I can only fit so many languages in my head!!!

Have you ever asked yourself the question, "Self, I wonder how many languages I can learn at the same time before I go crazy and start to forget english?" Well, ask no more. For me the answer is three. I am currently in the process of learning French, which I will be teaching in, Mooré, which is the local language in the middle of the country, and Gulmancema, which is the local language of the east where I will be living. I fear that by the time I leave Africa I will no longer be able to form a complete sentence in English, and that I will speak some type of bizarre form of frENGLoréCEMA and nobody will know what I am saying.

This past week I went to visit my site in the beautiful, lush green village of Matiakouali. As part of a learning exercise, the Peace Corps had us take public transport for the first time since we have been in country. Leaving Ouahigouya was no problem, because we all left as a group and some members of our group speak fluent French. When I was on my own, however, that is another story. We hung out in Ouaga for two days and I pretty much forgot that I was in Africa. Ouaga is a sizable city, with everything a person who has been in Africa for a month could want. I enjoyed some chili fries at the embassy, and the restaurants around town serve pizza, ice cream, and cheeseburgers. It was awesome! We also stayed in a hotel with a pool, air conditioning, and running water that was conected to something that I think I remember was called a shower in the states. I met my counterpart in Ouaga, another teacher that teaches at my school, and someone must have been reading my diary because he speaks english. After being spoiled by the wonders of Ouaga, I went with my counterpart to go visit the place I will be living for the next two years.

Matiakouali is a pretty nice place from what I saw of it. It took from 7AM to 5PM to get there, via bus and bush taxi, so I didnt have much time to see the sites. I did have time to see my house though. I have a small two room house in a courtyard that the village preacher and his family live in.... I think he was the preacher. I also have pets already. I have two of the tiniest, malnurished kittens I have ever seen, and also I have a family of bats that live in my roof. I havent given the kittens, or bats for that matter, names yet, but soon. Just outside my/my familys courtyard is a huge field full of mango trees. I am so excited for mango season in village. My school is small, and currently has no science teacher, so it looks like I am going to be teaching sixieme, cinqieme, and quatrieme SVT and maybe cinqieme english. As we were touring the school, we ran into some french people who had been living in Matiakouali for a month. Most of them spoke english, so I got to talk to them about the students and the problems they were having and just about the village in general and everything they said was positive. They however left the next day and went back to France.

The next day I went and checked out Fada, my regional capital, and met up with a peace corps voluteer who lived next to Fada. We rode our bikes 20 km to here village and spent the night there so that I could see how a real PCV lived. It was really cool and I learned a lot of stuff about living at a site in country. Then I came back to Ouhigouya and I can now not wait for training to be over.

So my computer just locked up and I thought that I had lost this entire wonderful blog entry, but the wonderful website that is blogger.com saves your blog as you type for people like me. I was trying to post some photos and I think that is what locked it up so that will have to wait for another day.