't really been doing that many exciting things over the summer. One of the toughest things for PCVs in medium-to-tiny villages is the rainy season. Once the rainy season really gets under way, almost everyone is out working in the fields farming (cultivating, which as I have discovered, really just boils down to weeding by hand after the seeds have sprouted). It makes it hard to do cool things like girls' camps or other things without lots of planning ahead of time and also being located in a more "urban" area, where people aren't all out in the fields. So, as you all know, I travelled a little bit, saw Dori, and got sick.

Happily, I got selected to attend an HIV/AIDS/Life Skills workshop in Koudougou. It was a three-day intense workshop. A lot of the information and resources shared with our counterparts was really useful/interesting/eye-opening for them, and seeing other PCVs was great because we got to exchange stories and ideas. I think the most important thing I got out of the workshop, is keeping in mind the milieu. Some things might work great in certain regions, but in others they won't work at all because of the cultural differences from province to province. Heck, village to village. Other than that, my counterpart and I formulated some game plans (well, technically, action plans, but game plans sounds way more exciting) for the upcoming school year. More importantly, we discussed what we would need to do to motivate the school director to get on board and also chip in a little bit of elbow grease.

What else was cool about Koudougou? Well, of course seeing a lot of the teachers from my village, who vacation there with their families. More exciting though: TAIWANESE people!!! I got to meet the Taiwanese people who work at the hospital. Military service is required for all of-age men in Taiwan, and often in lieu of the service people with medical training opt for a year of volunteer service in a country with need. Burkina Faso being one of the few countries that has diplomatic ties with Taiwan indeed has Taiwanese people. They took me on a tour of the hospital in Koudougou, which I think is pretty nice, but then again I am comparing it to the "hospital" in my village. On top of doing regular doctoring things, there is also acupuncture and a training program for local majors on malaria and HIV/AIDS. So, it looks like they are doing good work, and maybe I can work with them in the future to get some projects done. There are several of them that get shipped out every October/November, so this current "class" is leaving soon, but I plan on at least visiting them for a weekend because they have a basketball court (with a bad ball) and I have a good ball (with no players or basketball court nearby). I can definitely see how this will work out amazingly!

So, after Koudougou, I went back to village and relaxed for a little bit. Cleaned my house for the first time since December, and reorganized... pictures next time I am in village for sure. I finally figured out a way to hang up all the pictures and letters that everyone has been sending me (because you all are wonderful people of course!). Also, I acquired stuff from CLM because she left me (she COS'd, CONGRATS!!)... so, I had lots of fun rearranging and throwing out papers and other trash that I didn't really need at all. I'm very sad that CLM is gone because having a neighbor is/was nice. Though, Marty is moving up near me, and there is always Bryan. My nearest neighbor is now in the 65-70 km region. Bikeable in a day, but aller retour in a day will be tough physically.

Right now, I am in America. And, I am very happily getting fat. Today I leave for California, but in a little bit more than a week, I will be back in Burkina. After I get all settled in, I want to do a pre-school year warm up session with the new 6th graders. Just so they get used to hearing French, more importantly my way of speaking French. AND get reminded on how to do things like add, subtract, MULTIPLY and DIVIDE. Plus, if there's time (or if I can sucker the English teacher to come back early), I want to give them a head-start on English, and get them really excited about that. Of course, this depends on how my director is doing on advertising for this, but even if only a few kids show up, I will be really happy. If no one shows up, I'll probably just paint another mural, I'm thinking number lines this time around!

How many exclamation points did I use in this post?!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Hello World

I am back online until the 18th! Will post a longer post soon with pictures and whatnot and an update on what I have been doing. Afterwards, I will be heading home for a short vacation. I hope to go to California, but that depends on if I can good cheap plane tickets.

Fun tidbits:

Number of people who should be in the car to Ouaga: 25
Number of people who were in the car to Ouaga: 50
Number of goats on the car: 8
Number of goats that fell off the car: 1
Number of spam messages since the last time I checked email: 1748
Number of hours to travel 70 km: 2.5
Number of hours to travel 100 km: 1
Number of hours to travel 10 km: 0.75
Number of hours to bike 5 km: 0.25
Total continuous travel time: 4.5 hours
Number of days till taking off: 7 point something...