I recently discovered that the café here is very similar to the dining halls at any large institution. i.e. even if the café is open until 7:30, if you wait until 7:18 to go get food, you probably won’t get a stellar meal… just an FYI. Learning life a lesson through experience once, painful. Learning life lessons through experience twice, doubly painful and unnecessary.
Also, this afternoon upon emerging from my room I saw that there were actually clouds in the sky something I haven't seen in a while...
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
I know you have been in suspense, but wait no longer...
Sorry, sorry, sorry for not writing sooner. I have been swamped with things to do and really wanted to finish my book, so at night I would choose to read instead of write a post. Can you blame me? I’ll update this is reverse order…
Thursday: After drawing my sweet set of keys and working feverishly on an essay that afternoon I went back to my room and worked out for like 25 minutes and then headed off to the youth group Leanna had invited me to help out at. It wasn’t far from the University, but I couldn’t get a ride which meant I had to ride my bike. After talking to Leanna, I was reassured everything would be fine. It would be like 6:45pm at which point it would be dark, but still early. Fine. I drummed up some courage strapped the leadlamp Caroline gave me as a graduation present to the front of my bike, took a deep breathe and went for it. Of course, as I was walking out Pascal showed up to see if I wanted to head to dinner. I had to decline, but proposed Friday instead. The thought of having someone to eat with was quite appealing. The ride to the Harrison’s, where the youth group was held, as only slightly eventful as only one person decided it was necessary to slow down their moto to my pace and talk to me. I try to ignore him, which was successful after a while. The problem is you don’t want to be too mean because you don’t want to provoke anything, but then again I really just didn’t want to deal with anyone. The youth group meeting was fun. There were about 32 people there. We played a relay game, they celebrated three birthdays and Tyler talked about God’s love for each of us. It was pretty impressive how they celebrate birthdays. The birthday kid sits in a chair and they hoist them up and down while singing Happy Birthday. Ingenious! I would like to bring one back to the states. One of the birthdays was Leanna’s, so afterwards Leanna, Tyler, Bianca (Leanna’s friend in the peace corps.) and I went to Gondwana’s for some ice cream. Nice. Afterwards since it was quite late, Leanna and Bianca rode with me back to campus so I wouldn’t have to ride alone. That was one stipulation agreed upon before I said I would go to the youth group meeting in the first place.
Friday:
Work as usual. I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary. I don’t remember much about the work day at all actually. Later that evening I took Pascal up on his offer for dinner and we rode our bikes to a restaurant on the Babanguida. One of the bigger roads near the school. It was pretty fun although we didn’t leave until like 8:45 because there was a bible study going on earlier in the evening. Right before I left I began to regret agreeing to go and kinda just wanted to stay in for the night. But, alas, it was a fun time. I got to try Cote I’voirian food. I liked the fried plantains, but the leaf sauce was a little salty. Yes, they eat leaves. Actual leaves. Kinda crazy! I also found out growing up in the villages it is very common to eat hedgehogs and squirrel if they can find them… nothing is off limits. These types of meat are thankfully not all that common in larger cities like Ouaga. I also got to practice my French which was much appreciated.
Saturday:
I finally got to sleep in a bit. I slept in until 10:30…. voila! I felt very refreshed. In other news, I really really needed to finish my Oxford Application. I had been putting of writing the one-page personal statement and I resolved that today I would write it. So I went into the office and instead of writing it watched and episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Not part of the plan… After that indulgence I guilt-tripped myself into writing my essay ;) I finished the paper and sent it to my Mom to read over. I knew that they had the regional CC meet and so I was thinking about them all morning. I had lunch as usual in the café, and then later when I was back in my office fiddling with my work I got a call from Leanna. She invited me to her apartment to cook dinner. We decided to make chicken pot pie, and invited Tyler and a bunch of other people over as well. Only Tyler and the history teacher at ISO, Tobin, were able to make it. So there were four of us, a nice number :) Leanna is a great cook and it was fun to cook with her since she knows a lot of tricks about cooking in Ouaga. Like how to make sour cream out of cream and vinegar. It was so funny because we needed carrots, but sometimes you just can’t buy things in Ouaga and that day we could not find any carrots… We made do with the two she had and then some canned ones. I had never made chicken pot pie before, so it was quite an adventure. Leanna and I both like the crust the best so instead of just putting a crust on the top, we doubled the recipe and made a crust for the top and bottom. Great thinking! I would like to add though that the temperature in her house with the oven on was, according to her thermometer, 91.2 F Hot hot hot… But like I have mentioned before it doesn’t seem to bother me. Dinner was pre-gamed with some bread and fancy dipping sauces that Leanna had never used before. You know the kind that you find at the kitchen stores that you simply put in a little dish of oil and voila you have authentic Italian bread dipping oils. Anyway, A+ in my book on that appetizer, which by the way Tyler ran out the store to get bread for since we were fresh out. After dinner we watched V for Vendetta. Why haven’t I seen that movie before? It was freaking awesome! I mean really friends, how was this skipped in the recommendations up until now… It is very twisty-turny, and kind of out there, but good. At first I thought I would have nightmares from the Guy Fox mask, but the it just becomes part of the character, part of the movie. I think it has the same kind of suspense as The Interpreter. Another movie I really like. Anyway, Leanna drove me home afterwards since she has a vehicle again. She didn’t have one on Thursday or else she would have given me a ride to and from the youth group…
Sunday:
Overall I give this Sunday a D-minus. I wanted to try this new church called the International Church. Tyler gave me directions, but I couldn’t for the life of me find it. It was pretty sad. I had packed my bag with my workout gear and books to read. I was going to go to church and then to rec center for a workout and to swim. Well after riding around for like 45 minutes and not finding the church, stopping to ask for directions once and being directed to a different church, not the one I was looking for, I decided to throw in the towel and go to the rec center. I sat down and read for a while and met another missionary there. Not all that interesting. I decided to go swimming and saw Alice and her two children. It was nice to see familiar faces. I should mention that Larry Wolters is sick in the clinic and they aren’t sure what he has. Not good. Add him to your prayers if you can. Needless to say they were not at the rec center for lunch this Sunday. I had resolved to workout first, then swim, then eat. I go to the gym and there is no power. Of course I don’t know this and the worker that tells me this speaks only French so I don’t really know what he told me! I finally go out by the pool and talk to Alice who went in and asked them if the power would be back on anytime soon. They said later that afternoon. It’s 11:30 now, do them near 1:00 or 5:00? I don’t know… so I said heck with the workout I’ll go swimming so I jumped in and played with Charity and Sammy, Alice’s two kids. It was fun, but after a while I kind of wanted to swim laps since I couldn’t workout, but that was not going to happen since it seemed like I was committed to playing pool games of imaginary culinary school and toss the ball. C’est la vie. I was finally starving so I ended my swim and went into the restaurant after changing of course. It was at this point I noticed my hair felt pretty nasty. Like sticky and dry at the same time. Not good. Anyway, there was nothing I could at that point so I ordered a Taco Salad and read some more of my book during lunch. The Taco Salad was ok, but will not be repeated. After lunch I glumly took my sorry self back to my room. Thus far I had missed church, not been able to work out, my hair felt super nasty, and my lunch was mediocre. Poor Sara. I went to the office to see if my family was around to talk to me. They were and we talked for a few minutes, but I was pretty out of it and my lack of an ability to communicate anything substantial was actually even more depressing. The only good news was that Illiana had done really well at the regional meet taking first place and going 1,2,3,4. Nice JOB! After the unsuccessful phone conversation, I went back to my room and did the only thing I could think of that would cheer me up, watch the other episode of Grey’s that I had. After that I felt marginally better and thought the next course of action since I missed church would be to listen to a sermon from Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB). I went to HTB when I lived in London in 2006. Awesome place. Anyway, I kind of fell asleep while listening to it and surrendered to the tiredness of sadness and went to sleep for real. So I slept and slept and then got up and went to dinner. Then I read and went to sleep after a very long prayer time in which I very candidly expressed my dislike for my current state of being. After that I seemed to feel much better. Isn’t it amazing what God will do when you let him. By the way, I would just like to note at this point I have like no clean clothes left. NONE. I am just waiting for Monday when I can get Naromo (the guy to takes care of my place) to wash them. AND after showering after the swimming I realized that there is a definite issue with my hair. I don’t know what is up with the chemicals in that pool, but I shampooed twice and used globs of leave in conditioner to no avail it seems. I won’t be swimming again anytime soon. Or at least not without a swimming cap!
Monday:
First off things started off way better on Monday than Sunday. I talked to Namoro and my clothing situation is on the upswing. I also went with Konate over to the pilot plant to talk to Omar about getting things set up. The water is running now, but has to run for two days to clear out the system. I missed talking to my family since I was out of the office, but did get to talk Adam for a bit which was nice since I hadn’t talked to him in a while. Oh yes, on Friday I got to talk to Ryan for quite some time. We also discovered googletalk and have since been using it instead of Skype. It is great, and I have found the connection to be way better! Lunch was fun, Pascal was there and so I got to practice more French which was good because I had my French lesson directly following that. I need to ask my French teacher to talk in French more. Like I get it, he doesn’t have to explain everything in English to me… In the afternoon I worked on the Flood and Epidemic research I’m doing and later around 5:30ish Drew came over and we worked for like 2 and half hours on the stuff. It is pretty interesting. On Wednesday we are going to go to the Red Cross to talk to some people about what sort of medical records are available. Last night I took a practice GRE exam and studied more French. I have decided to really spend a good amount of time improving my French each night. There is no reason why it should be taking me this long to learn. I taught myself Algebra II I can teach myself French, right? Anyway, that is my new resolve I will let you know how it goes. Oh, Sunday I finished my book Cadillac Desert. Yeah! 500 pages, eat my dust… I have since started Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. About half the length and I am already on page 50. The pages are smaller and the font is bigger. Oh and its fiction instead of non-fiction, what a relief!
Tuesday:
Ah today. Konate came in and told me he was leaving for an all day meeting. And I was like ok, whatever. What am I supposed to say? Later I had another visitor. Kokou brought one of secretaries to talk to me. She had a contract for me. Like a work contract, which I suppose is a good thing, but wouldn’t you know, it was in French. So I spent a good portion of my morning translating the contract to make sure I am not signing up for something I shouldn’t be. Not that I’m not already here or anything. Anyway, one surprise was that the contract said I had 45 paid vacation days. Are they serious? I am here for like 9 months and they are giving me 6 weeks of paid vacation. I am not complaining. Anyone want to rendezvous in Paris? Je parle Fracias… donc je en trein du apprendre Fracias. Well, I guess that’s that. I thought it would be a good idea to talk to Prof. Maiga about the contract so I went to his office and asked his secretary if I could speak with him. I asked this is French and she understood me! The problem was when she responded I don’t know what she said… I think she said she would call later today and tell me when I could see him. At least that is what I hope she said. Lunch today was so-so, but I did get to chat with Claire this morning which brightened my day. Also, I now read the news stories like everyday and it is amazing what you come across. For example, Philadelphia in general has the least attractive people of all of the top 25 US cities. I couldn’t help but email that little tid-bit of info to Caroline. I am also updating my gmail address book in preparation for sending out a mass-email update. That is a challenge. Break is over so I am back to work. This afternoon I am going to read a book about gravel bed pre-filtration. I finally located an electronic version in English. Excellent!
Last note: Today when I talked to Ryan he said he really liked my blog and couldn’t believe how much I wrote. He said he couldn’t imagine having that much to say about what he does everyday. Well, Ryan, I don’t think I have much interesting to say either, but somehow I keep filling up the pages.
Thursday: After drawing my sweet set of keys and working feverishly on an essay that afternoon I went back to my room and worked out for like 25 minutes and then headed off to the youth group Leanna had invited me to help out at. It wasn’t far from the University, but I couldn’t get a ride which meant I had to ride my bike. After talking to Leanna, I was reassured everything would be fine. It would be like 6:45pm at which point it would be dark, but still early. Fine. I drummed up some courage strapped the leadlamp Caroline gave me as a graduation present to the front of my bike, took a deep breathe and went for it. Of course, as I was walking out Pascal showed up to see if I wanted to head to dinner. I had to decline, but proposed Friday instead. The thought of having someone to eat with was quite appealing. The ride to the Harrison’s, where the youth group was held, as only slightly eventful as only one person decided it was necessary to slow down their moto to my pace and talk to me. I try to ignore him, which was successful after a while. The problem is you don’t want to be too mean because you don’t want to provoke anything, but then again I really just didn’t want to deal with anyone. The youth group meeting was fun. There were about 32 people there. We played a relay game, they celebrated three birthdays and Tyler talked about God’s love for each of us. It was pretty impressive how they celebrate birthdays. The birthday kid sits in a chair and they hoist them up and down while singing Happy Birthday. Ingenious! I would like to bring one back to the states. One of the birthdays was Leanna’s, so afterwards Leanna, Tyler, Bianca (Leanna’s friend in the peace corps.) and I went to Gondwana’s for some ice cream. Nice. Afterwards since it was quite late, Leanna and Bianca rode with me back to campus so I wouldn’t have to ride alone. That was one stipulation agreed upon before I said I would go to the youth group meeting in the first place.
Friday:
Work as usual. I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary. I don’t remember much about the work day at all actually. Later that evening I took Pascal up on his offer for dinner and we rode our bikes to a restaurant on the Babanguida. One of the bigger roads near the school. It was pretty fun although we didn’t leave until like 8:45 because there was a bible study going on earlier in the evening. Right before I left I began to regret agreeing to go and kinda just wanted to stay in for the night. But, alas, it was a fun time. I got to try Cote I’voirian food. I liked the fried plantains, but the leaf sauce was a little salty. Yes, they eat leaves. Actual leaves. Kinda crazy! I also found out growing up in the villages it is very common to eat hedgehogs and squirrel if they can find them… nothing is off limits. These types of meat are thankfully not all that common in larger cities like Ouaga. I also got to practice my French which was much appreciated.
Saturday:
I finally got to sleep in a bit. I slept in until 10:30…. voila! I felt very refreshed. In other news, I really really needed to finish my Oxford Application. I had been putting of writing the one-page personal statement and I resolved that today I would write it. So I went into the office and instead of writing it watched and episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Not part of the plan… After that indulgence I guilt-tripped myself into writing my essay ;) I finished the paper and sent it to my Mom to read over. I knew that they had the regional CC meet and so I was thinking about them all morning. I had lunch as usual in the café, and then later when I was back in my office fiddling with my work I got a call from Leanna. She invited me to her apartment to cook dinner. We decided to make chicken pot pie, and invited Tyler and a bunch of other people over as well. Only Tyler and the history teacher at ISO, Tobin, were able to make it. So there were four of us, a nice number :) Leanna is a great cook and it was fun to cook with her since she knows a lot of tricks about cooking in Ouaga. Like how to make sour cream out of cream and vinegar. It was so funny because we needed carrots, but sometimes you just can’t buy things in Ouaga and that day we could not find any carrots… We made do with the two she had and then some canned ones. I had never made chicken pot pie before, so it was quite an adventure. Leanna and I both like the crust the best so instead of just putting a crust on the top, we doubled the recipe and made a crust for the top and bottom. Great thinking! I would like to add though that the temperature in her house with the oven on was, according to her thermometer, 91.2 F Hot hot hot… But like I have mentioned before it doesn’t seem to bother me. Dinner was pre-gamed with some bread and fancy dipping sauces that Leanna had never used before. You know the kind that you find at the kitchen stores that you simply put in a little dish of oil and voila you have authentic Italian bread dipping oils. Anyway, A+ in my book on that appetizer, which by the way Tyler ran out the store to get bread for since we were fresh out. After dinner we watched V for Vendetta. Why haven’t I seen that movie before? It was freaking awesome! I mean really friends, how was this skipped in the recommendations up until now… It is very twisty-turny, and kind of out there, but good. At first I thought I would have nightmares from the Guy Fox mask, but the it just becomes part of the character, part of the movie. I think it has the same kind of suspense as The Interpreter. Another movie I really like. Anyway, Leanna drove me home afterwards since she has a vehicle again. She didn’t have one on Thursday or else she would have given me a ride to and from the youth group…
Sunday:
Overall I give this Sunday a D-minus. I wanted to try this new church called the International Church. Tyler gave me directions, but I couldn’t for the life of me find it. It was pretty sad. I had packed my bag with my workout gear and books to read. I was going to go to church and then to rec center for a workout and to swim. Well after riding around for like 45 minutes and not finding the church, stopping to ask for directions once and being directed to a different church, not the one I was looking for, I decided to throw in the towel and go to the rec center. I sat down and read for a while and met another missionary there. Not all that interesting. I decided to go swimming and saw Alice and her two children. It was nice to see familiar faces. I should mention that Larry Wolters is sick in the clinic and they aren’t sure what he has. Not good. Add him to your prayers if you can. Needless to say they were not at the rec center for lunch this Sunday. I had resolved to workout first, then swim, then eat. I go to the gym and there is no power. Of course I don’t know this and the worker that tells me this speaks only French so I don’t really know what he told me! I finally go out by the pool and talk to Alice who went in and asked them if the power would be back on anytime soon. They said later that afternoon. It’s 11:30 now, do them near 1:00 or 5:00? I don’t know… so I said heck with the workout I’ll go swimming so I jumped in and played with Charity and Sammy, Alice’s two kids. It was fun, but after a while I kind of wanted to swim laps since I couldn’t workout, but that was not going to happen since it seemed like I was committed to playing pool games of imaginary culinary school and toss the ball. C’est la vie. I was finally starving so I ended my swim and went into the restaurant after changing of course. It was at this point I noticed my hair felt pretty nasty. Like sticky and dry at the same time. Not good. Anyway, there was nothing I could at that point so I ordered a Taco Salad and read some more of my book during lunch. The Taco Salad was ok, but will not be repeated. After lunch I glumly took my sorry self back to my room. Thus far I had missed church, not been able to work out, my hair felt super nasty, and my lunch was mediocre. Poor Sara. I went to the office to see if my family was around to talk to me. They were and we talked for a few minutes, but I was pretty out of it and my lack of an ability to communicate anything substantial was actually even more depressing. The only good news was that Illiana had done really well at the regional meet taking first place and going 1,2,3,4. Nice JOB! After the unsuccessful phone conversation, I went back to my room and did the only thing I could think of that would cheer me up, watch the other episode of Grey’s that I had. After that I felt marginally better and thought the next course of action since I missed church would be to listen to a sermon from Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB). I went to HTB when I lived in London in 2006. Awesome place. Anyway, I kind of fell asleep while listening to it and surrendered to the tiredness of sadness and went to sleep for real. So I slept and slept and then got up and went to dinner. Then I read and went to sleep after a very long prayer time in which I very candidly expressed my dislike for my current state of being. After that I seemed to feel much better. Isn’t it amazing what God will do when you let him. By the way, I would just like to note at this point I have like no clean clothes left. NONE. I am just waiting for Monday when I can get Naromo (the guy to takes care of my place) to wash them. AND after showering after the swimming I realized that there is a definite issue with my hair. I don’t know what is up with the chemicals in that pool, but I shampooed twice and used globs of leave in conditioner to no avail it seems. I won’t be swimming again anytime soon. Or at least not without a swimming cap!
Monday:
First off things started off way better on Monday than Sunday. I talked to Namoro and my clothing situation is on the upswing. I also went with Konate over to the pilot plant to talk to Omar about getting things set up. The water is running now, but has to run for two days to clear out the system. I missed talking to my family since I was out of the office, but did get to talk Adam for a bit which was nice since I hadn’t talked to him in a while. Oh yes, on Friday I got to talk to Ryan for quite some time. We also discovered googletalk and have since been using it instead of Skype. It is great, and I have found the connection to be way better! Lunch was fun, Pascal was there and so I got to practice more French which was good because I had my French lesson directly following that. I need to ask my French teacher to talk in French more. Like I get it, he doesn’t have to explain everything in English to me… In the afternoon I worked on the Flood and Epidemic research I’m doing and later around 5:30ish Drew came over and we worked for like 2 and half hours on the stuff. It is pretty interesting. On Wednesday we are going to go to the Red Cross to talk to some people about what sort of medical records are available. Last night I took a practice GRE exam and studied more French. I have decided to really spend a good amount of time improving my French each night. There is no reason why it should be taking me this long to learn. I taught myself Algebra II I can teach myself French, right? Anyway, that is my new resolve I will let you know how it goes. Oh, Sunday I finished my book Cadillac Desert. Yeah! 500 pages, eat my dust… I have since started Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. About half the length and I am already on page 50. The pages are smaller and the font is bigger. Oh and its fiction instead of non-fiction, what a relief!
Tuesday:
Ah today. Konate came in and told me he was leaving for an all day meeting. And I was like ok, whatever. What am I supposed to say? Later I had another visitor. Kokou brought one of secretaries to talk to me. She had a contract for me. Like a work contract, which I suppose is a good thing, but wouldn’t you know, it was in French. So I spent a good portion of my morning translating the contract to make sure I am not signing up for something I shouldn’t be. Not that I’m not already here or anything. Anyway, one surprise was that the contract said I had 45 paid vacation days. Are they serious? I am here for like 9 months and they are giving me 6 weeks of paid vacation. I am not complaining. Anyone want to rendezvous in Paris? Je parle Fracias… donc je en trein du apprendre Fracias. Well, I guess that’s that. I thought it would be a good idea to talk to Prof. Maiga about the contract so I went to his office and asked his secretary if I could speak with him. I asked this is French and she understood me! The problem was when she responded I don’t know what she said… I think she said she would call later today and tell me when I could see him. At least that is what I hope she said. Lunch today was so-so, but I did get to chat with Claire this morning which brightened my day. Also, I now read the news stories like everyday and it is amazing what you come across. For example, Philadelphia in general has the least attractive people of all of the top 25 US cities. I couldn’t help but email that little tid-bit of info to Caroline. I am also updating my gmail address book in preparation for sending out a mass-email update. That is a challenge. Break is over so I am back to work. This afternoon I am going to read a book about gravel bed pre-filtration. I finally located an electronic version in English. Excellent!
Last note: Today when I talked to Ryan he said he really liked my blog and couldn’t believe how much I wrote. He said he couldn’t imagine having that much to say about what he does everyday. Well, Ryan, I don’t think I have much interesting to say either, but somehow I keep filling up the pages.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Inspiration for you.
I made this last night :) It is a picture I took at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. I used photoshop to stylize it and add the text. I really like doing this kind of thing and am considering putting together a collection of pieces like this to make a calendar or other items to sell. I would love any feedback and suggestions about this idea...
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Everything is in French... et mon clés
I put all my phone and computer settings to French thinking it would help me learn. And it is. But is sure frustrating sometimes.
Yesterday, Wednesday I went running at the Parc du Bois with Drew again. last night at dinner I also had a nice conversation with another student here. He talked to me in English and I talked to him in French. It was pretty fun. Very confidence building too as far as my French goes. He is Mauritania which is Northwest of Mali. Look it up on a map...
Funny story. I had decided to prepare something to say to the girl who takes my money at the cafeteria. Something along the lines of "What's for dinner tonight?" Easy enough right. So I looked it up in this sweet dictionary the Wolters gave me and memorized what to say. I got up to the window and almost chickened out, but didn't. I said "Qu'y a-t-il au diner ce soir?" and of course my pronounciation is not the greatest and before I know it the girl is sending out one of the workers to buy me a bottle of Lafi (barnd name water). And I am like no no and repeated my little phrase until she got it. aye-ka-rum-ba. Dinner was rice with red sauce again. I didn't even need to ask, but I wanted to be friendly. We'll see how things go in the future :)
Today I helped Konate with and english translation he had done of his french article he was submitting for publication. It was pretty easy, just some small changes to make the prose flow more smoothly. After lunch I went back to my room and decided to do something fun in my 3 hour break, so I drew a picture. Again searching for a subject to draw I picked my keys. Here is the drawing... I am getting better at drawing from life instead of just copying pictures which is really cool.
Rewind. On Tuesday. I rode my bike about 5km to the Neilsen's house for bible study. It was really nice. They are doing a series by Beth Moore. They have a DVD to watch and a workbook. The study is every other week which is perfect for me. BTW. I rode my bike there at 3:00 probably the hottest and sunniest part of the day. I got there and my back was soaking with sweat. Next time I will bring an extra shirt. It was pretty cool because it was first time I had gone anywhere by myself. Not that I plan on making it a habit it was nice to feel independent. And I had paid close enough attention to where I was going when people were driving me around that I knew I wouldn't get lost.
Verse to know: Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it the LORD's purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21. This was one they used in the sermon on Sunday. The one where it seemed like they were yelling the whole time, yes, that one.
Yesterday, Wednesday I went running at the Parc du Bois with Drew again. last night at dinner I also had a nice conversation with another student here. He talked to me in English and I talked to him in French. It was pretty fun. Very confidence building too as far as my French goes. He is Mauritania which is Northwest of Mali. Look it up on a map...
Funny story. I had decided to prepare something to say to the girl who takes my money at the cafeteria. Something along the lines of "What's for dinner tonight?" Easy enough right. So I looked it up in this sweet dictionary the Wolters gave me and memorized what to say. I got up to the window and almost chickened out, but didn't. I said "Qu'y a-t-il au diner ce soir?" and of course my pronounciation is not the greatest and before I know it the girl is sending out one of the workers to buy me a bottle of Lafi (barnd name water). And I am like no no and repeated my little phrase until she got it. aye-ka-rum-ba. Dinner was rice with red sauce again. I didn't even need to ask, but I wanted to be friendly. We'll see how things go in the future :)
Today I helped Konate with and english translation he had done of his french article he was submitting for publication. It was pretty easy, just some small changes to make the prose flow more smoothly. After lunch I went back to my room and decided to do something fun in my 3 hour break, so I drew a picture. Again searching for a subject to draw I picked my keys. Here is the drawing... I am getting better at drawing from life instead of just copying pictures which is really cool.
Rewind. On Tuesday. I rode my bike about 5km to the Neilsen's house for bible study. It was really nice. They are doing a series by Beth Moore. They have a DVD to watch and a workbook. The study is every other week which is perfect for me. BTW. I rode my bike there at 3:00 probably the hottest and sunniest part of the day. I got there and my back was soaking with sweat. Next time I will bring an extra shirt. It was pretty cool because it was first time I had gone anywhere by myself. Not that I plan on making it a habit it was nice to feel independent. And I had paid close enough attention to where I was going when people were driving me around that I knew I wouldn't get lost.
Verse to know: Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it the LORD's purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21. This was one they used in the sermon on Sunday. The one where it seemed like they were yelling the whole time, yes, that one.
Pink pants and deep thoughts.
I wore my pink pants on Tuesday. I hadn’t worn them yet. But Tuesday just felt like a pink pants day. That and I have worn everything else I brought many times over already. They make me happy, and they are actually more coral than pink. That and I spilled dinner on them which I am just realizing. Not good.
I really don’t mind being away from people except that their lives keep going without me there. Like if I could just freeze everything back home and have it pick back up when I get that would be awesome, but no. Everyone will be a year older, things will have changed and I won’t have been part of it. It’s kind of sad to think about it. Guess you can’t have everything!
Some people love to shower. I, however, am not one of those people. That is not to say I don’t shower. I do shower. I just don’t enjoy it like most people do. If you know me you will know I take very fast showers. I think it has to do my not liking water falling on me, like I don’t like a fan blowing directly at me. Whatever. I shower, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I really don’t mind being away from people except that their lives keep going without me there. Like if I could just freeze everything back home and have it pick back up when I get that would be awesome, but no. Everyone will be a year older, things will have changed and I won’t have been part of it. It’s kind of sad to think about it. Guess you can’t have everything!
Some people love to shower. I, however, am not one of those people. That is not to say I don’t shower. I do shower. I just don’t enjoy it like most people do. If you know me you will know I take very fast showers. I think it has to do my not liking water falling on me, like I don’t like a fan blowing directly at me. Whatever. I shower, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Bunco, Ouaga 2000, and John Mayer... Excellent.
I told you it would happen and alas it has. I have become so busy that I have to try and make time to write in my blog. The last time I wrote was last Thursday. 5 days have passed since so I will start there:
Friday’s Highlight = Bunco at Joann Lockard’s house. Joann works for the embassy and hosts ladies nights at her house. There was potluck dinner followed by a fun game of Bunco, which basically involves NO skill whatsoever. You just roll 3 dice over and over trying to roll three of a kind or the number of the round. At the end of the night I won back 2000 of 2500 CFA it cost me to play. Not bad. The biggest thing was getting there. She lives about a little over a quarter mile from me. Just on the other side of the Charles de Gaulle (main road). So when I met up with her on Thursday she said just to walk over. And I’m thinking, ok kinda scary, but sure. Oh, I also went running with Drew again on Friday afternoon after going to get cash at the ATM and seeing where he is staying in Ouaga. It was super hot so we went the national forest, i.e. old military grounds and ran there in the quasi shade. After the run I got ready to go to Joann’s. The dinner started at 6:30 and by 6:15 it is pretty much dark. problem. So I took my flashlight and a deep breath and headed out of the Institute campus to Joann’s. I got there fine, but I was pretty tense the whole time. Oh, yeah and Friday was declared a holiday on Thursday night at like 6:00pm so when I went to work there was nobody there. I was unaware of this holiday. There is no communication here. I did have my second French lesson. It didn’t go as well as the first because I was tired and stressed about the lack of internet and not talking to my family and couldn’t pronounce the words as well. Anyway, I did get a ride home from Joann’s because walking alone at night at 6:20pm is a lot different than walking at 10:30pm. End of story.
Saturday I went into the office and worked on some stuff. I wanted to sleep in after the late night at Joann’s, but I woke up to what sounded like there someone was demolishing the building next door. A little discomforting to say the least. Also, later I found out they were in fact tearing up the concrete patio on the house next door. Lovely. So I couldn’t sleep in. Oh, and the internet hadn’t been working reliably since Wednesday and so I hadn’t been able to talk to my family which was frustrating. And Monday was the 20th anniversary of the president’s coming to power and also the 20th anniversary of the old president’s death (which is connected to the current’s coming to power). Anyway, there was murmur of a potential coup of sorts which was also a bit worrisome. Karen called though and said the Burgs had offered for me to come stay with them for Sunday and Monday night in case anything happened. Just a guess but the university is probably not the best place to be since it is the young ones who can get riled up. Ok, but it is Tuesday and things are still peaceful here. Good.
Ok, Saturday the Wolters picked me up at 6:00 and I went back to their house to try and call my family, but they were out at the CC meet, which I had expected. At 7:00 we went to The Edge which is a worship service with English songs and a video series. It was nice. I also got to meet Leanne and Tyler two other young single Americans in Ouaga. Hopefully we can all go out sometime this week. Oh, I failed to mention that at Bunco Night I met a nice woman named Mary Ellen who is a Fulbright Scholar to the University. We exchanged contacts and I hope to get together with her since we are so close here. After the service Karen, Larry, Pete, Alice and I all went out for ice cream at this cool place on the other side of Ouagadougou. I got the caramel sundae. To die for :)
Sunday I got up at 6:40 and got ready for church. I went with Pascal and 4 other guys here at the University to this very large evangelical church. It was pretty amazing to say the least. To get there we got in one of the sketchy green taxis. All of us in one. I’m not so keen on the taxis but I figured riding one with 5 other Africans who know me and are looking out for me was pretty safe. We got there at 7:30, the service started at 7:45 and we didn’t leave until 11:25. Yes my friend, close to 4 hours. Talk about long services… The nice thing was it is an international church and so there was an English interpretation. Unfortunately, there were also 3 other translations going on and the preacher was like yelling the whole time, so the translators were also yelling. It was so loud, my ears hurt by the end. The worship was cool though. People were dancing and had little streamer things they would wave around. Very evangelical. We won’t go there again next week, but it was nice to see once. After I got back to 2iE the Wolters picked me up and we went to the American Rec Center for lunch, as is the Sunday tradition. After lunch we went to Ouaga 2000, which is like the rich and new part of town. It was crazy. Very nice. Big houses, paved roads and what appears to be planned development. From there they dropped me off at the Burgs house. Diana and I, one of the burg girls, went to play ultimate Frisbee at the ISO school. They just got a new moto, and Nancy Berg the Mom thought it was a better idea for me to drive than Diana who is a sophomore in high school. A logical assessment, however, I have never ridden a moto. Let alone a brand new one with someone on the back. So what did I do? What ever other self-repsecting 22 year old in a foreign country would do... I test rode the moto like 20 ft down the road turned around picked up Diana and went for it :) It was really fun. I am leaning towards getting one of my own. The only glitch was turning into the school on the gravel drive and avoiding the gate which was only marginally accomplished.
That night we had pizza for dinner and thankfully the internet was working again so I got to talk to my family on Skype. They were having dinner so they set up the computer and microphones and it was like I was at dinner with them. The PSL met went great. I am excited to hear how the rest of the season turns out. That night we watched South Africa beat Argentina in the Rugby world cup. I was a little sad because I kind of wanted to Argentina to win, but SA played so well, well, they deserved it. I really don’t know much about rugby but it is pretty cool to watch nonetheless. It makes football look like its for pansies.
Monday, I slept in and spent the morning at the Bergs making sure everything was peaceful in town before heading to 2iE. I had my French lesson at 1:00 which went well and then worked for the afternoon. Nancy came and picked me back up at 6:15 to spend the night with them again. Boy it sure was nice to be around people again. I also realized that things in Ouaga are feeling more comfortable. Like I don’t feel totally shocked every time I see 200 motos lined up at a stoplight, or shack after shack selling colorful buckets, furniture, electronics and tissues… We had tuna melts for dinner which I helped to make and then spent the evening in the TV room everybody working on their own laptop. They have wireless and it was working last night which was so nice.
That was that and this morning Nancy showed me where the Nielsen’s live, stopped by the CMA office and then drove me back to 2iE. Later today Ahmed their worker brought over a bike for me to use. Just a pedal one, but nice and helpful because I wanted to go to bible study at Nielsen’s and previously had no way of getting there. Now I do :) Which is where I am off to right now…
Oh before I go, this isn't super important, but... I am taking this medication called Mefloquine to guard against Malaria. It is super effective, but has the side effect of giving you very "vivid" dreams. Well, after two weeks I was like no problem, nothing different. Until this third week... I have had the wierdest dreams. My friend Miss Caroline Chopko was in one where she and I were at some beach side resort and this guy was trapping turtles in a net and collecting seashells and Caroline went nuts on him telling him he couldn't just take the stuff... It was pretty amazing. And my most recent dream of last night consisted of my going to the VMA awards with John Mayer. Wierd. But SO Cool. Apparently, I was not impressed with the "smoky eyes" makeup trend and made that clear to him... The dreams really feel like reality which is kind of trippy. Anyway, I am going to switch to a different medication if the dreams turn scary, but right now I have to say I am kind of enjoying these surreal adventures :)
p.s. in honor of my dream I am now listening to John Mayer :)
Friday’s Highlight = Bunco at Joann Lockard’s house. Joann works for the embassy and hosts ladies nights at her house. There was potluck dinner followed by a fun game of Bunco, which basically involves NO skill whatsoever. You just roll 3 dice over and over trying to roll three of a kind or the number of the round. At the end of the night I won back 2000 of 2500 CFA it cost me to play. Not bad. The biggest thing was getting there. She lives about a little over a quarter mile from me. Just on the other side of the Charles de Gaulle (main road). So when I met up with her on Thursday she said just to walk over. And I’m thinking, ok kinda scary, but sure. Oh, I also went running with Drew again on Friday afternoon after going to get cash at the ATM and seeing where he is staying in Ouaga. It was super hot so we went the national forest, i.e. old military grounds and ran there in the quasi shade. After the run I got ready to go to Joann’s. The dinner started at 6:30 and by 6:15 it is pretty much dark. problem. So I took my flashlight and a deep breath and headed out of the Institute campus to Joann’s. I got there fine, but I was pretty tense the whole time. Oh, yeah and Friday was declared a holiday on Thursday night at like 6:00pm so when I went to work there was nobody there. I was unaware of this holiday. There is no communication here. I did have my second French lesson. It didn’t go as well as the first because I was tired and stressed about the lack of internet and not talking to my family and couldn’t pronounce the words as well. Anyway, I did get a ride home from Joann’s because walking alone at night at 6:20pm is a lot different than walking at 10:30pm. End of story.
Saturday I went into the office and worked on some stuff. I wanted to sleep in after the late night at Joann’s, but I woke up to what sounded like there someone was demolishing the building next door. A little discomforting to say the least. Also, later I found out they were in fact tearing up the concrete patio on the house next door. Lovely. So I couldn’t sleep in. Oh, and the internet hadn’t been working reliably since Wednesday and so I hadn’t been able to talk to my family which was frustrating. And Monday was the 20th anniversary of the president’s coming to power and also the 20th anniversary of the old president’s death (which is connected to the current’s coming to power). Anyway, there was murmur of a potential coup of sorts which was also a bit worrisome. Karen called though and said the Burgs had offered for me to come stay with them for Sunday and Monday night in case anything happened. Just a guess but the university is probably not the best place to be since it is the young ones who can get riled up. Ok, but it is Tuesday and things are still peaceful here. Good.
Ok, Saturday the Wolters picked me up at 6:00 and I went back to their house to try and call my family, but they were out at the CC meet, which I had expected. At 7:00 we went to The Edge which is a worship service with English songs and a video series. It was nice. I also got to meet Leanne and Tyler two other young single Americans in Ouaga. Hopefully we can all go out sometime this week. Oh, I failed to mention that at Bunco Night I met a nice woman named Mary Ellen who is a Fulbright Scholar to the University. We exchanged contacts and I hope to get together with her since we are so close here. After the service Karen, Larry, Pete, Alice and I all went out for ice cream at this cool place on the other side of Ouagadougou. I got the caramel sundae. To die for :)
Sunday I got up at 6:40 and got ready for church. I went with Pascal and 4 other guys here at the University to this very large evangelical church. It was pretty amazing to say the least. To get there we got in one of the sketchy green taxis. All of us in one. I’m not so keen on the taxis but I figured riding one with 5 other Africans who know me and are looking out for me was pretty safe. We got there at 7:30, the service started at 7:45 and we didn’t leave until 11:25. Yes my friend, close to 4 hours. Talk about long services… The nice thing was it is an international church and so there was an English interpretation. Unfortunately, there were also 3 other translations going on and the preacher was like yelling the whole time, so the translators were also yelling. It was so loud, my ears hurt by the end. The worship was cool though. People were dancing and had little streamer things they would wave around. Very evangelical. We won’t go there again next week, but it was nice to see once. After I got back to 2iE the Wolters picked me up and we went to the American Rec Center for lunch, as is the Sunday tradition. After lunch we went to Ouaga 2000, which is like the rich and new part of town. It was crazy. Very nice. Big houses, paved roads and what appears to be planned development. From there they dropped me off at the Burgs house. Diana and I, one of the burg girls, went to play ultimate Frisbee at the ISO school. They just got a new moto, and Nancy Berg the Mom thought it was a better idea for me to drive than Diana who is a sophomore in high school. A logical assessment, however, I have never ridden a moto. Let alone a brand new one with someone on the back. So what did I do? What ever other self-repsecting 22 year old in a foreign country would do... I test rode the moto like 20 ft down the road turned around picked up Diana and went for it :) It was really fun. I am leaning towards getting one of my own. The only glitch was turning into the school on the gravel drive and avoiding the gate which was only marginally accomplished.
That night we had pizza for dinner and thankfully the internet was working again so I got to talk to my family on Skype. They were having dinner so they set up the computer and microphones and it was like I was at dinner with them. The PSL met went great. I am excited to hear how the rest of the season turns out. That night we watched South Africa beat Argentina in the Rugby world cup. I was a little sad because I kind of wanted to Argentina to win, but SA played so well, well, they deserved it. I really don’t know much about rugby but it is pretty cool to watch nonetheless. It makes football look like its for pansies.
Monday, I slept in and spent the morning at the Bergs making sure everything was peaceful in town before heading to 2iE. I had my French lesson at 1:00 which went well and then worked for the afternoon. Nancy came and picked me back up at 6:15 to spend the night with them again. Boy it sure was nice to be around people again. I also realized that things in Ouaga are feeling more comfortable. Like I don’t feel totally shocked every time I see 200 motos lined up at a stoplight, or shack after shack selling colorful buckets, furniture, electronics and tissues… We had tuna melts for dinner which I helped to make and then spent the evening in the TV room everybody working on their own laptop. They have wireless and it was working last night which was so nice.
That was that and this morning Nancy showed me where the Nielsen’s live, stopped by the CMA office and then drove me back to 2iE. Later today Ahmed their worker brought over a bike for me to use. Just a pedal one, but nice and helpful because I wanted to go to bible study at Nielsen’s and previously had no way of getting there. Now I do :) Which is where I am off to right now…
Oh before I go, this isn't super important, but... I am taking this medication called Mefloquine to guard against Malaria. It is super effective, but has the side effect of giving you very "vivid" dreams. Well, after two weeks I was like no problem, nothing different. Until this third week... I have had the wierdest dreams. My friend Miss Caroline Chopko was in one where she and I were at some beach side resort and this guy was trapping turtles in a net and collecting seashells and Caroline went nuts on him telling him he couldn't just take the stuff... It was pretty amazing. And my most recent dream of last night consisted of my going to the VMA awards with John Mayer. Wierd. But SO Cool. Apparently, I was not impressed with the "smoky eyes" makeup trend and made that clear to him... The dreams really feel like reality which is kind of trippy. Anyway, I am going to switch to a different medication if the dreams turn scary, but right now I have to say I am kind of enjoying these surreal adventures :)
p.s. in honor of my dream I am now listening to John Mayer :)
Saturday, October 13, 2007
And the internet is woking again.
The biggest thing at the moment is that I get kind of lonely at night. Things are pretty good during work hours, and I have been able to connect with the Wolters several days in a row now which is really nice. However, at night when it is just me alone in my room I sometimes get kinda sad. I just want to call home, but it is so expensive. I am a people person. I need to talk to people and keep myself sane. I am working on arranging a better housing situation where I am living with other people. Anyway, you can feel sorry for me, but really don’t. I will be fine. I always seem to make it through and who knows maybe I will learn something new about myself from this whole experience. It has been approximately 10 days since the day I first arrived. It seems both like yesterday and a year ago. Its hard to describe. Last night after work I didn’t want to start on my GRE right away so I decided to do something fun. I often find myself wanting to watch a movie, but I repeat again… I didn’t bring any of those so I am left to my own devices. I did bring my sketch book and decided to draw. But what? I decided to draw a glass. Very challenging a task I warn you, but it turned out pretty good. I took a picture so you could see it. :)
Maybe I will develop my drawing skills while I am here. In exciting news I had my first French lesson today. My teacher’s name is Moumini and he is a very good teacher. It is awesome. He comes to the office since I don’t have any transport yet. The lessons last an hour and the best part is they cost 3000CFA or about $6. C’est trés bien.
I also had my clothes washed this week which was essential as I was pretty much running out. It cost me 2000CFA or $4 to have my clothes washed and ironed. Sounds good to me :) The funny thing about the French lesson today was I wasn’t expecting it. Moumini was supposed to call me last night, but never did so I figured eh whatever. But then I get this text message at like 1:00 saying he was at the school waiting for me. Okay. Whatever works I guess. Anyway, we setup a schedule which will be lundi, mecredi et viendri (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). I think I will learn very quickly. In one hour we went through what was like 3 lessons. My independent studying is really helping out. I am very happy with the help I getting with pronunciations. Today I finally got myself to write my personal statement for the NSF fellowship and tonight I am working on the research proposal. It is going well. In general, I feel a bit stressed, but am trying to be patient. I have numerous deadlines at the end of the month for grad school, fellowships, and the GRE. At the same time I am trying to learn about the research I am supposed to be helping with here. Oh, and adjusting to a new culture kind of on my own and learning a new language. Wanna trade places with me? One day?
In other news, on Wednesday I went with the Wolters, and a few other missionaries to look at motorbikes. I am thinking about buying one, but I am not sure yet. I need to wait a little while because right now I wouldn’t go anywhere by myself anyway so what’s the point. Also, the Wolters have an old 10-speed bike they don’t use and are going to let me borrow for a bit, so I think I’m set.
Today I went to the consulate to register that I am in the country. The Wolters took me and then we went to the grocery store because they had to get some stuff and it was really helpful because I needed to get some items as well. I tried to get money from an ATM but realized I had a Mastercard debit and not a Visa. I do have a Visa card, but I have to call and register that is going to be used overseas. I sent Susan Strand the other American coming to 2iE at the end of the month an email to ask her about housing references. She also got me in touch with Joann at the US Embassy. It was pretty cool, because I got an invite to a ladies night Bunco night at her house this Friday. I am so excited to have something to do tomorrow :) Also, Drew is around again so we might go running tomorrow or Saturday. It is nice to have little things to look forward to, it makes life on a day to day basis much more manageable. Okay, that is all for now. Miss you all! Today’s verse from Katha’s Calendar is: The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you. 2 Peter 3:9. I am also reading 1 Samuel right now, the story of David more specifically. Talk about amazing. God is really faithful and present in his life.
p.s. The internet at 2iE was not working today so I couldn’t talk to my family which was very frustrating. And I couldn’t get in touch with them to tell them why I was MIA from our scheduled talk.
Also for a little comparison, the first one is me my first night in Burkina, the second one was taken 10 days later :) Gotta love the timer setting... Like my mosquito net? Room pictures, next post I promise.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
I have officially been here 1 week.
Ah a new post. How lucky you are!
A few random thoughts: I bought a bowl at the supermarket. It is very uselful, but also very big so it makes me feel like my normal serving of cereal is like nothing. Sad. And at $7.00 a box I am not about to be filling it up all the way. I guess I will have to look at it half full instead of half empty.
I worked out and showered and left to go to dinner. When I was in viewing range of the cafeteria I noticed it was closed. Sad. I don’t know why. I went there at that time before so I will have to find out what the deal is. So I have to settle for cereal in my room. It’s Ok because I am really not all that hungry.
I am out of yogurt which means tomorrow I am going to brave one of the two snack counters at the school to try and buy something… wish me luck.
They don’t have napkins at the cafeteria. This is posing some problems as I have a problem keeping the red sauce they put on everything on my food and not my shirt. I might have to carry one with me.
The silverware at the cafeteria is also very thin. It is metal but very flimsy. Thankfully most of the tongs on the fork are straight, but sometimes when I am cutting the meat the fork starts bending. Oops.
I am going to visit the language institute tomorrow to arrange for a schedule of French lessons. Thank you Karen!
Susan is coming back at the end of October. I am looking forward to meeting her.
I met another PhD student here who Susan got me in touch with who speaks great English. She is really nice. Her name is Mariam.
I am staying up way too late. I don’t even have TV to watch. I lay in bed reading and then realize, shoot, its half past midnight and I am getting up at 7:00. Not good.
Today I went out on the back terrace area of my apartment and found out the rumbling sound that sounds like there is 4x4 parked idling outside my room is the air conditioning unit for the room next to mine. I wonder if mine is that loud?!
I need to do laundry. Apparently, you pay people to do your laundry here so I have to figure out how that works. Like yesterday, as I have one clean skirt left and I have worn my other clothes quite a bit already. Not good. I surprisingly have plenty of underwear.
I need to find out when I get my first pay check. I am kind of waiting until I get paid to go have clothes made. Apparently instead of buying clothes here, you buy fabric you like and take it tailor with a drawing of what you want and they make it. Funny thing is that you can do the same thing at FAO Schwartz in NY except it costs like $1,500. Interesting.
I have decided to tackle the grad school application process one school at a time. It makes things more manageable.
The Geckos that are all over make a really funny. It is like the clicking sound of someone typing. And then there is some other animal noise I hear that sounds like a chicken or some other bird is being spun in a salad spinner and yelping every turn.
I got new furniture today. Problem is there are no cushions, just wooden frames. I hope they come tomorrow. Not that I need them because there is no A/C in that room, and I tried to do my workout today in the room and it is way cramped now.
My book Cadillac Desert is really good. You might not like it, but I do. I would like to point out that WWII was probably won because of domestic hydroelectric projects. According to the book we didn’t out win, or out strategize the enemies we simply out produced them. At the beginning of the war we had a measly national military. During the war we produced 60,000 fighter planes, built with power generated by large dams of the west. AND the atomic bomb which ends the war. You guessed it. Its development was not possible without the incredible amount of power that could only be supplied by the Grand Coulee Dam. The US had the largest energy capacity in the world. I would now like to point out that China is now building the world’s largest dam on Yangtze River. Hum…
Summary of Activities
Saturday: I had a meeting with the research group at 2iE. They hold these all the time and this time they held it in English so I could understand. It took them about twice as long to get through everything. But it was nice to understand what was going on so I’m not going to complain. I worked on my computer the rest of the morning. And then. Then the best thing ever happened. I got a phone call from Karen, one of the CMA missionaries here in Ouaga. She had received my email and was calling to get in touch. We talked for about 20 minutes and then she said she would call back. Well, wouldn’t you know she called back and in 5 minutes she had driven over the 2iE picked me up and showed me all around my area. It was great. She showed me where there are doctors, tailors, restaurants, markets, nice streets, the ISO school. It was great! She brought me over to her house at the CMA mission and we talked for a bit. It was about dinner time by this time so we went to dinner. But the best part was we went to this awesome place called the Gandwana. Karen described it like the it’s a small world ride at Disney World, only with Africa. They have different rooms for different regions of the continent. It was so cool! The walls were clay and the roofs made of timber and goat skins. It was pretty posh and the floors were made of the really beautiful clean white sand. The tables were low and very European. If you come visit I promise I will take you there and we can sit there and pretend we are some celebrities on safari :) After that Karen drove me back to 2iE and, surprise I found a note on the floor of my room from Pascal saying he had gone out of town but was back and was reminding me about going to church the next day. Well, the only problem was I had agreed to go to church with Kokou, the researcher whose office is next to mine. He and his wife were already planning to come get me at 7:30 the next morning. I know church is early here, but more on that under Sunday. So I called the cell phone Pascal left and I couldn’t really get my point across. He was at the airport picking up his brother and said he would come by when he got back. I was ok, fine. It was about an hour later and I got a text message saying he was outside by the guest house with the guard. So I went out and explained to him I was going to a different church tomorrow and that I would go to his church the next Sunday. It was fine and I really appreciated the guard making sure it was ok for him to talk to me.
Sunday
Wow, 7:30 is really early to be up and ready for church. Kokou and his wife were there about 10 minutes late which I was kind of resenting since I probably could have slept those ten more minutes. Anyway, it was a small home church service. Everything was in French so I was clueless. Well not clueless. I was actually surprised by how much I gleaned from what the leader was saying. So there was about 45 minutes of worship and prayer. Then the leader got up to give the message. The first 5 minutes were tough and I was like, oh man, how am I going to manage listening this the whole time. And wouldn’t you know it ended in a brief 20 minutes and everything was fan-tastic. NOT. He talked for an hour and thirty-five minutes. Yes, 95 minutes. I was about dying. Trying not to yawn, keep my eyes open and all my legs wanted to do was stand up. OH well I made it through. Every once and a while Kokou would translate something for me and that was helpful. Once they were done with that they prayed really enthusiastically. They had quite a range of volume in both the message and the prayer. Oh, and the best part was when Kokou asked me stand up and present myself. I was thinking. ARE YOU KIDDING!!! But I got up and said thank you for having me here and I really like the service. I didn’t know if they wanted my life story or to know why I was there or why I was a Christian so I told Kokou I didn’t know what else to say and sat down… After the church leaders had a short meeting and I waited outside with the Kokou’s wife and some of the other ladies. There were the most adorable little boys running around. After the service I found out the house we were at was actually Kokou’s house and the little boys were his children. His youngest is 3 years old and was wearing this awesome orange and blue African outfit. very cool. I got back to 2iE at 11:20. Phew! Long morning and just in time. Karen was picking me up at 11:30 to go to the US Embassy Rec Center. I guess all the missionary families go there on Sundays. So I got to meet a bunch of other couple here serving with CMA. I met the field directors as well and made plans to help at the youth group they run on Thursday and attend the ladies bible study they have every other Tuesday. It will start not this week, but the next. Sounds like fun. I also have a lead on a place to stay. There is a new Belgium doctor here who is a Christian. His practice and house are right by the university and Alice one of the other missionaries thinks she is positive they are looking for someone to stay in a guest room/house thing. Reasonably priced and they have wireless. Can we say AMEN! Karen also knows a French teacher who she is going to get in touch with for me. And finally if that was enough… they are also putting in an order for 3 moto’s and offered to let me in on the reduced price they are trying to get by buying in bulk. Awesome. It was really really awesome. Really an answer to my prayers. I feel so much better about being here knowing I getting help with these major things. God is good. I am learning when you listen to him when he calls you to go somewhere he is faithful in taking care of you. Sunday after eating at the rec center I went back and worked on my computer I was so excited to talk to my family about my awesome news, but alas after being there for 4 hours no one was home! I was so sad L, I couldn’t understand where they all were. It was long enough after church that they should have been home. I found today Jordan and Ryan were at the Chicago Marathon all day and my parents ran some errands after church. Still, I went back to room super depressed. BUT after laying on my bed unhappy for all of 3 minutes I decided to listen to some music on my ipod. Great idea. The first couple of songs were pretty melancholy and I wrote in my journal a bit, but then oh yes the wicked song Popular came on. Did that ever do the trick. My spirits went right up and I was dancing around my room, singing Popular, you’re gonna be pop-u-who-lar… I decided I didn’t really want dinner and instead just had some crackers and apple juice. And wouldn’t you know I wasn’t hungry all night! I am thinking a big lunch and smaller evening meal might be a better way to fuel yourself in general. Anyway, later that night I mustered the initiative to start working on the Oxford application. I was great. I started thinking critically and really going to town with free writing ideas and whatnot.
Trying a new style for today’s activities…Let me know what you think.
Monday I:
Got up and went to work.
Briefly talked to my family on the phone.
Read a bunch of stuff.
Found that since I am connecting to the internet from Burkina Faso I have free access to all the PDF files and other books online and the Natinal Associated Press website.
Downloaded like 5 books. Great now I just have to read them.
Went to lunch.
Emailed a bunch of messages.
Got a text message from Pascal that his brother was in an accident and he had to leave campus to go to the hospital and be with him. Goodness. I hope his brother is ok!
Helped Kokou get S-Plus on his computer then realized he wasn’t going to be able to learn it easily and instead got the data file from him and worked on graphing Ecoli versus Energy data to find the nonlinear regression coefficients
Worked on more filtration stuff
Met Mariam a PhD student who speaks great English.
Got an email from Susan and emailed two women at the Embassy on her recommendation
Converted by resume to a CV by making it a bit longer
Wrote to a professor at Oxford, hence needing to make the CV
Talked to my Mom
Went back to my place
Worked out
Showered
Missed a call from Karen. Called her back and set up to meet the French teacher tomorrow at 2:15. Boy am I happy about that!
Left for dinner
Discovered the cafeteria was closed
Ate a bowl of Special K
Spent an hour writing this post.
I promise as I get busier these posts won’t be as painfully long. But hey right now whatever.
Things I miss from home in order:
My family and friends
Hannah Montana (Practically family)
Being able to talk to random people because we speak the same language
Movies [Silly Sara didn’t bring any movies with her to Burkina Faso. What was she thinking? Oh yes, that she would read and enrich her life in other ways than watching movies. Lofty goal, but really I just want to watch a movie. Lucky thing the rec center has a video rental room :) I am planning on renting on the next time I am there.]
IN OTHER NEWS: I think I want to do an independent project while I am here as well as the filtration stuff. In September there was terrible flooding here. Like USAID is giving the country $50,000 in relief aid. I would like to find out and write about the impacts of this flooding. I am going to talk to some people about formulating a project. The red cross and red crescent headquarters are nearby and I would be interested to find out from them about the problems caused by the flooding. One thing I know is that like 6,000 people were displaced and many schools were used to house them so now the start of school is being pushed back. These heavy rains have also affected other West African countries such as Ghana and Mali. Check out the reports at IRIN: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72869
I can’t believe I am getting paid to learn new things. This is really amazing. I can read the newspapers and other articles at work. Why, because that is what I do. It’s not for everyone and I might get sick of it in a month, but I am really liking it right now.
*I just found that Ryan put some Hannah Montana song my computer. Wow this has really just made my night.
A few random thoughts: I bought a bowl at the supermarket. It is very uselful, but also very big so it makes me feel like my normal serving of cereal is like nothing. Sad. And at $7.00 a box I am not about to be filling it up all the way. I guess I will have to look at it half full instead of half empty.
I worked out and showered and left to go to dinner. When I was in viewing range of the cafeteria I noticed it was closed. Sad. I don’t know why. I went there at that time before so I will have to find out what the deal is. So I have to settle for cereal in my room. It’s Ok because I am really not all that hungry.
I am out of yogurt which means tomorrow I am going to brave one of the two snack counters at the school to try and buy something… wish me luck.
They don’t have napkins at the cafeteria. This is posing some problems as I have a problem keeping the red sauce they put on everything on my food and not my shirt. I might have to carry one with me.
The silverware at the cafeteria is also very thin. It is metal but very flimsy. Thankfully most of the tongs on the fork are straight, but sometimes when I am cutting the meat the fork starts bending. Oops.
I am going to visit the language institute tomorrow to arrange for a schedule of French lessons. Thank you Karen!
Susan is coming back at the end of October. I am looking forward to meeting her.
I met another PhD student here who Susan got me in touch with who speaks great English. She is really nice. Her name is Mariam.
I am staying up way too late. I don’t even have TV to watch. I lay in bed reading and then realize, shoot, its half past midnight and I am getting up at 7:00. Not good.
Today I went out on the back terrace area of my apartment and found out the rumbling sound that sounds like there is 4x4 parked idling outside my room is the air conditioning unit for the room next to mine. I wonder if mine is that loud?!
I need to do laundry. Apparently, you pay people to do your laundry here so I have to figure out how that works. Like yesterday, as I have one clean skirt left and I have worn my other clothes quite a bit already. Not good. I surprisingly have plenty of underwear.
I need to find out when I get my first pay check. I am kind of waiting until I get paid to go have clothes made. Apparently instead of buying clothes here, you buy fabric you like and take it tailor with a drawing of what you want and they make it. Funny thing is that you can do the same thing at FAO Schwartz in NY except it costs like $1,500. Interesting.
I have decided to tackle the grad school application process one school at a time. It makes things more manageable.
The Geckos that are all over make a really funny. It is like the clicking sound of someone typing. And then there is some other animal noise I hear that sounds like a chicken or some other bird is being spun in a salad spinner and yelping every turn.
I got new furniture today. Problem is there are no cushions, just wooden frames. I hope they come tomorrow. Not that I need them because there is no A/C in that room, and I tried to do my workout today in the room and it is way cramped now.
My book Cadillac Desert is really good. You might not like it, but I do. I would like to point out that WWII was probably won because of domestic hydroelectric projects. According to the book we didn’t out win, or out strategize the enemies we simply out produced them. At the beginning of the war we had a measly national military. During the war we produced 60,000 fighter planes, built with power generated by large dams of the west. AND the atomic bomb which ends the war. You guessed it. Its development was not possible without the incredible amount of power that could only be supplied by the Grand Coulee Dam. The US had the largest energy capacity in the world. I would now like to point out that China is now building the world’s largest dam on Yangtze River. Hum…
Summary of Activities
Saturday: I had a meeting with the research group at 2iE. They hold these all the time and this time they held it in English so I could understand. It took them about twice as long to get through everything. But it was nice to understand what was going on so I’m not going to complain. I worked on my computer the rest of the morning. And then. Then the best thing ever happened. I got a phone call from Karen, one of the CMA missionaries here in Ouaga. She had received my email and was calling to get in touch. We talked for about 20 minutes and then she said she would call back. Well, wouldn’t you know she called back and in 5 minutes she had driven over the 2iE picked me up and showed me all around my area. It was great. She showed me where there are doctors, tailors, restaurants, markets, nice streets, the ISO school. It was great! She brought me over to her house at the CMA mission and we talked for a bit. It was about dinner time by this time so we went to dinner. But the best part was we went to this awesome place called the Gandwana. Karen described it like the it’s a small world ride at Disney World, only with Africa. They have different rooms for different regions of the continent. It was so cool! The walls were clay and the roofs made of timber and goat skins. It was pretty posh and the floors were made of the really beautiful clean white sand. The tables were low and very European. If you come visit I promise I will take you there and we can sit there and pretend we are some celebrities on safari :) After that Karen drove me back to 2iE and, surprise I found a note on the floor of my room from Pascal saying he had gone out of town but was back and was reminding me about going to church the next day. Well, the only problem was I had agreed to go to church with Kokou, the researcher whose office is next to mine. He and his wife were already planning to come get me at 7:30 the next morning. I know church is early here, but more on that under Sunday. So I called the cell phone Pascal left and I couldn’t really get my point across. He was at the airport picking up his brother and said he would come by when he got back. I was ok, fine. It was about an hour later and I got a text message saying he was outside by the guest house with the guard. So I went out and explained to him I was going to a different church tomorrow and that I would go to his church the next Sunday. It was fine and I really appreciated the guard making sure it was ok for him to talk to me.
Sunday
Wow, 7:30 is really early to be up and ready for church. Kokou and his wife were there about 10 minutes late which I was kind of resenting since I probably could have slept those ten more minutes. Anyway, it was a small home church service. Everything was in French so I was clueless. Well not clueless. I was actually surprised by how much I gleaned from what the leader was saying. So there was about 45 minutes of worship and prayer. Then the leader got up to give the message. The first 5 minutes were tough and I was like, oh man, how am I going to manage listening this the whole time. And wouldn’t you know it ended in a brief 20 minutes and everything was fan-tastic. NOT. He talked for an hour and thirty-five minutes. Yes, 95 minutes. I was about dying. Trying not to yawn, keep my eyes open and all my legs wanted to do was stand up. OH well I made it through. Every once and a while Kokou would translate something for me and that was helpful. Once they were done with that they prayed really enthusiastically. They had quite a range of volume in both the message and the prayer. Oh, and the best part was when Kokou asked me stand up and present myself. I was thinking. ARE YOU KIDDING!!! But I got up and said thank you for having me here and I really like the service. I didn’t know if they wanted my life story or to know why I was there or why I was a Christian so I told Kokou I didn’t know what else to say and sat down… After the church leaders had a short meeting and I waited outside with the Kokou’s wife and some of the other ladies. There were the most adorable little boys running around. After the service I found out the house we were at was actually Kokou’s house and the little boys were his children. His youngest is 3 years old and was wearing this awesome orange and blue African outfit. very cool. I got back to 2iE at 11:20. Phew! Long morning and just in time. Karen was picking me up at 11:30 to go to the US Embassy Rec Center. I guess all the missionary families go there on Sundays. So I got to meet a bunch of other couple here serving with CMA. I met the field directors as well and made plans to help at the youth group they run on Thursday and attend the ladies bible study they have every other Tuesday. It will start not this week, but the next. Sounds like fun. I also have a lead on a place to stay. There is a new Belgium doctor here who is a Christian. His practice and house are right by the university and Alice one of the other missionaries thinks she is positive they are looking for someone to stay in a guest room/house thing. Reasonably priced and they have wireless. Can we say AMEN! Karen also knows a French teacher who she is going to get in touch with for me. And finally if that was enough… they are also putting in an order for 3 moto’s and offered to let me in on the reduced price they are trying to get by buying in bulk. Awesome. It was really really awesome. Really an answer to my prayers. I feel so much better about being here knowing I getting help with these major things. God is good. I am learning when you listen to him when he calls you to go somewhere he is faithful in taking care of you. Sunday after eating at the rec center I went back and worked on my computer I was so excited to talk to my family about my awesome news, but alas after being there for 4 hours no one was home! I was so sad L, I couldn’t understand where they all were. It was long enough after church that they should have been home. I found today Jordan and Ryan were at the Chicago Marathon all day and my parents ran some errands after church. Still, I went back to room super depressed. BUT after laying on my bed unhappy for all of 3 minutes I decided to listen to some music on my ipod. Great idea. The first couple of songs were pretty melancholy and I wrote in my journal a bit, but then oh yes the wicked song Popular came on. Did that ever do the trick. My spirits went right up and I was dancing around my room, singing Popular, you’re gonna be pop-u-who-lar… I decided I didn’t really want dinner and instead just had some crackers and apple juice. And wouldn’t you know I wasn’t hungry all night! I am thinking a big lunch and smaller evening meal might be a better way to fuel yourself in general. Anyway, later that night I mustered the initiative to start working on the Oxford application. I was great. I started thinking critically and really going to town with free writing ideas and whatnot.
Trying a new style for today’s activities…Let me know what you think.
Monday I:
Got up and went to work.
Briefly talked to my family on the phone.
Read a bunch of stuff.
Found that since I am connecting to the internet from Burkina Faso I have free access to all the PDF files and other books online and the Natinal Associated Press website.
Downloaded like 5 books. Great now I just have to read them.
Went to lunch.
Emailed a bunch of messages.
Got a text message from Pascal that his brother was in an accident and he had to leave campus to go to the hospital and be with him. Goodness. I hope his brother is ok!
Helped Kokou get S-Plus on his computer then realized he wasn’t going to be able to learn it easily and instead got the data file from him and worked on graphing Ecoli versus Energy data to find the nonlinear regression coefficients
Worked on more filtration stuff
Met Mariam a PhD student who speaks great English.
Got an email from Susan and emailed two women at the Embassy on her recommendation
Converted by resume to a CV by making it a bit longer
Wrote to a professor at Oxford, hence needing to make the CV
Talked to my Mom
Went back to my place
Worked out
Showered
Missed a call from Karen. Called her back and set up to meet the French teacher tomorrow at 2:15. Boy am I happy about that!
Left for dinner
Discovered the cafeteria was closed
Ate a bowl of Special K
Spent an hour writing this post.
I promise as I get busier these posts won’t be as painfully long. But hey right now whatever.
Things I miss from home in order:
My family and friends
Hannah Montana (Practically family)
Being able to talk to random people because we speak the same language
Movies [Silly Sara didn’t bring any movies with her to Burkina Faso. What was she thinking? Oh yes, that she would read and enrich her life in other ways than watching movies. Lofty goal, but really I just want to watch a movie. Lucky thing the rec center has a video rental room :) I am planning on renting on the next time I am there.]
IN OTHER NEWS: I think I want to do an independent project while I am here as well as the filtration stuff. In September there was terrible flooding here. Like USAID is giving the country $50,000 in relief aid. I would like to find out and write about the impacts of this flooding. I am going to talk to some people about formulating a project. The red cross and red crescent headquarters are nearby and I would be interested to find out from them about the problems caused by the flooding. One thing I know is that like 6,000 people were displaced and many schools were used to house them so now the start of school is being pushed back. These heavy rains have also affected other West African countries such as Ghana and Mali. Check out the reports at IRIN: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72869
I can’t believe I am getting paid to learn new things. This is really amazing. I can read the newspapers and other articles at work. Why, because that is what I do. It’s not for everyone and I might get sick of it in a month, but I am really liking it right now.
*I just found that Ryan put some Hannah Montana song my computer. Wow this has really just made my night.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
40 degrees C, A new friend, and Loss of appetite
Vendredi 5 Octobre 2007 (Friday
Closing observations:
1. I really feel like I am getting a much clearer view of what living without clean water in a developing country really looks like.
2. The reservoir was pretty amazing. Also, the water along the edges was very turbid from the recent rain which carries sediment to the waters.
3. The door to the communal kitchen is across from mine, and I frequently think that my door is opening when it is really the door across the way. Freaky. But the nice thing is my door gets stuck as you open it so you have to push really hard to open and close it which is annoying, but also a nice safeguard.
4. I emailed the people at the Christian Missionary Alliance in
5. There are housekeepers that wash my floors everyday and today they gave me fresh sheets. Nice.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Fast Forward Button Please
Water Treatment Research
So I really like what I get to do. The first couple of weeks are going to be spent with me reading as much as I can on this subject, planning a timeline for the different tests and project as a whole and getting the pilot plant back online. By the end, Prof. Konate and Maiga hope to write a paper based on the results. Good. Phew, that was a mouthful.
I really look forward to the day when the feelings of anticipation in this post are long gone. Also, for dinner tonight it was spaghetti. The same red sauce, but didn’t care it was excellent. And the flavoring on the rice today at lunch was also different. Much easier to stomach :)
To end this post I will leave you with two thoughts.
1. I seem to have a problem with the air conditioning. With it off I am hot, with it on I am cold. If I turn the air conditioning temperature up a little the air smells funny. So I go through this cycle of turning it on getting cold and then turning it off and getting hot until I have to turn it on again, and the cycle continues…
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