10 days down, 90 to go

Hi everyone!
So I was planning on coming to this cyber cafe yesterday to post a blog but when we got here it was closed!  Actually, a lot of places were closed yesterday.  About half of the population of Burkina Faso is Muslim and yesterday was the end of Ramadan.  Walking around our neighborhood, I felt extremely under-dressed.  All of the locals had on beautiful clothing made of elaborately patterned cloth and all of the kids were playing in the streets and setting of fire crackers - it definitely felt like a holiday!

Last weekend, which was our first couple of days here, Monique and Louise, who are our two student coordinators/program assistants, showed us all around the city.  We all piled into a big vw van and drove around.  Driving around in that van is an experience in itself.  Most roads here are very bumpy and unpaved and driving along them in the van sent us all flying up and around (and without seatbelts you really need to hang onto something).  One place we stopped is called the Artisan Village.  They have a store filled with crafts and wares in the middle but then they also have open-air buildings all around with one stall after another housing artisans' work spaces and personal stores.  There were people carving wood, doing metal work, and weaving on a large loom.  During our touring time we also stopped by the city's big park/forest.  They had a small zoo that we toured around - the birds were all walking around near us and the monkeys were separated from us by only a couple of bars - definitely not like woodland park!  When one of the large birds started running towards our group the man leading us around the zoo shooed it away with a stick!  After the zoo, we started walking along a trail in the forest area (almost like Discovery Park).  The clouds were starting to gather overhead and the sky was turning a deep blue grey color.  Of course we turned around because it was going to rain.  As we were getting closer to the van, the wind started to pick up.  Apparently before it starts to rain here the winds get really strong.  So we were walking quickly, trying to get to the van and then the winds started to blow really strongly, blowing dust and dirt all around.  At this point we ran quickly towards the parking lot, through the clouds of dust.  Covered from head to foot with dust and dirt, we all piled into the van just as the first drops of rain hit the ground.  Let me just say that when it rains here it POURS.  We couldn't even see out the windows of the van it was raining so heavily!

We started our classes this week; I can still hardly believe that school has already started!  We have two Burkinabe teachers - one teaches our french language class and the other teaches french lit.  The french language class is relativly easy, and the teacher speaks english which is really helpful.  however, my french lit teacher is pretty difficult, he speaks very softly and quickly and has geared this class to a level way above anyone's in this program.  While we can all understand most of what he says, we are definitely missing a fair amount of detail.  It's as if this class could be taught in english and the content, lectures, homework, etc would still be at the same level as a normal college course taught in english...so we'll see how this class goes.  I'm almost up on time.  Talk to you guys later!