A Post From Kate!

soooo...to start this post, list of things that WOW are interesting to get used to, but are going just fine: roosters calling at ALL hours, nope, not limited to the morning, i often get woken up at 1 or 3 by roosters, and i swear there is a dog that immitates a rooster outside my window at all hours of the night 2) taking cold ICE cold showers at 6 in the morning...this is of course when we HAVE water, which as of now, it's been 4 days without, and i'm starting to not smell that great, hahaha, be glad you aren't here to smell me 3) getting caught in the rain constantly and having your clothes NEVER ever dry, but not having water to wash your hands or drink and thus getting ill every few days! not as bad as some people: one girl has been in the hospital here for over a week, and there are a few other interesting stories of people getting sick...
i've done my laundry twice now and often have a large crowd watch me until they realize how horrible i am at it and someone pitches in to help. they think i am completely helpless and ask me is in america there is a machine for everything they teach me to do. they were incredibly amazed that YES in fact i could whip egg whites with a fork (thank you baking experience) and i am an excellent ironer, and the most exciting thing for them yet was that i can shuffle cards...no one here can do it and i had a crowd of over 15 people making me shuffle cards over and over for them.
we have gotten our tools, as my dad said, and i have planted a nursery at the school i go to and at my house. to plant at my house i had to go to the village garbage pile with my brothers and dig into it with my hands to retreive "le fumier" aka: the manure. yeah, it was ok until i dug up a big chunk of human hair...i wanted to pass out. then i went back to my house with my entourage of people and they did my entire nursery for me after watching me for a few seconds, taking a video of me on my brother's phone (like they enjoy doing when i do anything they deem to be impossible for me) and then deciding i just wasn't good at it.
i have gone to bandefam and baffousam, which are two "neighbooring" towns and enjoyed both, as my dad also wrote about. we went to a "discoteque" here at 4 pm, and danced and i drank 1/2 a bottle of beer (for me this was quite the accomplishment).
training is going to get more interesting next week when we are going into the "immersion" phase, this means speaking nothing but french in and around our school building. my french class got switched and now it's too easy in a way, i always answer every question first and seem to be the only one who is understanding what my teacher says...which is kinda nice, but getting old and i spoke to the language coordinator today about being moved up. i still can't understand a whole lot of what my family says...but they're still puting up with me! my technical training is still very easy for me...we had a soils training class the other day...i pretty much taught it :>)
i miss everyone, and was EXTREMELY happy to get emails today when i finally got to the internet, after 3 days of attempts. thank you so much for the emails!
we had to discuss our "mental health" yesterday by writing about 3 things we were the most bothered by...mine were: missing people from home, being frustrated by the language and missing running. i have not ran or done anything other than walk for 3 weeks now, and i'm feeling very cooped up!
among the volunteers we are planning a lot of events, and had a mexican dinner night last night...which was INCREDIBLE!!! no more plantains or potatoes...wow...i miss salad and tofu and oatmeal (you don't understand) i am enjoying everything as much as i can...and yesterday i finally caught the cockroach in my closet, smashed it with my shoe and showed it to my brothers to prove that yes, even americans can kill bugs.
miss you all so very much...you're going to tire of hearing that
i have a lot of good ideas for gifts for a lot of you in the making...i need to figure out how to send packages now (apparently i have to do some bribing of postal workers)
hope your lives are going well, think of everyone all the time and want to know what you're doing! LOVE