Hi everyone!
We're leaving on friday to spend a week in the villages which means a week without internet, so I thought I'd update the blog sooner rather than much, much later!
There are a lot of geckos all around the city and our neighborhood so inevitably, one got into our house. The first time, I wandered into my room, turned on the light, and saw this little orange thing dart along the wall! I went to grab my roommate Kara and we both just kind of stood there for a few seconds. Trying to act nonchalant about the whole situation, both of us agreed that, hey it's only a little lizard, what harm can it do, let's just leave it alone. And then the thing darted across the wall and into kara's luggage. Both of us screamed and very quickly decided we needed to get this thing out of our room now. The problem was, he was hiding in all of kara's stuff and moving very quickly, darting into corners and crevices of our room. So, after moving furniture and bags and backpacks to the other side of the room, we finally found the little guy again, only to have him dart through our legs, into the hallway, and into the living area of our house! one of our housemates finally trapped him with a pot lid and paper, but the poor guy lost the very tip of his tail in the process! So last night another housemate called out saying their was a lizard in the bathroom and sure enough it was the same guy! Same size, same color, and with a little bit of tail missing! Once again, trapping him and getting him outside the house was a looong process!
And here's another random story - The program owns a big van and two cars to get all around the area for program organized activities. However, the student coordinators thought it would be a good idea to teach us how to take taxis here. Instead of having meters that keep track of how much the taxi ride is, you are instead supposed to negotiate with the driver how much you want to pay for a ride even before you get in. So we all took taxis to a restauant for dinner one night. On the ride back, I guess my cell phone slipped out of my pocket! The next day, somehow, the coordinators called the same taxi driver to come get them from the house. He then told them that someone (me) had left their cell phone in his car (woops) and he would bring it with him! I felt like an idiot but the taxi driver was really nice about the whole situation. Of course I immediately checked my history and realized I had received a call from a restricted number about an hour earlier. Of course, I had just given my number to my parents the day before and I had a strong inclination that the call had been theirs. When I called them, I asked if they had called my phone recently. They had, and the taxi driver answered, speaking a mile a minute in french! Of course they couldn't understand and thought that they had reached a wrong number - sorry guys!
Everything is going well and I'm definitely starting to get used to the rythme of life here. As a random tidbit, the food here is pretty good. It's a lot of starch: either rice or cous-cous with some sort of sauce (that's almost like stew) for both lunch and dinner. For breakfast we always have french bread with butter or jam and tea. We also usually have a mid-morning snack of fruit: pineapple, papaya, watermelon, and apples so far. The really nice thing is that all of this food is made for us by three women who work as housekeepers/cooks in the house: Sallimata, Bibata, and Absetta (I'm probably butchering the spelling of their names). On the weekends though we're on our own for food. There's a really good retaurant not too far from our house that makes excellent pizzas and has already become a program favorite!
Talk to you all when I get back from the villages!
Caroline
Monday, September 13, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
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!
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!
Monday, September 6, 2010
Five days down, 95 to go!
Hey everyone!
Theres so much to share, I dont know where to start! Firstly, excuse my punctuation, the french keyboard is slightly different from the ones back home and ive been having trouble finding the apostrophe! At the moment I am sitting inside a small internet cafe on a paved street nearby my house. Although I should have been expecting it, the very limited number of paved roads here was one of the first things that suprised me when I arrived. Although our house is in a fairly nice, upper middle class neighborhood (by Burkina Faso standards) the roads all around our house are very bumpy, unpaved, and filled with gravel, rocks, and trash.
Backing up a little bit, my friend Kara and I spent four days exploring Paris before we flew down to Africa. It is such an beautiful city filled with famous landmarks and culture. While I marvled at and appreciated the priceless artifacts and art I am lucky enough to have seen, what really struck me about the city was just how ancient it is. We had dinner a couple of nights on a street near our hotel called the rue Mouffetard, which apparently was originally a highway leading to rome when paris was a young city. And here we were, walking down the street, finding restaurants, and eating dinner with crowds of other people however many years later! We definitely crammed a fair amount of activities into our short stay! After meeting up at the airport and checking into our hotel, Kara and I found lunch, climbed the Arc de Triomphe, walked down the Champs Elysee (which literally has the biggest Sephora in the world), and had dinner before we crashed into bed. The next day we visited Notre Dame and climbed the bell tower (which was probably one of my favorite things that we did) and after lunch spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Louvre. Now neither of us had a watch and three times we asked different guards "what time is it?" or "quelle heure est-t-il?" which is what both of yus were taught in school. Not one person we asked could understand our french and then we would have to do the tourist thing of pointing to our wrists. Needless to say both of us felt very stupid. Wednesday we went to Versailles at the very beginning of the day so it was almost empty, which made it seem almost ghostly and then that night we took a boat tour on the Seine. The last day we went all the way up the Eiffel tour after having really yummy brioche, visited Sainte Chapelle, and walked around the Musee DOrsay. My internet is about to run out so Ill have to update this blog about Africa soon! Its really hot and muggy here but im adjusting, and only three mosquito bites so far!
Talk to you guys soon!
Caroline
Theres so much to share, I dont know where to start! Firstly, excuse my punctuation, the french keyboard is slightly different from the ones back home and ive been having trouble finding the apostrophe! At the moment I am sitting inside a small internet cafe on a paved street nearby my house. Although I should have been expecting it, the very limited number of paved roads here was one of the first things that suprised me when I arrived. Although our house is in a fairly nice, upper middle class neighborhood (by Burkina Faso standards) the roads all around our house are very bumpy, unpaved, and filled with gravel, rocks, and trash.
Backing up a little bit, my friend Kara and I spent four days exploring Paris before we flew down to Africa. It is such an beautiful city filled with famous landmarks and culture. While I marvled at and appreciated the priceless artifacts and art I am lucky enough to have seen, what really struck me about the city was just how ancient it is. We had dinner a couple of nights on a street near our hotel called the rue Mouffetard, which apparently was originally a highway leading to rome when paris was a young city. And here we were, walking down the street, finding restaurants, and eating dinner with crowds of other people however many years later! We definitely crammed a fair amount of activities into our short stay! After meeting up at the airport and checking into our hotel, Kara and I found lunch, climbed the Arc de Triomphe, walked down the Champs Elysee (which literally has the biggest Sephora in the world), and had dinner before we crashed into bed. The next day we visited Notre Dame and climbed the bell tower (which was probably one of my favorite things that we did) and after lunch spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Louvre. Now neither of us had a watch and three times we asked different guards "what time is it?" or "quelle heure est-t-il?" which is what both of yus were taught in school. Not one person we asked could understand our french and then we would have to do the tourist thing of pointing to our wrists. Needless to say both of us felt very stupid. Wednesday we went to Versailles at the very beginning of the day so it was almost empty, which made it seem almost ghostly and then that night we took a boat tour on the Seine. The last day we went all the way up the Eiffel tour after having really yummy brioche, visited Sainte Chapelle, and walked around the Musee DOrsay. My internet is about to run out so Ill have to update this blog about Africa soon! Its really hot and muggy here but im adjusting, and only three mosquito bites so far!
Talk to you guys soon!
Caroline
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