adjustment

This is a first.  The meter still has an hour and 20 minutes left and I already did everything else online.  So I can actually write without pressure.

I am sure there are tons of things people want to know, or maybe not. But it is really difficult think of what to say.  I live in a small village outside of Garoua which is the capital of the North province. It is mostly Muslim, but my family is Catholic.  I have my own room, but I try not to spend too much time in there because its really hot.  So usually when I am home, I sit outside in our compôund and play cards with Romeo and his friends.  They are trying to teach me some Fufulde but I am a slow learner.  So mostly we all laugh a lot.  They think its magic when I shuffle the cards.  All 20 of them get really quiet and stare at the cards, when I am done they all start laughing and try to imitate the sound.  I especially like talking to host mother.  She is really patient with me and helps me with my homework.  Her and I laugh a lot too.  I am pretty sure she thinks I am really weak because I don’t know how to wash my clothes the right way.  Today Juliette who is 4 came and watched me washing my clothes for a while, then she said “you don’t know how to wash clothes”.  Maybe she can teach me after she teaches me how to sweep the floor.  She tries so hard to make sure I understand her, she speaks really loudly and slowly to me.  She is actually quite condescending, but she also comes and sleeps in my lap, so we get along ok.

Training is going really well.  The tech training has been pretty general, but it will pick up in the coming weeks.  Friday we went on a field trip to a pepiniere which is a tree nursery.  This man started it with the help of a volunteer who came about 5 years ago.  He grows about 20,000 trees a year.  He told us all the things we needed for a nursery and we mixed dirt and filled some polypots for seeds.  We have also started making a press book full of tree leaves to help us with identification.  So far we have learned about Cassia semena, eucalyptus, mango, papaya, cassia senegal, avocado, vitex, and many others I don’t remember right now.  Dad, that list is really for you because most other people probably don’t care, you should see if cassia semena would grow at home.  The tree nursery guy was really excited about his work and it was really neat to see him so motivated.

French.  It’s coming.  But I get really impatient especially when I have to rely on other people’s patience to understand them.  I feel like I am learning much slower than I did during summer school.  We don’t really have huge amounts of free time and it makes it really difficult to process things as well as I need to.  The trainers have done really well, and I hope I can start tutoring this week.

That’s all I can think of right now.  Probably not much will change until I get my post assignment, so if you guys have questions you should put them in a comment and I can answer them in my posts.  I miss everyone so much.  My goal for this week is to upload some pictures.  I will post again soon!