AHHHHHHHHHHH

So I think that I have been trying to write this blog for approximately four weeks. Really since about Thanksgiving and thing just kept piling on and making me not want to write it even more. Blogging has become the new bain of my existence. It is hard work. But in a nutshell, here is what has happened since last time I have successfully completed my first trimester of teaching in Burkina Faso! I know you are all excited for me, but please hold your applause until the end. Since there are so few teachers at my school, I got roped in to being professor principal for the 5eme class. This means that I have to deal with problems that the students have with the administration (luckily none have come up yet), and calculate the grades at the end of each trimester. This is actually a pretty easy job, it is just very repetitive and time consuming. I did however succeed in this task, and avoided all of the random Burkina holidays in the process. During to last week of school there were two holidays. One was legitimate, but the other was, from what I can understand, a day with no school because several years ago something happened between the president of Burkina and a reporter, and if we would have had school that day all of the students would have striked and thrown rocks at any of the teachers who showed up at school. Luckily, that morning I was stopped by one of the other teachers within site of the school and told not to go. As a precaution they had locked all of the doors of the school so that none of the student could enter.

After all of this hubbub and calculation, I was done and off to the land of wonder that is Burkina’s neighbor, Ghana. This brings my new grand total of countries visited to a whopping 3! There were eleven of ous in the beginning, and we all had our fingers crossed that there would be eleven of us in the end. The trip started off promising enough considering that we showed up for our nice air-conditioned, movied, 20ish hour bus that was scheduled to leave at 7 AM, and it took only untill 11 AM for it to actually start moving. Oh, and it turned ut that the nice air conditioned movied bus was an old, non-air-conditioned, non-movied, non-nice, seats coming off, jagged metal sticking out bus. In the end, we negotiated some free bananas from the bus company, and I am not sure what is written in your book, but in my book it is written that free bananas make everything better. Following this intense banana exchange, banana is a fun word to type... try it out, we were finally on our way to the promise land of Ghana where the people speak English and there is not a whistled kid as far as they eye can see. As we were getting closer to the southern tip of Ghana and the surroundings were getting junglier, I realiwed that Ghana is what I had envisioned when I checked yes to the Africa box on my Peace Corps application. I had two weeks to enjoy it, and many-a-thing happened, but I will just give the exciting ones.

Our bus stopped in Accra, Ghana's capital that smells like the worlds largest toilet, and we quickly continued on to Ada Foah, a village where a friend, Megan, of another volunteer, Christina, is doing sea turtle research. We all stayed there until after Christmas in a huge house that she shares with the other researcher, Andy, and it was able to hold all eleven of us comfortably. I saw my first sea turle, and then we were off to Busua and the Alaskan Beach Resort that was only five dollars a night and right on the beach. Now up until this point, I had been nursing a cold for the entire trip. It got to the point that I couldnt decide whether my lymph nodes in my neck were crazily swollen or I was developing a goiter. However, the magical healing powers of the Alaskan Beach Resort cured me. A few other volunteers and I went on a walk on some treacherous rocks near the ocean, and I of course fell and hurt my ankle, but like a trooper I forged on and about five minutes later I observed some interesting sea life that I wanted to document and I reached in my pocket to retrieve my sweet, water proof, drop proof, awesome Olympus camera I bought only a month before embarking on my PC adventure, and withdrew my hand and sadly found it empty. It turns out that when I had fallen, so had fallen my camera and memories. We went back to see if in addition to it being waterproof, it was also wave resistant and still there, but sadly the ocean had claimed it as its own. Luckily I had just sent home the memory that had most of my pictures on it with Ray, another volunteer, who had just left the country, so I shrugged it off, I mean it was only a camera, and limped on. We all spent a few more days on the beac and then on New Years Eve, the phone that I had been using in Ghana got stolen by a small child. Luckily this was already the end of the trip, so by the time I was fed up with Ghana it was time to go back to Burkina. I was not looking forward to going back to site and speaking French, but I know once I got there it would be OK.

I speant all day on transport and finally made it back to Matiacoali and realized that I had left the key to my house in the floor of the transit house in Ouaga. Never worry, the family in my courtyard was to the rescue zith screw drivers and hammers, and after only about five minutes they had it open. The handle and lock sadly had been destroyed and ripped out of the door, so I am now locking it with the elaborate bike lock, two chair, and belt approach. Back in Matiacoali, I have completed my first week of school, and I am still alive. My book total is now 34, and my food trunk is overflowing due to the 19 packages that I picked up in Ouaga.

This brings me to my next point, the package race. I would first like to just thank everyone for participating. I think that to date I have gotten more packages than anyone else in country, including the volunteers that have already been here for two years. So thank you to: Mimi Cromwell for the Halloween card; Grandma Mary, Jean, and Aunt Sandy for the food and school supplies; Grandma Pat and Papa for the food and ketchup; The Snowdens for the awesome running socks, food, and knife; Matt and Marlene for the biggest pakcage of wonder I have yet to recieve, Amanda Neal and her French class for the French Laffy Taffy, I gave it out to my English class the other day and they went crazy; The Fosters, Michael and Jennifer for the crazy amounts of honey mustard and a cool wind-up lamp for the latrine, and of course the 'rents for the obscene number of packages that they have sent me. I think that is everyone. If I have forgotten someone, it is only due to the fact that 19 packages is a lot to keep track of. That being said I would like to state that everyone who entered The Great Package Race is a winner, but in the end there can be only one. I would like to declaire that the new winner is Matt and Marlene Gile of Columbia Missouri for the largest box of wonder recieved thus far! Congratulations!

I think that is all of the crazy thoughts that I have for the time being. I would have posted some pictures, but.... you know. Hopefully the memory card will find its way to Republic soon and my marm can put some good ones up.