This first week of March was crazy. It started out really stressful and then the stress miraculously turned into immeasurable joy and excitement with the reception of great news and success on many fronts.
The trip to Nazinga was definitely a blessing, but I had planned on spending the weekend catching up with work and planning for the presentation I was to give at the first 2iE Scientific Forum to be held this Thursday. Needless to say none of that planning got done. So I started out the week working like mad to gather resources and read up on the subject of point-of-use water treatments so I could write my talk. I was able to get my computer hooked up to a printer, and Monday and Tuesday I was printing articles, getting sources together and taking time to actually read them! I stuck with my 30 minutes of French each morning this whole week which extends my streak to 2 weeks. Pretty good.... One more week and I think it becomes a habit.
Monday I worked with the librarian again trying to get access to JSTOR. Turns out we had another set of forms to fill out! So we couldn’t finish the process on Monday. I did, however, go and talk to the secretary and computer people to get the relevant information we needed to complete the forms. Also, I was able to email the JSTOR people and learned on Tuesday that we don’t have to fill out the complicated licensing form. Phew. Monday I took a flow rate measurement, but realized that the second filter had grown some major algae. When I moved the table to get Filter 1 out of the sun, it put Filter 2 in the sun in the early morning hours. This would have to be remedied.
Around lunch time as I was trying to pull something together to eat. I think I made chicken salad… yes I did :) my housemates came in and said they had gone to see their new place this past weekend. Oh I was so so excited to hear that. I just want my house back to myself. This has really been a trying time for me. I was so excited about getting my new cooking things, but my housemates are always around making it hard for me to cook. So when they leave I will be much happier. I think, subconsciously, I am waiting to go grocery shopping until after they leave… They said sometime in the next week they would be leaving. I am counting down the days. Monday night I worked out at home doing my workout video. My housemates were around though and couldn’t figure out how to use the back door to get outside and had to disrupt me by walking through the room, twice…which was annoying. But I didn’t let it stop me.
Tuesday morning I cleaned the filters before lunch which took more time than anticipated… as usual. I should just anticipate it taking longer! I also moved the filters into the back room which is better shaded, hoping to avoid further algae growth. Around lunch time I went to the rec center to run on the treadmill and what do you know… One of my housemates was there running on it! Talk about a frustration. I guess it just serves me right for being nice. Next time if I don’t want to share something, like my gym equipment, I should just learn to be heartless and not try make friends with people because now they are inconveniencing me. Some lessons you have to learn the hard way. I was able to lift a little and swam in the pool, something my housemate also did after her workout which again annoyed me. After my swim I stuck around the pool and relaxed a little, or at least as much as I could after my gym fiasco. I ordered Shwarmas for lunch, a Lebanese wrap type dish, very tasty.
In the afternoon the power went out. At first it was fine; actually good because it encouraged me to read the articles and not be distracted by my computer. However, that night I had planned to pretty much write my talk and without my computer that would be tough. I had my French lesson as planned since that doesn’t depend on the power being on, and I am happy to report it went well again. This whole studying thing is paying off! Later that night, while I was waiting for the power to come back on I planned for bible study the next day. Always a good thing to do. We are going to finish up James this week. Yeah!
The power came back on around 7:30 so I quickly finished the bible study lesson then went to my office ready to get to work. However, just as I am ready to go the power goes off again…. sigh* By this time I was getting pretty nervous I wasn’t going to be ready for Thursday, and this whole power thing was not helping the situation. Anyway, I went back home made some popcorn thinking that would make me feel better. It did at first, until I found bugs in the popcorn requiring me to throw it out… However, in the depths of my popcorn dismay, the power came back on! Excellent. So I camped out at the table spread out all my articles and got to work…starting about 9:30. I knew it would be a late night. At about 11:30 my housemates came home with two guys. Thankfully, they went out the patio out back and left me alone. It was still annoying though because I could hear them talking. I did my best to ignore them, which I was miraculously able to do. The guys left about 12:30 and the girls went to bed. I stayed up another hour or so finishing up my plans. After spending 4 hours on my talk I was confident in what I would do. It still needed some work, but I had all Wednesday and Thursday in the morning to work on it.
Wednesday I got up and headed to work. I found it very hard to get myself on task, but finally did get to work. I think the fact I was up so late the night before with it that made me not want to work… I made up a one page executive summary to hand out with my talk so the professors would have something to walk away with and be able to reference if they didn’t understand everything I had said. At the same time as I was trying to prepare all these materials, I was also pretty distraught about my filter stuff. The flow rate in the large filters was slowing down again, and I hadn’t refilled the ceramic ones because I wanted to test them for ways to improve flow rate and was too busy with my talk to think straight. I determined in a moment of clarity to put my monitoring things on hold until after my talk on Thursday. This was a good plan. Right around ten o’clock Pascal, the woman I went to Nazinga with, stopped by my office to see if I wanted to grab a soda with her as a nice little break. What a pleasant idea! We chatted a little bit and it was nice to have an excuse to get out of the office. Additionally, I should mention that Susan’s power was acting really odd on Tuesday and it fried the charger for her computer. Since we both have Toshibas I have been charging hers for her. She goes home on March 22nd and will bring a new back with her then, but until then I think I will be helping out with keeping her computer going. I don’t mind. I know I would want the same thing if I was in her boat.
Wednesday I went over to Rosie and Anna’s for lunch before bible study. They are they new short term missionary girls from England who have offered to help with bible study since Maggie is leaving on March 12th. Sad. I will miss her a lot. Lunch was lovely and bible study discussion was good considering the circumstances. The power went out again just as we were starting and with no fan the room got pretty hot. After bible study, I wasn’t looking forward to going back to 2iE because I wouldn’t be able to continue my work without power. However, when I did finally bring myself back I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was power! Fantastic! So I made up the PowerPoint presentation to go along with talk, and printed out the first draft of the handout. I worked until 6:30-ish and then went home firstly because the tailor was at Susan’s house and I needed to try on the dress so he could make alterations have it ready for Saturday, and secondly to make dinner. I tried to make rice which turned out terribly. Sticky and gooey on the outside, and yet crunchy on the inside, blah. But with nothing else to eat I made it work… I would later learn the trick to cooking rice was putting a lid on the pot. Good to know.
I went back into the office after my sub-par dinner and worked until 9:30ish. When I left I was very happy with my plans for Thursday’s forum. I stayed up later than I had planned that night working on getting the Nazinga pictures ready to give to Pascal and Christian and to post online. This actually takes a while, b/c like I have mentioned before, I want to pass out good photos and you would be surprised how hard it is to narrow down 250 photos to 115-ish.
I slept in a little on Thursday not going in to work until 7:45. I made some finishing touches to the handout, printed it up and went to the copy room to have copies made. I also went to see the librarian and we filled out, what I hope is the last set of forms for Jstor access. I had lunch with my student friend Pascal, not the Nazinga lady… It was nice and I got to practice my French more. Pascal will be going to Bobo to complete his thesis work, which they call here a “Memoir”. Whatever. After lunch I took a short cat nap and then did my abs of steel toning workout just to get me energized for my talk. I went back to my office around 2:45 ran through my presentation one more time and then headed off to the room to set up.
The Forum was to start at 3:30 and at 3:40 Susan and I were still trying to get the computer projector to work. Talk about frustrating. But it was actually okay because just about everyone was late and if I had started right at 3:30 a lot of people would have missed my talk. Professor Maiga and many of the GVEA faculty showed up which was great. I really wanted these people to see my presentation. It went great. In fact, I would wager to say I nailed it :) I had their attention the whole time. And at the end many people had questions and comments which I take as a great sign of people paying attention and being interested in the topic. I answered questions as best as I could. It was the first forum like that I had ever participated in and what great practice it was! Following my presentation, the power went out! Talk about bad luck for the next presenter. He did a good job adapting and using the chalkboard. The power did come back on for his last two slides. The final presenter also did a nice job, but it was a presentation similar to one he gave at the conference in November that Marcia had helped put together. In general, the first Scientific Forum was a great success. There is another one in the works for April. I worked so hard on my presentation it was nice to see the hard work pay off. I knew this was my one shot to share this important information with my colleagues. It was also my one chance to show my boss what I have been up to and what I am capable of. I think he was impressed :)
After the Forum I starting soaking Filter 2 in a basin to backwash it. I brought in the filter as a visual aid in my presentation and took advantage of having it with me to start the experimentation with ways of improving flow rate. I figured if water flowed through one way it should be able to flow the other way thus dislodging the built up particles. I would know the next morning when I went to check back. Once the filter was set up I went to work editing the scholarship application I submitted on Monday. It was due Thursday night by midnight and I thought I was all set since I sent it in on Monday and hadn’t heard anything negative. Except on Thursday afternoon, right before I gave my talk actually, I learned I would have to reformulate the answers because they were a line too long and they were very strict about length limits. The time crunch for completing it didn’t help, but I was luckily able to put it out of my mind until after I gave my presentation. So anyway, I sat down and wordsmith-ed my answers. Once I was satisfied with the results I resubmitted it. This thankfully didn’t take too long and I still had time to quickly look up some information on prayer for the lesson I was teaching with Ben at WIRED that night. Leanna picked me up at 6:30 and the only downside of the night was my lack of time to get something to eat, so resorted to dried coconut. I bought a bunch of it with Susan two Saturdays ago and have since discovered it makes a great snack and/or dessert. It is good! Just not so good for you I would later learn…
The lesson at WIRED went really well. The kids were attentive and engaged. Two words I didn’t think I would use to describe junior highers… We were also at a different house that night. Since the Harrison’s didn’t have power, we went to the Higby’s house because they have a generator. Nice. After WIRED I came home and watched Anchor Man. It was awesome. I just needed a nice release from the stress this presentation had put me under. Wow, having gotten done with that I felt like I could take on anything!
Friday morning was really quite a good morning. I arrived at work and found an email in my inbox informing me I was accepted to Stanford. Can you believe it?! Oh, I was so HAPPY! It really helped set the mood for the rest of my day indeed. In the morning I followed up on the suggestions I had made at the Scientific Forum; mainly, for 2iE to join the World Health Organization’s International Network on Household Water Treatments and Safe Storage. In the morning I also found Pascal, the Nazinga lady, and got her the pictures from our trip. She was so happy to get them. We also exchanged contact information. It is great all the neat people I am meeting here… I left work to go to my tennis lesson at 9:30. The lesson went well. I hadn’t played tennis in almost two weeks, owning mainly to the fact that the last lesson was so unpleasant being sick and all. After the lesson I went to the market and picked up some fabric I needed to cover the large filter to prevent leaves from getting in as well as some lemons I planned to juice and use on Filter 1. The idea was to have the citric acid open up the pores by eating away at the calcium carbonate deposits which can form. Anyway, I also picked up two pastries and a piece of piece of pizza from a very nice looking bakery to have for lunch. On the ride back, I couldn’t resist buying some mangos and other fruit from a lady on the side of the road. All is well that ends well. I got back to work to find Omar working on unclogging the big filters. Yes! Finally. I worked on juicing my lemons and supervised what he was doing with the cleaning process. Later Pierre helped me install the fabric I had purchased. Everything was set with the big filters! Great. I finished with the lemon juice and applied it to Filter 1. I am not sure how this will turn out. I am pretty skeptical at the moment. Anyway, when I checked Filter 2, the backwashed one I was pleasantly surprised to find my idea had worked and by comparing the turbidity of water inside and outside of the filter I was able to confirm some of the clogging particles were dislodged. Just to make sure everything was removed I setup the backwashing again. This time the turbidity test showed no difference, so I could assume all the removable clogging material had been removed.
After having completed the lemon juice application I filled up both filters and took flow rate measures that afternoon. I did get to connect with my parents before they went to work to share the great Stanford news! I am still elated :) I took a nice repos on Friday, taking time to read and enjoy my pizza, mango and pain au raisin for lunch. The pain au raisin was actually not that great. Maybe it would have been better warm. I will probably never know… Anyway, in the afternoon I went back to the office and found myself reading a blog called “Things White People Like” my brother Adam had forwarded the link to me. Hil-lar-ious. Susan stopped by that afternoon and I was able to share my good news with her :) She also gave me a copy of the video recording she took during the forum. What a great resource to have to learn from and to use to show people my presenting style, ect… As I was killing time browsing Facebook, the mail guy came by and handed me a letter. It was not an international letter, so I opened it with a bit of skepticism over what it could be. Boy was I delighted to read I had been invited to a dinner of the Scientific Council to be held at the Director’s residence on Monday evening. I don’t know how my name got on the list, but I am not complaining. Sounds like a great networking opportunity. I really wish I had that awesome book, How to Work a Room with me here. I need to buy a copy of that when I get back to the states. It really is like gold.
I usually have French on Friday which is why I was sticking around my office, but I got a message from my teacher 15 minutes before my lesson time telling me he wasn’t coming. Nice. I can’t be too mad though, he said he was sick and frankly I would rather him stay home than get me sick too! So instead I went home read a little, and attempted to make rice again. This time, however, I read up online on the proper way to make rice and this time I came out with rice that was not sticky, yet cooked all the way through. Success! Now the trick will be if I can repeat this amazing feet again… I also sautéed up some onions and tomatoes and made a nice little dinner. I say little because I was planning to go out with some other ladies to a wine restaurant. I knew I wouldn’t get a normal meal there and I didn’t want to have wine on am empty stomach so that is why I ate before going to the restaurant. While Susan and I were waiting for our ride, the tailor came by and dropped off our dresses for the next day. Since we were waiting outside, we couldn’t try them on and the tailor charged us way more than usual which was not okay.
Our ride finally came and we made it to the restaurant in fine time. The wine we ended up choosing was in my opinion only so-so. It was white though so I couldn’t complain too much. There were 6 of us in all and the occasion was a pre-celebration of International Women’s Day which was on Saturday. The conversation was fun and Susan’s friend Sandra came. Sandra is from Italy and has a great British accent when she speaks English. She is a really interesting lady and I was glad to be able to talk to her little bit that night. She gave Susan and I ride to and from the restaurant. After the wine evening Susan I watched Miss Potter. Susan lasted about 30 minutes into the movie before falling asleep, but I watched the whole thing. Oh, how I do like that movie!
It was late when I went to bed and I knew I would be getting up early the next day, but oh well. I had just completed a killer week at work AND I got into Stanford! I was entitled to a little celebration. Saturday I got up about 8:30 and headed over to the ampitheater about 9:00 for the Women’s Day Celebration they were having. Since there was no one there yet, I went to my office to check my email. Just when I thought things were about as good they get, I received an email notifying me that I had been admitted to MIT. Yes, the MIT; The leading engineering school in the nation. Can you imagine? If I get a PhD from MIT that about writes my ticket to where ever I want to go later in life. Yahoo! I found Susan and told her the good news. She was so happy she almost started crying for me… Yeah, the whole morning I felt like I had rays of sunshine happiness falling down around me. After three hours of speeches, a role playing exercise and gifts presentations we all went outside and the women took a group picture in our coordinating outfits. It was so cute.
After the picture taking there was lunch where I sat with the lady who ran the role playing exercise. She was quite fascinating. She was from the Netherlands and had lived in Burkina Faso for 28 years! That, my friends, is a long time to live in Burkina Faso. She had interesting things to say about how they celebrated Women’s Day when the past president was still around. I guess the men had to go to the market that day… a revolutionary idea for this place.
Lunch finished up and I started more flow rate measurements, read some more of my book I am trying desperately to finish, and got ready for the soccer game. At 4:00pm the women students in Ouaga were facing off against the women students from Kamboise, the other campus. I would play for the Ouaga team. What fun! Of course the game didn’t start until like 4:30, but hey I was happy it started at all. There were times when I wasn’t sure if it was going to organized enough to play at all. Anyway, I had a great time. My soccer skills from years ago came back, even on the all dust no grass terrain. At the end of the first half I missed a penalty kick which was really quite disappointing. I had, however, played well. I have to say though after the first couple of minutes my throat burned so badly. I wasn’t sure I could keep playing. The dust, the heat, ect. But I made it through. In the second half my team scored and we went on to win the game! I hurt my ankle a little bit and will definitely have a bruise on my leg, but it was worth it. I gained a lot of respect on the field and impressed quite a few people who I am sure were skeptical of the white girls soccer skills… Afterwards, I got to relish in the victory celebrations. It was nice to connect with the other women students on campus. I had seen them around a lot, but hadn’t really had much interaction with them. I think playing this game with them was a huge step in the right direction in trying to build relationships with the other female students here.
The day’s festivities would last well into the night, but I was about done celebrating La Journee de la Femme. So I talked with my parents online for a like 20 minutes, just enough time to share with them the awesome news of getting accepted to MIT. My Mom is sick right now though so she didn’t have quite the reaction I was hoping for. Talking to her felt a lot like talking to my Dad when he is half asleep after dinner. Leanna came to get me about 6:30 for the Edge church service and I was able to share both the Stanford and MIT news with her. It was nice because she came to get me first, so I was able to tell her one-on-one my good news! While I am excited, I don’t want the whole world to know… at least not yet.
The Edge service was lovely. It was nice to be able to worship in English with songs I am used to. I had Leanna bring me home afterwards since I really needed to just go to sleep. I was exhausted. One from the week in general, two from the late night before, and three from the grueling soccer match I played! I went sleep about 10:30pm and got up at 10:00am. Nice.
Sunday I worked furiously finishing up my post from two weeks ago I put on the back burner in light of my presentation preparations. I also got my pictures ready to post on my blog and wrote up the February update I send out to the select people in my life luckily enough to be on that list ;) This whole writing operation takes much longer than you would imagine at least three hours a week. The thing is though I have actually come to enjoy it! I listened to a sermon at noon time and around 4:00 I went in to the office to post and mail what I had been working on. I also made some mashed potatoes from the potatoes I had cooked up on Friday but hadn’t had a chance to mash. They were quite yummy. I played my guitar until 6:40 when I headed over to Gondwana’s for Maggie’s send off dinner. It was nice to get the group together, but the table was so long I didn’t even get a real chance to talk to Maggie. The great thing was Leanna sat by me and we were able to talk. We sat across from Ben and Tyler B. The conversations that followed between the four of us were quite entertaining. Not wanting to order a full meal Leanna and I ordered some Tapas to share. The Tapas were not so great and that idea will not be repeated. The company was good though and I got home but 9:45. Before spending a chunk of time finishing this post I read some essays I wrote back in high school and the beginning of college. It is so great to be able to look back and see where I was at different points in my life and how I have changed. It is now past midnight and I am calling it a night. I did, however, want to finish this post tonight so I would be all caught up with communicating my life to those parties interested enough to read about it.
All my Love,
Sara
Monday, March 10, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Spinach Soup, Tiebele, and Nazinga :)
So the big news is that I figured out that my internet connection at work allows me to update my blog again. This is huge because now I don’t have to go to the café all the time. While much more convenient, I will miss the lunch hours in the cute café. Wait… who says they have to stop, maybe now instead of bringing my computer I can bring a book and order some tea. Sounds delightful doesn’t it?
Wednesday was a crazy day! But good crazy. I was working on my experiments in the morning, and tried to finish last weeks blog post. It was to no avail and I ended up spending about another hour at the café trying to get in everything I had to say… I left work at 11:30 and went to the gym. I was going to run and then swim a little. Go to the café for lunch then head to bible study. Everything was going great. I got to the gym and there was no one there. I started running on the treadmill and I was just cruising. Really enjoying the run, working on getting faster, ect. Then with about a mile left the treadmill just shuts off! Like someone pulled the plug… At first I thought the power went out which is not at all unusual, but the machine next to me still had power. I checked the converter and it looks suspect, but I couldn’t seem to see what’s wrong and the machine would not turn back on. So alas I had to abandon my running and instead lifted a few weights before hopping in the pool to finish things off.
From the gym I headed to the café where I again order the excellent cheese and ham panini. However, this time to my disappointment the cheese was not quite melted enough for my liking. Unfortunately, I don’t know the French for “Can you please cook my cheese more?” so I ate it as it was. I was supposed to leave at 2:30 to get to bible study on time, but 2:30 turned into 2:45 and then I realized I left my lesson papers at home and would have to make a slight detour! I rode really fast and was only 5 minutes late and Maggie was there and everything, but I really just hate being late. Bible study was great. We went through the topics of wisdom, humbling yourselves before God and boasting about tomorrow. We have one more chapter to go which we will tackle next week. The following week will be Maggie’s last week before she goes home to Germany so we will be doing a quick review of James and then a fun ice cream party!
I had to get back to work to check my microbiology tests, even though I had about a million and one errands I wanted to run… After successfully counting my coliform colonies I worked on some of my personal stuff and then met up with Mary Ellen. She came over for dinner which we made together. We made Cream of Spinach soup which was really quite terrible… We put in too much spinach, which was canned spinach to begin with so you know already that it has some obstacles to overcome. Susan came over to partake as well and the tailor made an appearance to pick up some fabric Susan had to make us both dresses for the “International Women’s Day” which is March 8th. Susan had been in Fada for Monday and Tuesday and it was funny how much I missed having her around. It will sad when she goes to the states for two weeks at the end of March! She did bring me back some excellent skin blam which was super nice of her to do… After dinner we looked at some awesome fabric pieces that Mary Ellen has been collecting to make a hoopa for her Jewish friend who is getting married. She had about one hundred 1ft by 1ft scraps of fabric. Pretty impressive. I made us up smoothies for dessert which were thankfully more appetizing that the failed soup. When all else fails put some fruit in your blender and you will please a multitude!
When Mary Ellen left I had a strange desire to talk to my family so at 9:30 I headed to my office, but to my dismay no one was online. Sad. So I wrote an email and then headed back home to go to bed. It was nice getting to bed early.
Thursday was an awesome day. I feel like I had so much going on… it was non-stop. I didn’t take a repos and ended up working in the evening as well. In the morning I took the time to type up my results from the last week and a half or so for the ceramic filters and started a data file for the slow sand filter information I am collecting. Moving right along! In the afternoon I really wanted to rerun the tests from Tuesday, but I didn’t have the Petri dishes made up or the time to run them and I was confused on what to do with taking samples the next day and I didn’t have anyone to go to for advice…sigh… I felt like I was caught up in a whirlwind of having a million things to do and not being able to finish anything because it was all tied together and there was always something missing! Anyway, I pushed on and made up some Petri dishes and finished just in time to go to the lecture of the professor visiting from Duke University. His talk was interesting. Thankfully it was in English. This guy has a theory called Constructal theory about how every system evolves to provide easier access to the flow of energy or something like that… It was a little hard to follow at times, but interesting none the less.
After the lecture I was planning to go get some work done and then I found out there was a 2iE personnel meeting to meet the new 2iE Foundation president. La-dee-da. So I sat through that, yawn. Oh, I should mention that Thursday was the 28th of February, the day that was supposed to be some sort of call to action against rising food prices, ect. Well, there were no disturbances near me which was good. There were some demonstrations and tire burnings in a few of the neighborhoods, but in general is wasn’t too bad. We got emails from the embassy saying not to go out if possible. I stayed at 2iE and was fine. Still pretty funny though. The ISO students got a half day. In the states kids get half days for unexpected snow storms. In Africa you get half days for civil unrest. What are you gonna do?
So by now it is about 5:30 and I get a text from Leanna that WIRED is cancelled. Hallelujah! I just needed a week off of youth group. Instead I stayed at work and got done the experiments I had been needing to do. I wanted to finish things up so I could start again with a clean slate on Friday. I worked until like 8:00pm. It was exhausting and I hadn’t had dinner. BUT I wanted to talk to my Mom who had just gotten home from school, so I stayed in my office and talked with her. This was all for the best though, because at 8:45 I would have had to come back to weight some filters anyway. So I avoided a trip home AND got to talk to my Mom. Yeah. It was so nice to just catch up and talk. When I got home I made some popcorn and watched the first half of the excellent comedy Starsky and Hutch ;)
Friday I was able to get up and go to work excited to get back to what I had been working on. I like when I like what I am doing. I worked straight through from 7:00 until 2:30 taking a short break for lunch. I made myself some of the left over soup from Wednesday which was FYI just as bad if not worse the second time around… I couldn’t finish my bowl of it and ended up throwing away what was left in the pot. Such is life. I did, however, enjoy reading all the star gossip in the US Weekly magazine Claire and Carolyn sent me. It’s nice to get to just shut off your brain for a while… At about 3:00 I headed over to Leanna’s house and helped her decorate some cakes for the Sadie Hawkins Dance at ISO that night. It was pretty awesome. Leanna worked in a bake shop for a summer so she learned this trick of dipping the icing knife in water for the last pass over the cake to make it really smooth. It was incredible! The cake designs turned out great if I do say so myself. The other reason I wanted to get to Leanna’s was that she had the stuff my family sent me. The latest mission team had arrived and brought it with them. So I got my new ipod shuffle which I love! Miss Potter the movie, measuring spoons and cups, and power bars. What more is there to want in life?
From Leanna’s I went back to work just in time to get there before Moumini came for my French lesson. Oh-la-la… I had forgotten to do the homework he gave me. Well, whatever. I have been doing at least a half hour of French study every morning, just not the stuff he gave. In general, though, that has to count for something.
Friday night I was planning to have dinner with some 2iE personnel and the visiting professor and his son. Susan and I were supposed to be getting picked up for the dinner at 7:15. So I finish with French and rush home to try and get in an abs of steel session before leaving. I’m in the middle of doing like a million situps and I get a text from Susan asking where I am. I all of sudden freak out that they really meant 6:15 and not 7:15 and they are waiting for me. So I anxiously called Susan and she just wanted to talk to me about something… but it could wait. Phew! Finishing my workout I showered and got ready to go. The guy coming to get us was about a half hour late. I mean really. If you mean to come at 7:45, just tell us 7:45… Don’t say 7:15 and then show up later, because when you do that you may have been able to get something else done in the mean time but I on the other hand wasted my time waiting for you. If you value me, you will value my time and not make me wait, or at least let me know when you intend to come if you are running late so I can plan accordingly. Alright, I am stepping down off my soapbox now…
When we did finally get to the dinner it was lovely. Professor Coulibaly hosted us all at his house and his wife cooked. It was well done indeed. The funniest part of the evening though was that the son of the professor, who was not 21 but this is Africa so drinking laws don’t apply, drank like three bottles of beer and was very talkative. He studied several years of French and it started flowing much more freely and loudly as the bottles were emptied. Remind me never to let that happen to me. It’s just not classy. The best part of the evening was getting a chance to talk to the professor about my choices for grad school for next year. He was very helpful in that he teaches at Duke, went to MIT and now has a daughter at Oxford in their graduate program. At the top of the list was MIT, Oxford and Stanford which was kind of how I had the top three in my head, but I can’t really say because I have only heard that I got into Oxford I don’t know about any other schools yet, so I am not arranging eggs I don’t have yet.
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you what Susan wanted to talk to me about. She had met a visiting Swiss professor going to Nazinga from Saturday to Sunday who had an extra seat in the car if I wanted to come along. YES! Can you imagine my joy?! Nazinga is the animal reserve I have been wanting to go to… There was talk about bringing the visiting professor’s son there, but that fell through so I had pretty much resigned that I would have to wait until the next missions team came that wanted to go and hope that they would have an extra seat for me. But God is pretty darn amazing if you ask me. He takes away one opportunity and it looks like things are bleak, but then he opens another door that was even better than what the other one held. God’s blessings are undeserved, unexpected, but surely appreciated when accepted! So at 8:00am Saturday morning I was to off to Nazinga! Now just to pack and get everything ready…
Friday night I didn’t sleep so well. I was anxious about leaving the next morning and my roommate was being quite loud in the room next door… I really would like if they moved out, like yesterday!
Anyway, Saturday I start the day with a refreshing bowl of oatmeal which is not the instant kind and so I never make it quite right. I finished up my packing and headed over to my office to send my brother an email. I was supposed to Skype with him in the morning his time, but obviously wouldn’t be able to make it as I was heading out of Ouagadougou. Wouldn’t you know, to my great frustration, the internet was down! I felt terrible… I knew Jordan would understand but I hate to not show up for something like that it just makes the other person feel not so great . But there was nothing I could do. I stopped by my house to pick up my belongings. I also went by Susan’s place to get her video camera to take some video footage of the elephants I was hoping to see. I walked out to the Charles de Gaulle and hailed a green taxi. Lovely. I needed to get to the Hotel Centrale, which not surprisingly is in the center of the town. I made it there a little before 8:00am. Early. That’s the way I like to roll…
I waited in the lobby for the professor to come. His name is Christian and he is an older guy teaching a 3week course on construction engineering. In addition, another woman named Pascal joined us. She is also teaching a 3week course at 2iE. She is Swiss, and incidentally about 5-6 months pregnant. Quite the adventurous one indeed! We headed south from Ouagadougou towards a town called “Po”. It is about 2 hours from Ouaga and all paved very nice roadways. I slept most of the way. I was exhausted! We had a nice 4x4 vehicle that I would later end up paying about $40 towards… which is actually kind of annoying because the guy was going anyway and dude I am pretty poor right now. So anyway, instead of heading straight to Nazinga we went West instead of East and stopped by the town of Teibele. This little village is just about like every other village you will see except that they paint weird designs on their houses and the people have an elaborate King and Royal court social system. You pay a tourist fee to visit Tiebele which gets you a guided tour of the Royal Court. All I can say is if that is the way the royal family lives, I would hate to see how rest of the people make do with what they have…
There are three things I would like to tell you about:
1. When we first pulled up in the 4x4 and we all got out I saw this girl walking past holding another little girl’s hand. This is a common enough sight, but it still made me smile… what’s more as they pass us I see the older girl is pulling a cardboard box on a string. How cute, I wonder what is in the box…? I look inside as it slides past kicking up dust and you know what I saw… a cucumber! Of all things! Just plain bizarre. I can’t begin to come up with a reason why this girl was walking her pet cucumber in a box. Talk about other-worldly. She did really make me smile though :) What a sight!
2. From the car we walk to this tourist encampment. The other two order some soda’s and I just kind of chill there trying to catch the French conversation that is going about a mile a minute between the group of guys who are sitting around under the restaurant cabana and the two Swiss folks. Anyway, the one guy who turns out to be our guide tells us that there are 400 people in his family, extended family included… But still that is a heck of a lot! Okay, the point, right. One of the guys lazing around has this very stylish looking shirt on that says in English, “Allow me to introduce myself, my name is SPEED from THAILAND.” Yeah, do you get it, because I sure as heck don’t. The T-shirt sayings you see around here are great. Really funny sometimes because they have no idea what their shirt says. It is kind of like when we used to wear shirts with the Chinese symbols on them we thought were so cool… Who even knows what those said!
3. After lunch we are all just sitting around waiting until about 2:30ish before hitting the road again. The A/C in the car doesn’t work so going when it is super hot is not the best idea. It sounds horrible, but with the windows down it’s not bad. I also have a ridiculous capacity to tolerate heat. Surprisingly so did Pascal. She never once complained of it being too hot! I was impressed… Anyway, we’re sitting around and I want to go get my book from the car, but I don’t know where the driver is. Christian finds him and I go out to get my book. While I am there the little boy who wanted to sell me a maraca for 1000CFA offers it to me for 500CFA. I was actually planning to go buy it for 1000CFA before we left, but hey, whatever, you want to take 500 that works for me :) So I pay the kid 2000CFA and am waiting for my change. It is taking longer than usual and I beginning to think the little rascal ran off with my three dollars… The other kids keep assuring me that he is coming back. As I’m standing there the wind whips up right behind the car in what looks like a tornado! It was crazy cool! I was a bit nervous, because it was pretty big and impressive looking… I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t died down as fast as it came up. Talk about getting your blood pumping. “Girl caught up in freak tornado, luckily deposited at the top of a mango tree!” I could just see the headlines ;)
From Tiebele we start off for Nazinga. It is about an hour and half drive from one to the other. It was no big deal except that most of roads were not paved. However, after experiencing Mali I have to say these roads where in pretty nice shape. On the way to Nazinga we came across a group of people getting their cotton ready to ship off to Sofitex (the cotton company in Burkina). We pulled over because Pascal wanted to go talk to them. I guess she studied cotton production before and just wanted to chat. It was actually really cool and I got take some pictures which I otherwise would not have been able to do.
We finally arrived at the entrance to the wild animal reserve park. Little did we know that the encampment where we would stay the night was like smack dab in the middle of the park which was another 35km on unpaved roads away. The only benefit of this next leg of the journey was that the whole time we were on the look out for animals! On the way we saw a baboon as well as a bunch of elephants grazing. It was neat. Like a real African safari! Oh wait, it WAS a real African safari :)
When we got to the camp we found our rooms which were really nice actually. Working shower, toilette, electricity from 6pm to 10pm… It is amazing how my standards have changed ;) For dinner we ate at the restaurant. We had to order like two hours in advance or else we would have waited a long time. It is the only place to get food and there are quite a few people who stay here. In fact, when we arrived at the entrance to the park we saw a vehicle waiting because they hadn’t made reservations and couldn’t get a place. Boy was I glad we had called ahead! I slept well. The temperature became quite comfortable at night. The only issue was Pascal woke up part way through the night saying she heard a mouse by her head. That freaked me out. We looked for a little and then decided to just try and go back to sleep. Well, that wasn’t too easy and just as I am about to drift off, I hear the mouse noises. Scratching and little scampering. Not good. So Pascal and I both get up. We move all our stuff onto the beds and move them away from the wall. Making a quite a racket in the process. Finally, the mouse scurries out and that was a bit disconcerting to say the least. We open the door thinking it might run out, but it didn’t. Instead it ran by our beds again, this time we couldn’t see it and didn’t know where it went. After waiting quite some time and not seeing or finding our mouse friend we decided to try and sleep. This time we switched the which way our heads were facing. Luckily, I slept fine and was able to get up at 5:45 as planned to watch the sun rise over the lake. It was beautiful and I took some nice pictures. The only downside was I wasn’t the only person with the idea and I had to share the look out point with some other tourists…. grump.
At 6:30am we pilled in the 4x4 to go drive around looking for animals. We saw some deer looking creatures with an African twist to them, but that was about it. No elephants. I was sitting up front and kept falling asleep. The rocking of the car, the unchanging landscape and lack of animals made it hard to stay awake. The cool thing was when we got back all the elephants were headed to the water hole adjacent to the encampment. I guess they come every morning to bathe and drink their fill of water. Why we drove around for an hour and a half when we could wait to have them come to us is a question that will remain unanswered. I took a ton of photos of the elephants at the watering hole. It felt every Lion King-ish just with elephants instead of large dangerous cats.
We stuck around for the morning and had breakfast and lunch at the same restaurant. Since it was Sunday I listened to a sermon and took a nice nap. I also drew a picture of the lake in the down time before lunch. Talk about relaxing! We left about 2:00-ish and headed back to Ouaga. I got dropped off at 2iE which was much appreciated. I showered quickly, went to my office to chat with my family for a few minutes and then rode over to Leanna’s to watch a movie with her and Tyler. It was nice and low key. I also brought my dirty laundry with me and used Leanna’s washer to do a load of clothes. When I got home, I hit the hay exhausted, yet so happy with my weekend and the chance to go to Nazinga.
Sorry this is so late in coming. The next post which should be up by Tuesday will explain why. I had a very busy week this last week!
Wednesday was a crazy day! But good crazy. I was working on my experiments in the morning, and tried to finish last weeks blog post. It was to no avail and I ended up spending about another hour at the café trying to get in everything I had to say… I left work at 11:30 and went to the gym. I was going to run and then swim a little. Go to the café for lunch then head to bible study. Everything was going great. I got to the gym and there was no one there. I started running on the treadmill and I was just cruising. Really enjoying the run, working on getting faster, ect. Then with about a mile left the treadmill just shuts off! Like someone pulled the plug… At first I thought the power went out which is not at all unusual, but the machine next to me still had power. I checked the converter and it looks suspect, but I couldn’t seem to see what’s wrong and the machine would not turn back on. So alas I had to abandon my running and instead lifted a few weights before hopping in the pool to finish things off.
From the gym I headed to the café where I again order the excellent cheese and ham panini. However, this time to my disappointment the cheese was not quite melted enough for my liking. Unfortunately, I don’t know the French for “Can you please cook my cheese more?” so I ate it as it was. I was supposed to leave at 2:30 to get to bible study on time, but 2:30 turned into 2:45 and then I realized I left my lesson papers at home and would have to make a slight detour! I rode really fast and was only 5 minutes late and Maggie was there and everything, but I really just hate being late. Bible study was great. We went through the topics of wisdom, humbling yourselves before God and boasting about tomorrow. We have one more chapter to go which we will tackle next week. The following week will be Maggie’s last week before she goes home to Germany so we will be doing a quick review of James and then a fun ice cream party!
I had to get back to work to check my microbiology tests, even though I had about a million and one errands I wanted to run… After successfully counting my coliform colonies I worked on some of my personal stuff and then met up with Mary Ellen. She came over for dinner which we made together. We made Cream of Spinach soup which was really quite terrible… We put in too much spinach, which was canned spinach to begin with so you know already that it has some obstacles to overcome. Susan came over to partake as well and the tailor made an appearance to pick up some fabric Susan had to make us both dresses for the “International Women’s Day” which is March 8th. Susan had been in Fada for Monday and Tuesday and it was funny how much I missed having her around. It will sad when she goes to the states for two weeks at the end of March! She did bring me back some excellent skin blam which was super nice of her to do… After dinner we looked at some awesome fabric pieces that Mary Ellen has been collecting to make a hoopa for her Jewish friend who is getting married. She had about one hundred 1ft by 1ft scraps of fabric. Pretty impressive. I made us up smoothies for dessert which were thankfully more appetizing that the failed soup. When all else fails put some fruit in your blender and you will please a multitude!
When Mary Ellen left I had a strange desire to talk to my family so at 9:30 I headed to my office, but to my dismay no one was online. Sad. So I wrote an email and then headed back home to go to bed. It was nice getting to bed early.
Thursday was an awesome day. I feel like I had so much going on… it was non-stop. I didn’t take a repos and ended up working in the evening as well. In the morning I took the time to type up my results from the last week and a half or so for the ceramic filters and started a data file for the slow sand filter information I am collecting. Moving right along! In the afternoon I really wanted to rerun the tests from Tuesday, but I didn’t have the Petri dishes made up or the time to run them and I was confused on what to do with taking samples the next day and I didn’t have anyone to go to for advice…sigh… I felt like I was caught up in a whirlwind of having a million things to do and not being able to finish anything because it was all tied together and there was always something missing! Anyway, I pushed on and made up some Petri dishes and finished just in time to go to the lecture of the professor visiting from Duke University. His talk was interesting. Thankfully it was in English. This guy has a theory called Constructal theory about how every system evolves to provide easier access to the flow of energy or something like that… It was a little hard to follow at times, but interesting none the less.
After the lecture I was planning to go get some work done and then I found out there was a 2iE personnel meeting to meet the new 2iE Foundation president. La-dee-da. So I sat through that, yawn. Oh, I should mention that Thursday was the 28th of February, the day that was supposed to be some sort of call to action against rising food prices, ect. Well, there were no disturbances near me which was good. There were some demonstrations and tire burnings in a few of the neighborhoods, but in general is wasn’t too bad. We got emails from the embassy saying not to go out if possible. I stayed at 2iE and was fine. Still pretty funny though. The ISO students got a half day. In the states kids get half days for unexpected snow storms. In Africa you get half days for civil unrest. What are you gonna do?
So by now it is about 5:30 and I get a text from Leanna that WIRED is cancelled. Hallelujah! I just needed a week off of youth group. Instead I stayed at work and got done the experiments I had been needing to do. I wanted to finish things up so I could start again with a clean slate on Friday. I worked until like 8:00pm. It was exhausting and I hadn’t had dinner. BUT I wanted to talk to my Mom who had just gotten home from school, so I stayed in my office and talked with her. This was all for the best though, because at 8:45 I would have had to come back to weight some filters anyway. So I avoided a trip home AND got to talk to my Mom. Yeah. It was so nice to just catch up and talk. When I got home I made some popcorn and watched the first half of the excellent comedy Starsky and Hutch ;)
Friday I was able to get up and go to work excited to get back to what I had been working on. I like when I like what I am doing. I worked straight through from 7:00 until 2:30 taking a short break for lunch. I made myself some of the left over soup from Wednesday which was FYI just as bad if not worse the second time around… I couldn’t finish my bowl of it and ended up throwing away what was left in the pot. Such is life. I did, however, enjoy reading all the star gossip in the US Weekly magazine Claire and Carolyn sent me. It’s nice to get to just shut off your brain for a while… At about 3:00 I headed over to Leanna’s house and helped her decorate some cakes for the Sadie Hawkins Dance at ISO that night. It was pretty awesome. Leanna worked in a bake shop for a summer so she learned this trick of dipping the icing knife in water for the last pass over the cake to make it really smooth. It was incredible! The cake designs turned out great if I do say so myself. The other reason I wanted to get to Leanna’s was that she had the stuff my family sent me. The latest mission team had arrived and brought it with them. So I got my new ipod shuffle which I love! Miss Potter the movie, measuring spoons and cups, and power bars. What more is there to want in life?
From Leanna’s I went back to work just in time to get there before Moumini came for my French lesson. Oh-la-la… I had forgotten to do the homework he gave me. Well, whatever. I have been doing at least a half hour of French study every morning, just not the stuff he gave. In general, though, that has to count for something.
Friday night I was planning to have dinner with some 2iE personnel and the visiting professor and his son. Susan and I were supposed to be getting picked up for the dinner at 7:15. So I finish with French and rush home to try and get in an abs of steel session before leaving. I’m in the middle of doing like a million situps and I get a text from Susan asking where I am. I all of sudden freak out that they really meant 6:15 and not 7:15 and they are waiting for me. So I anxiously called Susan and she just wanted to talk to me about something… but it could wait. Phew! Finishing my workout I showered and got ready to go. The guy coming to get us was about a half hour late. I mean really. If you mean to come at 7:45, just tell us 7:45… Don’t say 7:15 and then show up later, because when you do that you may have been able to get something else done in the mean time but I on the other hand wasted my time waiting for you. If you value me, you will value my time and not make me wait, or at least let me know when you intend to come if you are running late so I can plan accordingly. Alright, I am stepping down off my soapbox now…
When we did finally get to the dinner it was lovely. Professor Coulibaly hosted us all at his house and his wife cooked. It was well done indeed. The funniest part of the evening though was that the son of the professor, who was not 21 but this is Africa so drinking laws don’t apply, drank like three bottles of beer and was very talkative. He studied several years of French and it started flowing much more freely and loudly as the bottles were emptied. Remind me never to let that happen to me. It’s just not classy. The best part of the evening was getting a chance to talk to the professor about my choices for grad school for next year. He was very helpful in that he teaches at Duke, went to MIT and now has a daughter at Oxford in their graduate program. At the top of the list was MIT, Oxford and Stanford which was kind of how I had the top three in my head, but I can’t really say because I have only heard that I got into Oxford I don’t know about any other schools yet, so I am not arranging eggs I don’t have yet.
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you what Susan wanted to talk to me about. She had met a visiting Swiss professor going to Nazinga from Saturday to Sunday who had an extra seat in the car if I wanted to come along. YES! Can you imagine my joy?! Nazinga is the animal reserve I have been wanting to go to… There was talk about bringing the visiting professor’s son there, but that fell through so I had pretty much resigned that I would have to wait until the next missions team came that wanted to go and hope that they would have an extra seat for me. But God is pretty darn amazing if you ask me. He takes away one opportunity and it looks like things are bleak, but then he opens another door that was even better than what the other one held. God’s blessings are undeserved, unexpected, but surely appreciated when accepted! So at 8:00am Saturday morning I was to off to Nazinga! Now just to pack and get everything ready…
Friday night I didn’t sleep so well. I was anxious about leaving the next morning and my roommate was being quite loud in the room next door… I really would like if they moved out, like yesterday!
Anyway, Saturday I start the day with a refreshing bowl of oatmeal which is not the instant kind and so I never make it quite right. I finished up my packing and headed over to my office to send my brother an email. I was supposed to Skype with him in the morning his time, but obviously wouldn’t be able to make it as I was heading out of Ouagadougou. Wouldn’t you know, to my great frustration, the internet was down! I felt terrible… I knew Jordan would understand but I hate to not show up for something like that it just makes the other person feel not so great . But there was nothing I could do. I stopped by my house to pick up my belongings. I also went by Susan’s place to get her video camera to take some video footage of the elephants I was hoping to see. I walked out to the Charles de Gaulle and hailed a green taxi. Lovely. I needed to get to the Hotel Centrale, which not surprisingly is in the center of the town. I made it there a little before 8:00am. Early. That’s the way I like to roll…
I waited in the lobby for the professor to come. His name is Christian and he is an older guy teaching a 3week course on construction engineering. In addition, another woman named Pascal joined us. She is also teaching a 3week course at 2iE. She is Swiss, and incidentally about 5-6 months pregnant. Quite the adventurous one indeed! We headed south from Ouagadougou towards a town called “Po”. It is about 2 hours from Ouaga and all paved very nice roadways. I slept most of the way. I was exhausted! We had a nice 4x4 vehicle that I would later end up paying about $40 towards… which is actually kind of annoying because the guy was going anyway and dude I am pretty poor right now. So anyway, instead of heading straight to Nazinga we went West instead of East and stopped by the town of Teibele. This little village is just about like every other village you will see except that they paint weird designs on their houses and the people have an elaborate King and Royal court social system. You pay a tourist fee to visit Tiebele which gets you a guided tour of the Royal Court. All I can say is if that is the way the royal family lives, I would hate to see how rest of the people make do with what they have…
There are three things I would like to tell you about:
1. When we first pulled up in the 4x4 and we all got out I saw this girl walking past holding another little girl’s hand. This is a common enough sight, but it still made me smile… what’s more as they pass us I see the older girl is pulling a cardboard box on a string. How cute, I wonder what is in the box…? I look inside as it slides past kicking up dust and you know what I saw… a cucumber! Of all things! Just plain bizarre. I can’t begin to come up with a reason why this girl was walking her pet cucumber in a box. Talk about other-worldly. She did really make me smile though :) What a sight!
2. From the car we walk to this tourist encampment. The other two order some soda’s and I just kind of chill there trying to catch the French conversation that is going about a mile a minute between the group of guys who are sitting around under the restaurant cabana and the two Swiss folks. Anyway, the one guy who turns out to be our guide tells us that there are 400 people in his family, extended family included… But still that is a heck of a lot! Okay, the point, right. One of the guys lazing around has this very stylish looking shirt on that says in English, “Allow me to introduce myself, my name is SPEED from THAILAND.” Yeah, do you get it, because I sure as heck don’t. The T-shirt sayings you see around here are great. Really funny sometimes because they have no idea what their shirt says. It is kind of like when we used to wear shirts with the Chinese symbols on them we thought were so cool… Who even knows what those said!
3. After lunch we are all just sitting around waiting until about 2:30ish before hitting the road again. The A/C in the car doesn’t work so going when it is super hot is not the best idea. It sounds horrible, but with the windows down it’s not bad. I also have a ridiculous capacity to tolerate heat. Surprisingly so did Pascal. She never once complained of it being too hot! I was impressed… Anyway, we’re sitting around and I want to go get my book from the car, but I don’t know where the driver is. Christian finds him and I go out to get my book. While I am there the little boy who wanted to sell me a maraca for 1000CFA offers it to me for 500CFA. I was actually planning to go buy it for 1000CFA before we left, but hey, whatever, you want to take 500 that works for me :) So I pay the kid 2000CFA and am waiting for my change. It is taking longer than usual and I beginning to think the little rascal ran off with my three dollars… The other kids keep assuring me that he is coming back. As I’m standing there the wind whips up right behind the car in what looks like a tornado! It was crazy cool! I was a bit nervous, because it was pretty big and impressive looking… I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t died down as fast as it came up. Talk about getting your blood pumping. “Girl caught up in freak tornado, luckily deposited at the top of a mango tree!” I could just see the headlines ;)
From Tiebele we start off for Nazinga. It is about an hour and half drive from one to the other. It was no big deal except that most of roads were not paved. However, after experiencing Mali I have to say these roads where in pretty nice shape. On the way to Nazinga we came across a group of people getting their cotton ready to ship off to Sofitex (the cotton company in Burkina). We pulled over because Pascal wanted to go talk to them. I guess she studied cotton production before and just wanted to chat. It was actually really cool and I got take some pictures which I otherwise would not have been able to do.
We finally arrived at the entrance to the wild animal reserve park. Little did we know that the encampment where we would stay the night was like smack dab in the middle of the park which was another 35km on unpaved roads away. The only benefit of this next leg of the journey was that the whole time we were on the look out for animals! On the way we saw a baboon as well as a bunch of elephants grazing. It was neat. Like a real African safari! Oh wait, it WAS a real African safari :)
When we got to the camp we found our rooms which were really nice actually. Working shower, toilette, electricity from 6pm to 10pm… It is amazing how my standards have changed ;) For dinner we ate at the restaurant. We had to order like two hours in advance or else we would have waited a long time. It is the only place to get food and there are quite a few people who stay here. In fact, when we arrived at the entrance to the park we saw a vehicle waiting because they hadn’t made reservations and couldn’t get a place. Boy was I glad we had called ahead! I slept well. The temperature became quite comfortable at night. The only issue was Pascal woke up part way through the night saying she heard a mouse by her head. That freaked me out. We looked for a little and then decided to just try and go back to sleep. Well, that wasn’t too easy and just as I am about to drift off, I hear the mouse noises. Scratching and little scampering. Not good. So Pascal and I both get up. We move all our stuff onto the beds and move them away from the wall. Making a quite a racket in the process. Finally, the mouse scurries out and that was a bit disconcerting to say the least. We open the door thinking it might run out, but it didn’t. Instead it ran by our beds again, this time we couldn’t see it and didn’t know where it went. After waiting quite some time and not seeing or finding our mouse friend we decided to try and sleep. This time we switched the which way our heads were facing. Luckily, I slept fine and was able to get up at 5:45 as planned to watch the sun rise over the lake. It was beautiful and I took some nice pictures. The only downside was I wasn’t the only person with the idea and I had to share the look out point with some other tourists…. grump.
At 6:30am we pilled in the 4x4 to go drive around looking for animals. We saw some deer looking creatures with an African twist to them, but that was about it. No elephants. I was sitting up front and kept falling asleep. The rocking of the car, the unchanging landscape and lack of animals made it hard to stay awake. The cool thing was when we got back all the elephants were headed to the water hole adjacent to the encampment. I guess they come every morning to bathe and drink their fill of water. Why we drove around for an hour and a half when we could wait to have them come to us is a question that will remain unanswered. I took a ton of photos of the elephants at the watering hole. It felt every Lion King-ish just with elephants instead of large dangerous cats.
We stuck around for the morning and had breakfast and lunch at the same restaurant. Since it was Sunday I listened to a sermon and took a nice nap. I also drew a picture of the lake in the down time before lunch. Talk about relaxing! We left about 2:00-ish and headed back to Ouaga. I got dropped off at 2iE which was much appreciated. I showered quickly, went to my office to chat with my family for a few minutes and then rode over to Leanna’s to watch a movie with her and Tyler. It was nice and low key. I also brought my dirty laundry with me and used Leanna’s washer to do a load of clothes. When I got home, I hit the hay exhausted, yet so happy with my weekend and the chance to go to Nazinga.
Sorry this is so late in coming. The next post which should be up by Tuesday will explain why. I had a very busy week this last week!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
I got a blender! and a sweet care package... Lucky me :)
FYI: I started this post last night at 9pm, but only got as far as outlining it. Trying to remember all that happened in the last 7 days is hard! Anyway, here goes…
Last Tuesday I successfully posted the last entry and had a wonderfully long conversation with my Mom. I went to Les Petites Delices as usual and this time since my stomach was really shot I ordered a “pain au raisin”, which is normally a spiral of flaky dough with raisins inside. However, the pain au raisin from the petites delices is more like a cinnamon roll without the heavy frosting. Major score! I will definitely get that again. And they served it HOT! Yum. I got there about 8pm and was afraid it was closed since there was no one else there. But they said they were open and didn’t seem to mind having me there. Besides, I really liked having the place to myself. The only downside was the mosquitoes, but for some reason I can’t feel them when they bite me and the bites don’t itch…even though I know I get some because I can see the red spots, weird.
Wednesday I woke up feeling much, much better. Not eating much for a few days was a good plan. I also didn’t take the Doxycycline again because I heard that could have adverse affects on one’s stomach. You have to eat it with a meal which I feel like I normally do, but oh well. I am going to switch back to Mefloquin for a bit to see if it helps my stomach not be so sore. In the morning, I was hard at work doing some suspended solids measurements, basically to measure how much stuff in the water… I worked until 2:30 and then made up some baked oatmeal before heading to bible study. I had run out of cereal and I found this recipe in my magic cookbook and wanted to give it a try. It smelled really yummy when it came out of the oven. I can’t wait to try to for breakfast!
Bible study went great. The girls were really engaged and thinking. We went over James 2:14-3:12, talking about faith and deeds and taming the tongue. Both excellent topics! After bible study I decided not to go back to work, this was my plan all along which is why I worked straight up until 2:30… Instead I went and took care of depositing a check and getting more money out the bank. Again this endeavor took me 45 minutes! I was about to go to the local branch by the university, but that line was out the door. So instead I went to the downtown one thinking there might be less people. At least that way there would be places to sit while waiting, and I could check on my ATM card. When you get to the bank the first thing you do is take a number like you do at the deli counter. Well the number I got was 914… and they were currently helping customer 879. Yeah, talk about a discouraging way to start off this banking experience :( At the bank I next went to the lady who gives you a piece of paper with your account balance on it. Forget monthly statements, or online banking. The only thing you know about your account it the bottom line, which for me is frustrating because I like to see all my information, thank you very much. Since at that point I had a ton of time to kill I went over and asked about my card, pretty sure I would get the same response as before… BUT to my surprise and delight they had my card! The heavens parted and angels started singing… However, I couldn’t use it until after 7pm that night and I still had to deposit a check so I still had to wait. BUT the prospect of not having to wait like that again, helped me pass the time.
From the bank I headed to Orca intending to buy a spatula and check prices on blenders. I was successful with the spatula as well as found some great shampoo and conditioner which is hard to find…Unfortunately their blender selection was less than impressive so I made the decision that I would go back to the Decorama and buy the one I liked there. This was my hunch all along, but I needed to be a smart shopper and check out all my options. And when I say all my option I mean all my options. After leaving Orca I managed some tricky traffic maneuvers and made it to the home store kitty corner to Orca. They had a huge selection of fine blending devices, but the prices were double what I wanted to pay. C’est la vie! So from here I rode my bike to the vegetable market. It was just past 6 and most of the women were packed up to go home… but I had already invited Maggie over to help make and enjoy dinner and needed a few things. So, I had to try. And sure enough as soon as I roll up I am bombarded by teenage girls asking me what I want and suggesting that I have a need for just about everything they are selling. I get the green peppers and green onions which was what I was looking for and just as I am refusing every other offer saying I don’t need anything else, a women with awesome looking strawberries catches my eye… I can’t resist and buy 2 kilos, or 4 pints worth. Well worth the stop since the price was only 1250CFA a kilo down from 3000CFA when strawberry season first started. I am trying to build up a supply in my freezer so I can have smoothies for a while…
Anyway, I told Maggie between 6:15-6:30 and I didn’t get home until 6:30… lucky for me the housemates let her in and she waiting for me there. We got straight to work on the dinner I had planned. We made salmon cakes from the packaged salmon my Mom sent… We had green beans left over from Monday and made rice and a lemon thyme sauce. The meal was delicious! And afterwards Ben came over and the three of us watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Ben really reminds me of my brother Jordan. It is like looking at Jordan 5 years from now… weird. After everyone left I stayed up and looked over my finances. As I mentioned, there isn’t an easy way to see what is going on with my account so I have to keep good records myself or else I end up surprised by my balance at the end of the month! I had also taken out quite a bit the last time and it didn’t last as long as I had expected… I was able to figure out where all the money went and determined it was well within my budget. Living in a cash economy is tough! The way I handle things is I have a monthly calendar that I draw up at the start of each month and each day write in what money I spent that day. I usually record stuff about every three to five days, everyday is too hard to remember to do! The system is working well so far. I am trying to balance spending enough to enjoy myself here, while saving some to manage the travel I want to do and the expenses I will have this summer. Since I don’t have much time at home this summer I don’t think I can find a job. I would like to work, but more than that I want to be able to go on vacation with my family. If you have any suggestions for me I would love them!
Since I ended up staying up later than I had hoped on Wednesday night and still wasn’t 100%, Thursday morning I decided to stay in bed until I felt good and then go into work. This scheme worked and can now say I have fully recovered from whatever was wrong. I still haven’t taken and Doxcycline again… I plan to start the mefloquine on Friday. In the morning I worked on my filters as usual. I cleaned out the basins again because one of them had some serious algae growing in it! I brought my camera to take pictures of it and then decided to walk around and take pictures of the whole campus. You can expect a virtual tour of 2iE in the next monthly update… Oh the suspense! I had lunch with my friend Moulaye who afterwards showed me pictures of his house and the desert in Mauritania. They were pretty cool actually. In the afternoon I responded to the Birthday emails and facebook messages I had gotten… This took a lot more time than I had anticipated! There was also a department wide meeting I attended. I understood a lot more than the first one I went to a few months ago, but still have a ways to go. At one point some guys came in and started moving around boxes and chairs making it very hard to hear! I was like come on… are you serious, I have a hard enough time as it is understanding what is going on without having to strain to hear what is being said! Anyway, at the meeting Professor Maiga brought up the proposals I made for possible Master’s research topics and they were well received.
Thursday evening I went to WIRED, as is the norm. Ben taught Junior High and I helped him. He did a question and answer thing where the kids wrote down questions they had and we answered them as best as we could… I was skeptical at first, but it turned out well.
Friday morning I had a meeting scheduled with Professor Maiga. I had made up a list of things to go over with him the day before which was helpful, but my printer connection is still not working so I had to go from memory kind of defeating the point of typing up meeting notes. He had another meeting right after mine and since we started late I didn’t get to discuss all the topics in as much detail as I had hoped for, but I was still able to take some major steps forward. We discussed in more depth the proposals I mentioned before and emailed another professor here who we are hoping will be interested in working on finding local materials suitable for making the ceramic filters. Finding and testing the materials is the most time consuming steps in trying to set up a filter factory. If this can be done by 2iE, establishing a factory in Ouagadougou should be easy. Also, I would like to mention that all this past week, minus Thursday I have been to work pretty much on time. Yeah for me.
Friday was already scheduled to be a hectic day in that I planned to go to the post office to pick up a package as well as go buy the blender. I had invited my friends over for smoothies that night, so I kind of needed to buy it… I left work at 11:00 to go get my package before the post office closed for lunch and then go workout. I headed out, ready to go and find the road barricaded! So I have to take a detour to a side street… ugh. I make it to the post office only to find as I am walking in that I left the magic slip of paper with the package number on it at home! I try to talk the guy into getting me the package anyway, but I knew it was useless. The place is such a mess and without the number it would be impossible to find it… so I was about to be very sad, when I just brightened up and said, “Oh well! I guess I will have to come back again this afternoon, even though I also have to go to Decorama which is in the opposite direction…more exercise and chance preserve through trials” (Persevering through trials was something we went over in bible study.) Before leaving, I did buy some strawberries from the lady outside the post office. Funny story, I ask for 2 kilos and she hears 10 kilos. We agree on a per kilo price and then she asks me if I want them in a crate or in the large metal bowl she has. I don’t really get it because 2 kilos isn’t that much… it is at this point I realize she thinks I want 10 kilos. I explain the misunderstanding and buy my 2 kilos and leave, but I was still around to hear her recounting to her friends the story of the white girl who got ten and two mixed up. It was funny, but I kind of felt like she was making fun of me, but I am going to hope it was all good natured which I genuinely believe it was.
Right, back to me… I head to the rec center and have an awesome, awesome workout. Mix some speed work into the normal 3 mile run. I go back to work around 2:00 and take some samples. I don’t have time to run the tests because there is a school wide meeting at 3:30, Oye! Also, I should mention that I was invited to participate in a IWA conference call set for that evening at 11:00pm and since I don’t have a direct number they can call in on I have to scramble to find a way to take the call. Luckily I talked to the right person, Professor Wethe, who said I could use his office and have them call into his direct line.
The 3:30 meeting turned out to be all about a big 2iE Foundation planning meeting scheduled for Monday and Tuesday of next week, of which I had no part to play. Luckily the meeting didn’t last long! I also would like to point out that this meeting must be pretty important because they repainted all the walls and scrubbed everything down, added potted plants to the buildings, ect. They are really getting everything ready. I think it is a meeting for all the donors… definitely people you want to impress. Anyway, after the meeting I head out for the post office adventure – take two. I feel like I have resigned myself to the fact that whenever I get a package it will take me two trips to the post office to get it! I made it there successfully and lucky for me the barricade was down so I didn’t have to detour again. I found out the package was from my friends Claire and Carolyn two girls who were very close friends on my crew team. They sent me new guitar strings, hair elastics, some magazines, gum, candy hearts, and hair conditioner. I love these girls! They are amazing :)
After the package was securely in my possession I rode the 2.5 miles to get to Decorama and bought my blender. This purchase was made possible by the Birthday present from my grandparents. Blenders aren’t cheap here, but I am sure I will use it enough to make it worth it. AND, I will probably be able to sell it before I leave to recover some of the cost. On the way back I stopped at a convenience store to buy some sugar for the smoothies and made it back to 2iE before 6:00. Impressive, I know. I needed to be back by 6:00 to get the keys to Professor Wethe’s office to take the call that night. BUT he was no where to be found. I waited until 6:15 but then had to go to get to Grease on time… He said he would leave the key with the guard if he couldn’t find me. So I wrote him a reminder note that I stuck on his door, crossed my fingers, and headed out. I planned to walk to ISO, but just as I left 2iE Omar, the lab technician rode past, stopped, and offered me a ride. The prospect of walking wasn’t that appealing so I took him up on his offer! I got to the school in plenty of time :)
Sidenote: I was supposed to have a French lesson at 5:00, but I canceled earlier in the week because I wasn’t sure what time the Grease play would start. Even though the play didn’t start until 7:00, I was glad I cancelled it… except that my teacher didn’t get the message and showed up anyway. Quel dommage! (What a shame!) The good thing is he doesn’t really care when stuff like happens... which is all the same to me :)
Grease was great. I knew most of the kids who were in it from WIRED and other activities so it was really neat to see them succeed. Keri was so cute as Sandy. Keri’s sister, Amy, played Rizzo and her own personality fit the character great. The singing was really impressive and given the limitations of Ouagadougou, the sets and costumes were well done. The sound quality was rough, but it’s Africa… so what can you do. At least they tried to have microphones; even if the sound was really hollow and scratchy sometimes. After the show was over Leanna, Tyler, Ben, Will, Maggie, Anna, and Rosie all came over as planned. The only sad part of the night was that Bianca couldn’t join us. Apparently there is some talk of protests in the near future so Peace Corps is keeping all the volunteers in their villages and out of the bigger cities. The day set for the demonstrations is tomorrow Thursday February 28th. My hope is that nothing happens at all. I guess we will find out tomorrow, eh?
When we first came in the gate I stopped and asked the guard about the key that was supposed to be left for me. He didn’t have it and didn’t know anything about it. Ugh, so I still didn’t have the key… it was about 9:30, my call was set for 11 and I had 7 guests over… What did I do? I went home, made everyone smoothies, and then spent the next half hour talking to the guards trying to track down what might have happened to the key Professor Wethe was supposed to leave. I tried to call him on his cell, but the call wouldn’t go through! Talk about inconvenient time for the cell network to malfunction… After a lot of talking I finally made the guards get out the bag of keys I knew they had in the back room. They assured me, though, that the key wasn’t there. The big black plastic bag holding all the keys contained 4 little bags inside. We opened 3 of them with no luck and the guy is like, “See, it’s not here…” I politely asked him to open the last bag, and wouldn’t you know… the last key in the last bag was for Professor Wethe’s office. My heart started racing. Could this be real? I had resigned myself to the fact that I would miss the call and was pretty bummed, but now I had a key in my hands. I start walking with determination to his office to see if it worked. You know that walk when you are so nervous to know what you will find, so you are praying the whole time that the key works, or the letter says what you want it say, ect.
Anyway, I put the key in the lock and almost leaped for joy when it turned the lock and let me! I was afraid it was an old key and wouldn’t work… But it did work! This would be an example of providence. So I went home to be with my guests again, this time happy and content, to pass the last half hour with them before I had to go take the call. I wouldn’t have arranged the smoothie night given the craziness of this conference call stuff. However, I didn’t know the time the call would be scheduled for until the day before, and who would have thought it would be 11pm on Friday! When I got home with the keys in hand, my friends were finishing up LOST and then started watching The Office. I totally wanted to stay and watch with them, but I had to go. Boy was I glad I did! The conference call went so great! I wasn’t sure if I would have anything to contribute, but turns out I did and I felt like a million bucks walking out the office a midnight when the call ended… The call was in regards the IWA sustainability toolbox I created in the summer of 2006 when I worked at IWA. They are reopening and reworking the initiative, and now I can stay a part of it! Being able to explain the original thinking and give my blessing for redesigning the site was great. Before the call I had sat down and took notes on the points I wanted to make, ect. This was SO helpful! I would also like to ad my toastmasters training really came in handy. When I was about to start speaking I got kind of nervous. It was a call with 7 other people from all over the world; professionals who are high in their company ranks and leaders in the IWA. Could be intimidating, but I just remembered what I had learned with Toastmasters and spoke with confidence :)
I went home at midnight, and speaking of Toastmasters, I stayed up and planned for Toastmaster the next morning. I was the Table Topics Master and I had been meaning to plan for this role for the last two weeks and never got to it! All I can say is I guess the night before is better than the morning of…
I would also like to note Tuesday night while outlining this post I was listening to Hannah Montana/ Miley Cyrus at the moment, nothing like that teen pop sensation to pick me when I feeling a bit down.
Saturday I got up to review what I had planned for Toastmasters only to discover Susan had asked me to present an education session, and I totally forgot about it!
After a minor internal struggled I decided I could not do it. It about killed me. But I gave myself grace. I would rather disappoint Susan, than do a shoddy job at something. This would be my definition of exercising the idea of “not sweating the small stuff”. I could have beat myself up about it, but I didn’t. And you know what? The meeting went just fine without the extra session. In fact, the meeting would have gone way overtime if I had taken another 10 minutes to present the educational session on how to pick a speech topic.
As the Table Topics Master I was in charge of the impromptu speech part of the meeting. I had to ask questions that people could give one to two minute responses to. The theme I chose was “What If…” and had the members use their imagination to answer questions like:
What if you could be Olympic athlete? What sport would you chose and what would you do with your gold medal if you won?
What if you could live in any movie? Which movie would like to live in and what makes you chose that film?
What if you were able to fly in a hot air balloon over any city in the world? Which city would you pick and what would you hope to see?
What if you were running for president of your country? What would be the most important issue to you and how would you address this issue once you became president?
The session went well, but it is hard to get non-native English speakers to speak on the spot for 2 minutes. Their answers usually last only about 30 seconds! After Toastmasters Susan and I went for lunch at a place called De Niro… I ordered a good tuna sandwich and while we were there a bunch of other white people started showing up. There was no one there when we got there, and we just randomly picked the place. We thought the owners should pay us for the publicity of sitting outside and bringing in other customers :) From lunch we went to the market to look for some fabric. Susan had found some really neat brown fabric with a cool bird and paisley type print… I was hoping to find the same thing. Unfortunately, we had no such luck. I did, however, buy some strawberries. This time I only paid a 1000CFA a kilo! But I didn’t have a good bag to put them in and as I rode home on my bike I could tell I was crushing them. Sure enough, when I got home there was a nice pool of strawberry juice in the plastic bag which had proceeded to leak into my purse… sad. But I was still able to freeze the strawberries, which was good, even though they were kind of beat up. Oh, before we headed back home Susan offered to buy me a milkshake at the rec center. We had ridden our bikes there, parked them then walked to lunch and the market so on the way back it was natural to stop in for some dessert and to sit out and enjoy the pool and nice weather :)
When we finally got back to 2iE we ran into Professor Wethe. He was so concerned when, that morning, the guard told him he hadn’t given me the keys. I guess he did leave the keys at the gate, but they never got to me due to miscommunication among the guards. He seemed pretty concerned that I hadn’t been able to take the call, but he was very happy to hear I found a key and was able to get in. Saturday afternoon I ran tests on the samples I had taken on Friday. I intended to run the samples on Friday, but I didn’t have time to do it considering I was running around trying to everything at once that day! I blame it on the fact I left my slip of paper for the package at home the first time. This faux pas cost me a good 45 minutes, but who’s counting. It was good exercise, not that I needed any more!
By the time I finished running the microbiology tests I was exhausted. I went home and laid down watch a little ducktales, you know the old Disney cartoon about the three little duck brothers and their uncle Scrooge. It was surprisingly not quite as entertaining as I remember it… For dinner I had the salmon cakes left over from Wednesday. FYI they were just as good, if not better, than they were the first time around. After dinner about 7:00ish I rode my bike over to Leanna for a low key movie with her and Tyler. We decide to watch Micheal Clayton. I was doubtful at first, but it turned out to be an excellent movie. I was a little frustrating in that I didn’t know what the hack had been going on until the end. After the movie was over I rode my bike home and went to sleep…sigh… I slept very well. I should have. Boy was I tired!
Sunday I woke up and went to the gym to work out. I chose to run and listened to great sermon titled “The Art of Rebellion”. It is about how being a Christian actually requires rebelling and being different from the world. I was a bit tired on the treadmill, but I worked through it and in the end felt really good. For lunch I made the last hamburger in my freezer with a mango on the side :) I read some more of my book and made a quick outline of the talk I going to give on March 6th at the 2iE Scientific Forum. I quickly ran to the lab to read the tests I did the day before, and then headed with Susan over to the book club meeting. I was supposed to have a tennis lesson, but I had to cancel because book club was at the same time. Book club was held at the house of one of the Peace Corps administrators. It was awesome. She has a real American couch in the living room… I could have sat there all night. The conversation about the book was great. We were discussing, “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, and boy is there a lot to talk about in that book! This was the first book club I had been to since high school and I loved it. Also, going along with the theme of the book some people made and brought Afganistani food to sample. Yum.
Book club lasted until 5:00 and from there I stopped by Leanna’s and then rode on to her office at ISO to talk with my family. It was nice to reconnect. I hadn’t talked to my Dad or Ryan for a while! It was about the time that they were eating so they just brought the computer to the table and I joined in on the meal. It made me feel like I was really there, how nice!
I had originally planned on having a chill evening at home on Sunday. However, the gang was to get together for dinner on Saturday night and since that didn’t happen we did it on Sunday instead… The boys were cooking so I didn’t complain. Ben made Ninja chicken, basically just a Chinese chicken dish his Dad made for him growing up. His Dad called it ninja chicken to get the little boy Ben to eat it. It was really quite good and we had steamed veggies that included peas at my request ;) I did get home early, about 9:10ish… which was nice. Before I went to bed I made a list of things I had to do in the coming week. Otherwise I am pretty sure I would have laid in bed fretting all night. Laying in bed I read for a little while, I am starting a real push to finish the book I am currently reading… It’s not exactly a page turner, but one I would like to finish. Problem is it is 400 pages and I am on page 175, so I have a ways to go.
Monday I got up refreshed and was at work on time! Getting to bed early really helps this to happen. I also have been praying God will give me what Solomon prayed for, contentment and purpose in my everyday work… working for God, not for man or praises from other people. This is a hard attitude to come by, but I have confidence God will provide. The morning went well I laid out what I would do and basically stuck to the plan. I have resolved to practice French at least 30 minutes each day. I found a great site Francais Interactif, that I am using on a daily basis now. If I am serious about learning French this is the type of dedication it will take. I also filled out a form for an Oxford Scholarship. The form was only 1 page containing 3 questions with only 4 lines in which to answer each question. Shorter would seem easier to fill out, but it just means you have to choose your words even more carefully since there is only a very limited number you can use. This is great scholarship covering all fees- academic and college- plus a living stipend. I really tried to distinguish myself on paper, but like I said in such limited space it is tough. A number of finalists get flown to Oxford to interview. Pray for this one for me, it would be huge!
In other news, I haven’t been to the store in a week and I wasn’t planning on going for a while. I kind of want to use up what I have… so for lunch I made spaghetti, with onions, peppers, not too great, but hey it worked. I took a nap after lunch and then headed to the pool for a quick swim. I wanted to work on kicking and using my legs more. This is what Bianca told me to work on. So I used the kickboard and went to town practicing kicking. It is surprisingly tiring! I also picked up some recharge cards for my phone. I had run out of credit on Friday and just hadn’t realized my messages weren’t being sent… maybe that is why my French teacher showed up…oops. I also tried to mail a small package, but it was going to cost about $40 so I said forget it! I will send it with a missions team headed back to the states and have them mail it domestically. Might not be as exciting as getting a package mailed from Africa, but it is definitely more economical.
In the afternoon on Monday I typed up my lab results from the past couple of weeks. It is exciting that I am actually accumulating quite a bit of data. Later on I also went over and worked with librarian on step two to securing access to free online journals. We finished step one, registering with PERI, now we are registering with the publishers and started on another network that is more focused on environmental studies… Things are looking promising for this endeavor. Once the connection is set up and I learn how to use it well, I will team up with Susan to teach the faculty and students how to use it.
Finally, before calling it a day on Monday I went over to the filter plant with Konate to look at why the flow rate was SO slow. We had Omar pump water through the pipe to try and clear any blockage that might be there. This seems to have worked as the flow rate went up again. We will see how long this increase lasts…
For dinner, again I am low on food, so I made a giant smoothie. It was really more like sherbet it was so thick :) After dinner, I had the realization that working one day here really feels like working two days because of the break in the middle day. It is exhausting! That night I worked on planning bible study for Wednesday, restringing my guitar and writing up a letter to Professor Soboyejo about my work, ect. I went to bed early and read for a while before nodding off.
Sidenote: The French girls got new motos today. New motos! I hate to admit it, but I was a little jealous a first. I started to think, “Why don’t I get a moto?” Then I remembered I didn’t ask for a moto and that I don’t want a moto. I have my bike. I love my bike. I get great exercise and I am way safer. But, admittedly, it is still hard when someone gets something and you don’t.
Sidenote2: I have decided to keep the pitcher part of the blender in my room. It is just too new and I don’t have a lot of confidence in how my housemates treat property to let them use it. This could be a mean thing to do, but this is how it is going to be…
Tuesday morning I again got an early start. This is a good record so far. I finished up the last of my baked oatmeal, which was incredible even cold! I never heated it up and still liked it :) I went into to work for only like 30 minutes then headed out on an adventure to visit the school where my friend Maggie helps out.
It was a very interesting experience. The school was so chaotic. There were a ton of kids running around. There were dirt floors, and no lights… you can imagine with all the jumping around the kids managed to kick up a fair amount of dust, not good for the lungs to be sure! They have only one notebook each and Maggie has to copy assignments for them into each book by hand since there are no photocopiers. We also worked on drawing donkey pictures for the kids to color in art class. The whole time I was there in the morning which was about 3 hours, the kids learned about a square, rectangle, circle and angle. They also practiced the letter “d”. That is it… in three hours! Any other time the kids were just running around. I took some pictures I will post them as soon I have a chance to go through them.
When I got back to 2iE around lunch time I immediately started the flow rate measurements. I made a quick lunch of rice, with some ranch seasoning on it. So I admit, I am not very good at making rice yet. I was impatient and should have let it cook longer… so it was still a bit crunchy. At first I liked the crunch, but it got progressively harder to eat as I got through the bowl.
After lunch I took my normal water samples, ran tests, ect. I then listened to sermon on science and faith taking notes as it went. I was supposed to be meeting with Ben at 6:30 to plan for the WIRED lesson this week. We were going to talk about faith and science so I wanted to prepare a little.
My French lesson at 5:00 was great. My resolve to spend 30 minutes has lasted two days so far, but there is a marked improvement. I will try and keep it up :) I should also note that the big todo meeting I was briefed about on Friday was going on… I was not super interested and not invited, so whatever, and I didn’t have the energy to get all dressed up to go talk to the people anyway. BTW the weather is getting hotter. I can feel my energy levels dropping during the day and at night I have to put on my A/C for like 15 minutes to cool down my room before falling asleep.
As planned at 6:30 Ben came over, we decided to answer some questions left over from the last week and then talk about prayer, so the notes on the sermon weren’t too important, but it is good to have them. Faith and science is an important topic. If you are interested I would recommend listening to this: HTB Faith and Science Message
After the meeting with Ben I made some awesome oatmeal crackers! Definitely a 10 on my rating system! For dinner I had another smoothie. This time I tried adding coconut for more flavor, but I think need to add more to get any sort of effect. I watched only some of the more exciting parts of Pirates of the Carribean at World’s End and worked on this post.
I could go into what has happened already today, Wednesday, but my time here is up! I have to get to bible study, so you will have to wait until next time to hear what I am up to today…
All the best,
Sara
P.S. Way to make it through this epic retelling of my week. This one is definitely longer than usual. My inner dialogue which naturally becomes my written posts seems to be especially detailed and loquacious today. (Bet you haven’t used that word in a sentence lately!)
Last Tuesday I successfully posted the last entry and had a wonderfully long conversation with my Mom. I went to Les Petites Delices as usual and this time since my stomach was really shot I ordered a “pain au raisin”, which is normally a spiral of flaky dough with raisins inside. However, the pain au raisin from the petites delices is more like a cinnamon roll without the heavy frosting. Major score! I will definitely get that again. And they served it HOT! Yum. I got there about 8pm and was afraid it was closed since there was no one else there. But they said they were open and didn’t seem to mind having me there. Besides, I really liked having the place to myself. The only downside was the mosquitoes, but for some reason I can’t feel them when they bite me and the bites don’t itch…even though I know I get some because I can see the red spots, weird.
Wednesday I woke up feeling much, much better. Not eating much for a few days was a good plan. I also didn’t take the Doxycycline again because I heard that could have adverse affects on one’s stomach. You have to eat it with a meal which I feel like I normally do, but oh well. I am going to switch back to Mefloquin for a bit to see if it helps my stomach not be so sore. In the morning, I was hard at work doing some suspended solids measurements, basically to measure how much stuff in the water… I worked until 2:30 and then made up some baked oatmeal before heading to bible study. I had run out of cereal and I found this recipe in my magic cookbook and wanted to give it a try. It smelled really yummy when it came out of the oven. I can’t wait to try to for breakfast!
Bible study went great. The girls were really engaged and thinking. We went over James 2:14-3:12, talking about faith and deeds and taming the tongue. Both excellent topics! After bible study I decided not to go back to work, this was my plan all along which is why I worked straight up until 2:30… Instead I went and took care of depositing a check and getting more money out the bank. Again this endeavor took me 45 minutes! I was about to go to the local branch by the university, but that line was out the door. So instead I went to the downtown one thinking there might be less people. At least that way there would be places to sit while waiting, and I could check on my ATM card. When you get to the bank the first thing you do is take a number like you do at the deli counter. Well the number I got was 914… and they were currently helping customer 879. Yeah, talk about a discouraging way to start off this banking experience :( At the bank I next went to the lady who gives you a piece of paper with your account balance on it. Forget monthly statements, or online banking. The only thing you know about your account it the bottom line, which for me is frustrating because I like to see all my information, thank you very much. Since at that point I had a ton of time to kill I went over and asked about my card, pretty sure I would get the same response as before… BUT to my surprise and delight they had my card! The heavens parted and angels started singing… However, I couldn’t use it until after 7pm that night and I still had to deposit a check so I still had to wait. BUT the prospect of not having to wait like that again, helped me pass the time.
From the bank I headed to Orca intending to buy a spatula and check prices on blenders. I was successful with the spatula as well as found some great shampoo and conditioner which is hard to find…Unfortunately their blender selection was less than impressive so I made the decision that I would go back to the Decorama and buy the one I liked there. This was my hunch all along, but I needed to be a smart shopper and check out all my options. And when I say all my option I mean all my options. After leaving Orca I managed some tricky traffic maneuvers and made it to the home store kitty corner to Orca. They had a huge selection of fine blending devices, but the prices were double what I wanted to pay. C’est la vie! So from here I rode my bike to the vegetable market. It was just past 6 and most of the women were packed up to go home… but I had already invited Maggie over to help make and enjoy dinner and needed a few things. So, I had to try. And sure enough as soon as I roll up I am bombarded by teenage girls asking me what I want and suggesting that I have a need for just about everything they are selling. I get the green peppers and green onions which was what I was looking for and just as I am refusing every other offer saying I don’t need anything else, a women with awesome looking strawberries catches my eye… I can’t resist and buy 2 kilos, or 4 pints worth. Well worth the stop since the price was only 1250CFA a kilo down from 3000CFA when strawberry season first started. I am trying to build up a supply in my freezer so I can have smoothies for a while…
Anyway, I told Maggie between 6:15-6:30 and I didn’t get home until 6:30… lucky for me the housemates let her in and she waiting for me there. We got straight to work on the dinner I had planned. We made salmon cakes from the packaged salmon my Mom sent… We had green beans left over from Monday and made rice and a lemon thyme sauce. The meal was delicious! And afterwards Ben came over and the three of us watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Ben really reminds me of my brother Jordan. It is like looking at Jordan 5 years from now… weird. After everyone left I stayed up and looked over my finances. As I mentioned, there isn’t an easy way to see what is going on with my account so I have to keep good records myself or else I end up surprised by my balance at the end of the month! I had also taken out quite a bit the last time and it didn’t last as long as I had expected… I was able to figure out where all the money went and determined it was well within my budget. Living in a cash economy is tough! The way I handle things is I have a monthly calendar that I draw up at the start of each month and each day write in what money I spent that day. I usually record stuff about every three to five days, everyday is too hard to remember to do! The system is working well so far. I am trying to balance spending enough to enjoy myself here, while saving some to manage the travel I want to do and the expenses I will have this summer. Since I don’t have much time at home this summer I don’t think I can find a job. I would like to work, but more than that I want to be able to go on vacation with my family. If you have any suggestions for me I would love them!
Since I ended up staying up later than I had hoped on Wednesday night and still wasn’t 100%, Thursday morning I decided to stay in bed until I felt good and then go into work. This scheme worked and can now say I have fully recovered from whatever was wrong. I still haven’t taken and Doxcycline again… I plan to start the mefloquine on Friday. In the morning I worked on my filters as usual. I cleaned out the basins again because one of them had some serious algae growing in it! I brought my camera to take pictures of it and then decided to walk around and take pictures of the whole campus. You can expect a virtual tour of 2iE in the next monthly update… Oh the suspense! I had lunch with my friend Moulaye who afterwards showed me pictures of his house and the desert in Mauritania. They were pretty cool actually. In the afternoon I responded to the Birthday emails and facebook messages I had gotten… This took a lot more time than I had anticipated! There was also a department wide meeting I attended. I understood a lot more than the first one I went to a few months ago, but still have a ways to go. At one point some guys came in and started moving around boxes and chairs making it very hard to hear! I was like come on… are you serious, I have a hard enough time as it is understanding what is going on without having to strain to hear what is being said! Anyway, at the meeting Professor Maiga brought up the proposals I made for possible Master’s research topics and they were well received.
Thursday evening I went to WIRED, as is the norm. Ben taught Junior High and I helped him. He did a question and answer thing where the kids wrote down questions they had and we answered them as best as we could… I was skeptical at first, but it turned out well.
Friday morning I had a meeting scheduled with Professor Maiga. I had made up a list of things to go over with him the day before which was helpful, but my printer connection is still not working so I had to go from memory kind of defeating the point of typing up meeting notes. He had another meeting right after mine and since we started late I didn’t get to discuss all the topics in as much detail as I had hoped for, but I was still able to take some major steps forward. We discussed in more depth the proposals I mentioned before and emailed another professor here who we are hoping will be interested in working on finding local materials suitable for making the ceramic filters. Finding and testing the materials is the most time consuming steps in trying to set up a filter factory. If this can be done by 2iE, establishing a factory in Ouagadougou should be easy. Also, I would like to mention that all this past week, minus Thursday I have been to work pretty much on time. Yeah for me.
Friday was already scheduled to be a hectic day in that I planned to go to the post office to pick up a package as well as go buy the blender. I had invited my friends over for smoothies that night, so I kind of needed to buy it… I left work at 11:00 to go get my package before the post office closed for lunch and then go workout. I headed out, ready to go and find the road barricaded! So I have to take a detour to a side street… ugh. I make it to the post office only to find as I am walking in that I left the magic slip of paper with the package number on it at home! I try to talk the guy into getting me the package anyway, but I knew it was useless. The place is such a mess and without the number it would be impossible to find it… so I was about to be very sad, when I just brightened up and said, “Oh well! I guess I will have to come back again this afternoon, even though I also have to go to Decorama which is in the opposite direction…more exercise and chance preserve through trials” (Persevering through trials was something we went over in bible study.) Before leaving, I did buy some strawberries from the lady outside the post office. Funny story, I ask for 2 kilos and she hears 10 kilos. We agree on a per kilo price and then she asks me if I want them in a crate or in the large metal bowl she has. I don’t really get it because 2 kilos isn’t that much… it is at this point I realize she thinks I want 10 kilos. I explain the misunderstanding and buy my 2 kilos and leave, but I was still around to hear her recounting to her friends the story of the white girl who got ten and two mixed up. It was funny, but I kind of felt like she was making fun of me, but I am going to hope it was all good natured which I genuinely believe it was.
Right, back to me… I head to the rec center and have an awesome, awesome workout. Mix some speed work into the normal 3 mile run. I go back to work around 2:00 and take some samples. I don’t have time to run the tests because there is a school wide meeting at 3:30, Oye! Also, I should mention that I was invited to participate in a IWA conference call set for that evening at 11:00pm and since I don’t have a direct number they can call in on I have to scramble to find a way to take the call. Luckily I talked to the right person, Professor Wethe, who said I could use his office and have them call into his direct line.
The 3:30 meeting turned out to be all about a big 2iE Foundation planning meeting scheduled for Monday and Tuesday of next week, of which I had no part to play. Luckily the meeting didn’t last long! I also would like to point out that this meeting must be pretty important because they repainted all the walls and scrubbed everything down, added potted plants to the buildings, ect. They are really getting everything ready. I think it is a meeting for all the donors… definitely people you want to impress. Anyway, after the meeting I head out for the post office adventure – take two. I feel like I have resigned myself to the fact that whenever I get a package it will take me two trips to the post office to get it! I made it there successfully and lucky for me the barricade was down so I didn’t have to detour again. I found out the package was from my friends Claire and Carolyn two girls who were very close friends on my crew team. They sent me new guitar strings, hair elastics, some magazines, gum, candy hearts, and hair conditioner. I love these girls! They are amazing :)
After the package was securely in my possession I rode the 2.5 miles to get to Decorama and bought my blender. This purchase was made possible by the Birthday present from my grandparents. Blenders aren’t cheap here, but I am sure I will use it enough to make it worth it. AND, I will probably be able to sell it before I leave to recover some of the cost. On the way back I stopped at a convenience store to buy some sugar for the smoothies and made it back to 2iE before 6:00. Impressive, I know. I needed to be back by 6:00 to get the keys to Professor Wethe’s office to take the call that night. BUT he was no where to be found. I waited until 6:15 but then had to go to get to Grease on time… He said he would leave the key with the guard if he couldn’t find me. So I wrote him a reminder note that I stuck on his door, crossed my fingers, and headed out. I planned to walk to ISO, but just as I left 2iE Omar, the lab technician rode past, stopped, and offered me a ride. The prospect of walking wasn’t that appealing so I took him up on his offer! I got to the school in plenty of time :)
Sidenote: I was supposed to have a French lesson at 5:00, but I canceled earlier in the week because I wasn’t sure what time the Grease play would start. Even though the play didn’t start until 7:00, I was glad I cancelled it… except that my teacher didn’t get the message and showed up anyway. Quel dommage! (What a shame!) The good thing is he doesn’t really care when stuff like happens... which is all the same to me :)
Grease was great. I knew most of the kids who were in it from WIRED and other activities so it was really neat to see them succeed. Keri was so cute as Sandy. Keri’s sister, Amy, played Rizzo and her own personality fit the character great. The singing was really impressive and given the limitations of Ouagadougou, the sets and costumes were well done. The sound quality was rough, but it’s Africa… so what can you do. At least they tried to have microphones; even if the sound was really hollow and scratchy sometimes. After the show was over Leanna, Tyler, Ben, Will, Maggie, Anna, and Rosie all came over as planned. The only sad part of the night was that Bianca couldn’t join us. Apparently there is some talk of protests in the near future so Peace Corps is keeping all the volunteers in their villages and out of the bigger cities. The day set for the demonstrations is tomorrow Thursday February 28th. My hope is that nothing happens at all. I guess we will find out tomorrow, eh?
When we first came in the gate I stopped and asked the guard about the key that was supposed to be left for me. He didn’t have it and didn’t know anything about it. Ugh, so I still didn’t have the key… it was about 9:30, my call was set for 11 and I had 7 guests over… What did I do? I went home, made everyone smoothies, and then spent the next half hour talking to the guards trying to track down what might have happened to the key Professor Wethe was supposed to leave. I tried to call him on his cell, but the call wouldn’t go through! Talk about inconvenient time for the cell network to malfunction… After a lot of talking I finally made the guards get out the bag of keys I knew they had in the back room. They assured me, though, that the key wasn’t there. The big black plastic bag holding all the keys contained 4 little bags inside. We opened 3 of them with no luck and the guy is like, “See, it’s not here…” I politely asked him to open the last bag, and wouldn’t you know… the last key in the last bag was for Professor Wethe’s office. My heart started racing. Could this be real? I had resigned myself to the fact that I would miss the call and was pretty bummed, but now I had a key in my hands. I start walking with determination to his office to see if it worked. You know that walk when you are so nervous to know what you will find, so you are praying the whole time that the key works, or the letter says what you want it say, ect.
Anyway, I put the key in the lock and almost leaped for joy when it turned the lock and let me! I was afraid it was an old key and wouldn’t work… But it did work! This would be an example of providence. So I went home to be with my guests again, this time happy and content, to pass the last half hour with them before I had to go take the call. I wouldn’t have arranged the smoothie night given the craziness of this conference call stuff. However, I didn’t know the time the call would be scheduled for until the day before, and who would have thought it would be 11pm on Friday! When I got home with the keys in hand, my friends were finishing up LOST and then started watching The Office. I totally wanted to stay and watch with them, but I had to go. Boy was I glad I did! The conference call went so great! I wasn’t sure if I would have anything to contribute, but turns out I did and I felt like a million bucks walking out the office a midnight when the call ended… The call was in regards the IWA sustainability toolbox I created in the summer of 2006 when I worked at IWA. They are reopening and reworking the initiative, and now I can stay a part of it! Being able to explain the original thinking and give my blessing for redesigning the site was great. Before the call I had sat down and took notes on the points I wanted to make, ect. This was SO helpful! I would also like to ad my toastmasters training really came in handy. When I was about to start speaking I got kind of nervous. It was a call with 7 other people from all over the world; professionals who are high in their company ranks and leaders in the IWA. Could be intimidating, but I just remembered what I had learned with Toastmasters and spoke with confidence :)
I went home at midnight, and speaking of Toastmasters, I stayed up and planned for Toastmaster the next morning. I was the Table Topics Master and I had been meaning to plan for this role for the last two weeks and never got to it! All I can say is I guess the night before is better than the morning of…
I would also like to note Tuesday night while outlining this post I was listening to Hannah Montana/ Miley Cyrus at the moment, nothing like that teen pop sensation to pick me when I feeling a bit down.
Saturday I got up to review what I had planned for Toastmasters only to discover Susan had asked me to present an education session, and I totally forgot about it!
After a minor internal struggled I decided I could not do it. It about killed me. But I gave myself grace. I would rather disappoint Susan, than do a shoddy job at something. This would be my definition of exercising the idea of “not sweating the small stuff”. I could have beat myself up about it, but I didn’t. And you know what? The meeting went just fine without the extra session. In fact, the meeting would have gone way overtime if I had taken another 10 minutes to present the educational session on how to pick a speech topic.
As the Table Topics Master I was in charge of the impromptu speech part of the meeting. I had to ask questions that people could give one to two minute responses to. The theme I chose was “What If…” and had the members use their imagination to answer questions like:
What if you could be Olympic athlete? What sport would you chose and what would you do with your gold medal if you won?
What if you could live in any movie? Which movie would like to live in and what makes you chose that film?
What if you were able to fly in a hot air balloon over any city in the world? Which city would you pick and what would you hope to see?
What if you were running for president of your country? What would be the most important issue to you and how would you address this issue once you became president?
The session went well, but it is hard to get non-native English speakers to speak on the spot for 2 minutes. Their answers usually last only about 30 seconds! After Toastmasters Susan and I went for lunch at a place called De Niro… I ordered a good tuna sandwich and while we were there a bunch of other white people started showing up. There was no one there when we got there, and we just randomly picked the place. We thought the owners should pay us for the publicity of sitting outside and bringing in other customers :) From lunch we went to the market to look for some fabric. Susan had found some really neat brown fabric with a cool bird and paisley type print… I was hoping to find the same thing. Unfortunately, we had no such luck. I did, however, buy some strawberries. This time I only paid a 1000CFA a kilo! But I didn’t have a good bag to put them in and as I rode home on my bike I could tell I was crushing them. Sure enough, when I got home there was a nice pool of strawberry juice in the plastic bag which had proceeded to leak into my purse… sad. But I was still able to freeze the strawberries, which was good, even though they were kind of beat up. Oh, before we headed back home Susan offered to buy me a milkshake at the rec center. We had ridden our bikes there, parked them then walked to lunch and the market so on the way back it was natural to stop in for some dessert and to sit out and enjoy the pool and nice weather :)
When we finally got back to 2iE we ran into Professor Wethe. He was so concerned when, that morning, the guard told him he hadn’t given me the keys. I guess he did leave the keys at the gate, but they never got to me due to miscommunication among the guards. He seemed pretty concerned that I hadn’t been able to take the call, but he was very happy to hear I found a key and was able to get in. Saturday afternoon I ran tests on the samples I had taken on Friday. I intended to run the samples on Friday, but I didn’t have time to do it considering I was running around trying to everything at once that day! I blame it on the fact I left my slip of paper for the package at home the first time. This faux pas cost me a good 45 minutes, but who’s counting. It was good exercise, not that I needed any more!
By the time I finished running the microbiology tests I was exhausted. I went home and laid down watch a little ducktales, you know the old Disney cartoon about the three little duck brothers and their uncle Scrooge. It was surprisingly not quite as entertaining as I remember it… For dinner I had the salmon cakes left over from Wednesday. FYI they were just as good, if not better, than they were the first time around. After dinner about 7:00ish I rode my bike over to Leanna for a low key movie with her and Tyler. We decide to watch Micheal Clayton. I was doubtful at first, but it turned out to be an excellent movie. I was a little frustrating in that I didn’t know what the hack had been going on until the end. After the movie was over I rode my bike home and went to sleep…sigh… I slept very well. I should have. Boy was I tired!
Sunday I woke up and went to the gym to work out. I chose to run and listened to great sermon titled “The Art of Rebellion”. It is about how being a Christian actually requires rebelling and being different from the world. I was a bit tired on the treadmill, but I worked through it and in the end felt really good. For lunch I made the last hamburger in my freezer with a mango on the side :) I read some more of my book and made a quick outline of the talk I going to give on March 6th at the 2iE Scientific Forum. I quickly ran to the lab to read the tests I did the day before, and then headed with Susan over to the book club meeting. I was supposed to have a tennis lesson, but I had to cancel because book club was at the same time. Book club was held at the house of one of the Peace Corps administrators. It was awesome. She has a real American couch in the living room… I could have sat there all night. The conversation about the book was great. We were discussing, “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, and boy is there a lot to talk about in that book! This was the first book club I had been to since high school and I loved it. Also, going along with the theme of the book some people made and brought Afganistani food to sample. Yum.
Book club lasted until 5:00 and from there I stopped by Leanna’s and then rode on to her office at ISO to talk with my family. It was nice to reconnect. I hadn’t talked to my Dad or Ryan for a while! It was about the time that they were eating so they just brought the computer to the table and I joined in on the meal. It made me feel like I was really there, how nice!
I had originally planned on having a chill evening at home on Sunday. However, the gang was to get together for dinner on Saturday night and since that didn’t happen we did it on Sunday instead… The boys were cooking so I didn’t complain. Ben made Ninja chicken, basically just a Chinese chicken dish his Dad made for him growing up. His Dad called it ninja chicken to get the little boy Ben to eat it. It was really quite good and we had steamed veggies that included peas at my request ;) I did get home early, about 9:10ish… which was nice. Before I went to bed I made a list of things I had to do in the coming week. Otherwise I am pretty sure I would have laid in bed fretting all night. Laying in bed I read for a little while, I am starting a real push to finish the book I am currently reading… It’s not exactly a page turner, but one I would like to finish. Problem is it is 400 pages and I am on page 175, so I have a ways to go.
Monday I got up refreshed and was at work on time! Getting to bed early really helps this to happen. I also have been praying God will give me what Solomon prayed for, contentment and purpose in my everyday work… working for God, not for man or praises from other people. This is a hard attitude to come by, but I have confidence God will provide. The morning went well I laid out what I would do and basically stuck to the plan. I have resolved to practice French at least 30 minutes each day. I found a great site Francais Interactif, that I am using on a daily basis now. If I am serious about learning French this is the type of dedication it will take. I also filled out a form for an Oxford Scholarship. The form was only 1 page containing 3 questions with only 4 lines in which to answer each question. Shorter would seem easier to fill out, but it just means you have to choose your words even more carefully since there is only a very limited number you can use. This is great scholarship covering all fees- academic and college- plus a living stipend. I really tried to distinguish myself on paper, but like I said in such limited space it is tough. A number of finalists get flown to Oxford to interview. Pray for this one for me, it would be huge!
In other news, I haven’t been to the store in a week and I wasn’t planning on going for a while. I kind of want to use up what I have… so for lunch I made spaghetti, with onions, peppers, not too great, but hey it worked. I took a nap after lunch and then headed to the pool for a quick swim. I wanted to work on kicking and using my legs more. This is what Bianca told me to work on. So I used the kickboard and went to town practicing kicking. It is surprisingly tiring! I also picked up some recharge cards for my phone. I had run out of credit on Friday and just hadn’t realized my messages weren’t being sent… maybe that is why my French teacher showed up…oops. I also tried to mail a small package, but it was going to cost about $40 so I said forget it! I will send it with a missions team headed back to the states and have them mail it domestically. Might not be as exciting as getting a package mailed from Africa, but it is definitely more economical.
In the afternoon on Monday I typed up my lab results from the past couple of weeks. It is exciting that I am actually accumulating quite a bit of data. Later on I also went over and worked with librarian on step two to securing access to free online journals. We finished step one, registering with PERI, now we are registering with the publishers and started on another network that is more focused on environmental studies… Things are looking promising for this endeavor. Once the connection is set up and I learn how to use it well, I will team up with Susan to teach the faculty and students how to use it.
Finally, before calling it a day on Monday I went over to the filter plant with Konate to look at why the flow rate was SO slow. We had Omar pump water through the pipe to try and clear any blockage that might be there. This seems to have worked as the flow rate went up again. We will see how long this increase lasts…
For dinner, again I am low on food, so I made a giant smoothie. It was really more like sherbet it was so thick :) After dinner, I had the realization that working one day here really feels like working two days because of the break in the middle day. It is exhausting! That night I worked on planning bible study for Wednesday, restringing my guitar and writing up a letter to Professor Soboyejo about my work, ect. I went to bed early and read for a while before nodding off.
Sidenote: The French girls got new motos today. New motos! I hate to admit it, but I was a little jealous a first. I started to think, “Why don’t I get a moto?” Then I remembered I didn’t ask for a moto and that I don’t want a moto. I have my bike. I love my bike. I get great exercise and I am way safer. But, admittedly, it is still hard when someone gets something and you don’t.
Sidenote2: I have decided to keep the pitcher part of the blender in my room. It is just too new and I don’t have a lot of confidence in how my housemates treat property to let them use it. This could be a mean thing to do, but this is how it is going to be…
Tuesday morning I again got an early start. This is a good record so far. I finished up the last of my baked oatmeal, which was incredible even cold! I never heated it up and still liked it :) I went into to work for only like 30 minutes then headed out on an adventure to visit the school where my friend Maggie helps out.
It was a very interesting experience. The school was so chaotic. There were a ton of kids running around. There were dirt floors, and no lights… you can imagine with all the jumping around the kids managed to kick up a fair amount of dust, not good for the lungs to be sure! They have only one notebook each and Maggie has to copy assignments for them into each book by hand since there are no photocopiers. We also worked on drawing donkey pictures for the kids to color in art class. The whole time I was there in the morning which was about 3 hours, the kids learned about a square, rectangle, circle and angle. They also practiced the letter “d”. That is it… in three hours! Any other time the kids were just running around. I took some pictures I will post them as soon I have a chance to go through them.
When I got back to 2iE around lunch time I immediately started the flow rate measurements. I made a quick lunch of rice, with some ranch seasoning on it. So I admit, I am not very good at making rice yet. I was impatient and should have let it cook longer… so it was still a bit crunchy. At first I liked the crunch, but it got progressively harder to eat as I got through the bowl.
After lunch I took my normal water samples, ran tests, ect. I then listened to sermon on science and faith taking notes as it went. I was supposed to be meeting with Ben at 6:30 to plan for the WIRED lesson this week. We were going to talk about faith and science so I wanted to prepare a little.
My French lesson at 5:00 was great. My resolve to spend 30 minutes has lasted two days so far, but there is a marked improvement. I will try and keep it up :) I should also note that the big todo meeting I was briefed about on Friday was going on… I was not super interested and not invited, so whatever, and I didn’t have the energy to get all dressed up to go talk to the people anyway. BTW the weather is getting hotter. I can feel my energy levels dropping during the day and at night I have to put on my A/C for like 15 minutes to cool down my room before falling asleep.
As planned at 6:30 Ben came over, we decided to answer some questions left over from the last week and then talk about prayer, so the notes on the sermon weren’t too important, but it is good to have them. Faith and science is an important topic. If you are interested I would recommend listening to this: HTB Faith and Science Message
After the meeting with Ben I made some awesome oatmeal crackers! Definitely a 10 on my rating system! For dinner I had another smoothie. This time I tried adding coconut for more flavor, but I think need to add more to get any sort of effect. I watched only some of the more exciting parts of Pirates of the Carribean at World’s End and worked on this post.
I could go into what has happened already today, Wednesday, but my time here is up! I have to get to bible study, so you will have to wait until next time to hear what I am up to today…
All the best,
Sara
P.S. Way to make it through this epic retelling of my week. This one is definitely longer than usual. My inner dialogue which naturally becomes my written posts seems to be especially detailed and loquacious today. (Bet you haven’t used that word in a sentence lately!)
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Inspiration for your day. XOXO, Sara
This is a picture I took in Mali. I love this verse. I set this picture as the background on my computer. I hope it inspires you, like it inspires me...
Valentine's Day, Softball, and my Birthday!
I managed to post the last two posts from Les Petites Delices on Wednesday. Last Wednesday I had my whole day planned out. I would work in the morning with no distractions leave around noon go to Petites Delices for lunch and to post my entry then go workout, which is right next door before heading over to bible study at 3:00. Well, I was late getting out around lunch time and then I spent time than anticipated online so I ended up having to postpone the workout. I think that was a good choice anyway because the ham and cheese Panini I got for lunch was really good and probably not fully digested. I made it to bible study just in time. Petites Delices is a good 15 minute ride from Maggie’s place where we have the study and I needed to stop and have copies of a crossword puzzle made. Sheesh! Never a dull moment. At bible study we went over the first half of James 2. The lesson went really well. The girls were participating, and I think they got the idea of not showing favoritism and how important it is to treat your neighbor as yourself. When I got back to work I read the test results from Tuesday. I left work very satisfied with what I had gotten done and went to go work out! It was weird not getting there until 7:00ish and staying at the gym until 8pm, but the running was great. When I got home I spent the rest of my evening planning the lesson I would teach at wired on Thursday. I decided to do a PowerPoint presentation and teach on how God can use you even if you are young. This, however, was no ordinary PowerPoint presentation. I used about 70 slides and made it like my teaching dialog with only a sentence or two on a slide. The idea was I would not talk at all, but just click the slides! Sounds a bit wild, but the kids have been having a tough time listening, they are in junior high remember… So I thought this would be a way for them to be encouraged to pay attention. You’ll have to read on to find out how the experiment went!
Thursday Happy Valentine’s Day. What a day it turned out to be! No I didn’t get any secret admirer cards, which was actually a great relief ;) To start off the day I had a tennis lesson in the morning. So even just with that you know it is going to be a good day. I got back from tennis and was able to complete the microbiology tests before lunch time. I was on a role… Thursday I finally had lunch with my housemates at the rec center. We got there around 1-ish and the girls worked out while I laid down on the sofa in the TV room and watched some cheesy movie, It Could Happen to You with Nicolas Cage. I had already had my tennis lessons so I saw no need to workout twice and besides I was terribly tired. As I watched the movie I did make some really fun Valentines for my friends. I made one for Susan, Leanna, Tyler, Ben, Maggie, and Bianca. When I got back to work in the afternoon I googled Valetine’s Day jokes and put a little joke on each one. They were way better than the kind you buy in the store. Lunch went well. We had a nice conversation. I was rather taken aback when one of the girls asked me how much I am getting paid. I kindly said I was not comfortable with discussing that. I my head I was like, “Really? Why would you ask that? I mean we are getting along, but we aren’t really what I would consider friends and I can’t imagine what motives you have for wanting to know that!” Anyway, later talking to Bianca she pointed out that it could be a French thing, they aren’t quite as private about that sort of thing in France as we are in the States. And it’s not like it is a huge secret, but I just felt like they had ulterior and not such noble motives for wanting to know.
The afternoon at work went by very fast. I left about 5:30 to get to Paradisios for Dinner. Bianca, my friend in the Peace Corps, had just gotten back in town and since I hadn’t had a chance to get her a Christmas present I offered to buy us dinner :) I was great. We split a Hawaiian pizza. Highly recommend it. On the way to WIRED from there we stopped by Maggie’s house and slipped her Valentine under her door since she teaches a class on Thursday night. When I saw her on Friday she was so cute about it. She wasn’t sure it was me or another Sara! SO to end your suspense… the lesson at WIRED went GREAT! Really really well. You should have seen there faces and anticipation when they realized what was going on and that I wasn’t talking, but was able to predict everything they would do or have questions about and put the right slides in the presentation! It was tough because I really wanted to talk. There are so many things you want to add or get them to think about, but I remained silent. They have missed a couple of things in the lesson, but it surely a week they will remember. At the end we also played a bible verse draw game where I put up a verse on the screen and two players race to find the verse in their bibles and read it out loud. It was boys verses girls, the girls won by an impressive margin. At WIRED they had amazing snacks of cookies with Valentine’s Day M&Ms. I had about 6 or more… I stopped counting. Anyway, I was pretty done for and then Tyler suggests we all go out for ice cream. Yeah! So we went to the Creparie and got Belgium waffles with strawberries and ice cream. It was great except I was SO full after having had one too many cookies at WIRED. All in all it was a great day, and my friends got a kick out my jokes ;)
Friday was the first day of the SOFANWET softball tournament. It was held at ISO and there were teams there from Burkina Faso and the neighboring country of Niger. The morning at work is really kind of a blur I was busy trying to get everything ready for next weeks experiments and finishing up proposals to send to Professor Maiga regarding two master’s thesis topics. I was thankfully able to finish those! I had to be at the softball field at 2:00 which was a stretch with trying to finish the proposals. The real problem was there was no deadline for these proposals. No one tells me I have to do anything. I could have just as easily said, eh… these can wait until later. But thankfully I have been getting my motivation from the idea that I work to honor and please God so I need to do my best. Not to impress others, but because if I don’t I am wasting what God has given me and frankly I don’t want to be the servant who buries his coins…
At 2:00 I reported for the game. We were playing the ISO kids and wouldn’t you know we lost pretty badly. Our pitcher was having issues and the kids were walking one by one. It was so frustrating not being able to do anything. My only consolation was that when I was up at bat I got on base each time. I definitely had to work to stay positive. I am just way too competitive a person and this was the social league so… that explains it. I was just happy to be playing at all though. And we got some really neat t-shirts that say the Ouagadougou Geckos, which was the name of our team. Most of the team members were embassy employees. Since we were at first short on players I invited Maggie to join us. She at least had some softball experience… It was hard though for her to adapt to the slow pitch rather than the fast pitch she was used to playing. After the game was over I hung around a little bit and chatted with some people I hadn’t seen in a while and then went back to work. I got Bernard to sterilize some bottles for me and I had a French lesson. The lesson went well and I think it was because I was in such a good mood from playing softball. After work I did 20 minutes of Abs of Steel since I didn’t feel like I got much of a workout playing softball. For dinner I went over to Leanna’s and had soup with Leanna, Tyler, Maggie, and Bianca. Ben, Will and Tyler B came later to play games. Bianca had found a LOST board game at the Peace Corp hostel and we tried to play it but it was way too complicated and required much more strategy effort than any of us were willing to put in. So in stead we played Phase 10. With 8 people it took a while, but we finished the game. We lost people before finishing on account of the time, but at 12ish Will finally got to phase 10. I was only on phase 7 which was a bummer. I left my bike at Leanna’s house and she drove me home because it was too late for me go back alone.
Saturday there was no Toastmasters this week. I did, however, get up around 8:00 and go into the office to rerun the microbiology tests from the last two weeks. There were some interesting results and I just wanted to check again. It was so nice to be there when there was no one else around. I like being around people, but the lab is one place I like to be alone. I finished just in time to walk to ISO, about a 20 minute walk… I left my bike at Leanna’s remember. This game we played against the Peace Corps team and again we lost. But I made 2 outs catching fly balls down the third base line. I was playing third base… and I had a couple of nice hits. After the game Susan and I got Sloppy Joes for lunch. Gotta love them Sloppy Joes… and watched the next game for a while. I also checked out all the wares the different craft vendors were selling. I wanted to know how much I should bring on Sunday ;) I have decided to start buying people souvenirs now so I don’t have to scramble to stuff in June when it is time to go. Around 2:30ish I walked over to Leanna’s to get my bike, she only lives about a half mile from ISO. On my way there I stopped and bought a really cool three tiered basket to hold my fruits and veggies. Once I got my bike I rode back to ISO carrying the basket rather clumsily as I went. I put on my swimsuit and sat by the pool for a bit and then jumped in a swam a few laps as exercise. It was nice and refreshing.
From the pool I headed back home to chill out a bit. I ended up trying to make pita bread again, but to no avail… again. I had found a different recipe so I thought maybe it would work this time. This was attempt number 4. This time the dough looked and smelled more like pita bread, but again it never rose properly. I am going to wait until I get measuring utensils before I try for a fifth time. I can’t be sure what I am doing is precise and I feel like with yeast, sugar, and salt you have to know what you are doing. I left my house about 6:30ish and rode to Leanna’s house. From there we promptly left to go to the Edge Service. It was great worship and having missed it the last time I really appreciated it. Afterwards, Bianca, Tyler and Ben wanted to watch 28 Days. Leanna and I don’t like scary movies so instead didn’t so we cooked some brownies for the softball tournament, baked up some chips for my birthday the next day and that was that.
Then after the movie was over Leanna cut my hair! I know I am so picky about my hair. I usually make a big stink about getting it cut and where I am going to go, but I let her cut it. Thankfully she did an amazing job and I really like my new haircut. I was actually a bit concerned because it was like already after midnight and I knew she was tired but if she didn’t cut it then I would have had to wait for a long time. SO I took the gamble and won :) That night I slept over at Leanna’s house ;) and before I went to bed I got some movies on my hard drive from Bianca… Good movies! Also, I would like mention that when the clock struck 12, Happy Birthday was sung to me…
Sunday, February 17. What a great day. It also happens to be my Birthday… Is that what makes it great? I will let you decide that. All I know is that 2/17/1985 was a big day for me! My first day on this Earth in fact. So Happy Birthday to me, and to my parents :)
Waking up at Leanna’s was fun. I was glad to be with friends on my Birthday. Leanna and Bianca had to leave about 9-ish to run errands and get to the tournament. I went home at this point to get my stuff together for the game and to read my test results from the day before. Well I got home and realized I didn’t have much to eat for breakfast. I decided I would make a cheesy egg sandwich, but then realized I only had two eggs. I wanted to also make brownies to donate to the Prom committee to sell at their bake sale and those take two eggs. I thought I was going to have to choose between breakfast or brownies, when I got a text from Susan inviting me to come over and she would make me French Toast for my Birthday breakfast. Talk about awesome! So I whipped up the brownies, stuck them in the oven and headed over to Susan’s house. The french toast was excellent and it was just such a nice gesture on her part. She also gave me a really nice Birthday card and a purple scarf. Breakfast finished up later than I had planned and I barely had enough time to pack up the Brownies and the rest of my gear for the day, walk over to read my tests and walk, yes walk, to ISO again. I wanted to walk so I didn’t have to deal with my bike later in the evening after my birthday dinner and everything.
We played our last and final softball game against the Japanese team. They are really good and so we lost pretty badly again. We went 0-3 in the tournament. Not the shiniest of records… The only reason why they didn’t absolutely annihilate us was because another embassy guy joined our team for this last game and he had some mad skills. After our last and final defeat, they have everyone get together and I am thinking we are going to get the good try team at least we had fun pep talk… BUT then they all start singing Happy Birthday and Susan brought brownies for the team to share! What a awesome surprise :)
I had fun walking around and bought a bunch of stuff from the vendors that I had scoped out the day before. Susan bought me lunch of Sloppy Joes, again. It was either that or pizza and I was more up for another Sloppy Joe… The rest of the afternoon I watched the other games that were going on and went to the pool. I listened to HTB sermon, it was Sunday you know! When I went swimming Bianca came by and watched a little bit to give me some pointers. Next time she said she will bring her suit and we will have a swimming lesson. Fun! I had tried to tlak to my family earlier in the afternoon, but it was church time at home so just before we left I checked one last time and wouldn’t you know I caught them! I didn’t get to talk long, but it was great to hear their voices. My Mom was actually down in Florida since the 14th visiting her parents so it was a bit trickier than normal to connect.
After the tournament stuff was all cleaned Bianca, Leanna and I all went back to Leanna’s house for my Birthday dinner. The menu consisted of Bar-B-Q chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The boys took care of the meat and Leanna and Biance made the veggies. Ben was in charge of the rum punch. It was a great dinner and so nice to have friends to share it with! Dinner was nice and drawn out. I could linger at a table to talk for a long time :) To my surprise after dinner I got open some presents! I was not expecting any presents, but my friends all chipped in and got me some great kitchen stuff like a glass bread pan, non-stick cookie sheet, glass sealed flour canisters, and 4 tall glass glasses. The glasses that came with my house were so small, if you take 3 sips you have to refill… I was also gifted a bottle of red wine. I prefer white, but the red will go with a nice meat meal sometime as well. It was SO thoughtful of my friends to get me these things! All day long I was just surprised time and time again…
Once the excitement of the presents was over we sat down and watched Atonement. It was nominated for Best Picture so I really wanted to see it. It was definitely weird. Good, but at the end you aren’t sure what was real and what was not. The actresses they got to play the main women throughout the different stages of her life were so convincingly the same character. We paused the movie in the middle to have dessert, which at my request was a fruit pizza. Everyone sang happy birthday and I got to blow out my candles! It was a very memorable 23rd birthday. Leanna drove me home when everything was said and done. She had no school on Monday so she was able to stay up ;)
I would like to note that my friend Ben made a comment about how I am only 11 months older than he is but that I act like much more of an adult. This is true.
Monday was tough waking up. I really just wanted to keep sleeping, but I knew that I had things to do at work so I got up and went to work, literally. When I checked my email I had such nice emails and birthday wishes from friends. I wasn’t able to check email later on Sunday so I got to receive a bunch of fun Birthday wishes on Monday… which continued onto to Tuesday :) I think one of my favorite ones was Lillie’s poem she wrote using the letters of my name and the fact that Caroline sang me Happy Birthday on facebook.
Monday morning I washed out filters, because there had been some major algae growing in the bottom of filter 1 and the test results overall were showing a deteriorating quality. This little exercise took longer than planned, but I got it done and was out of the office about 12:30 for lunch.
Sunday I offered to help make a meatloaf dinner with Susan for 3 other Peace Corps people. I really needed to go shopping. I hadn’t been to store in two weeks. The pickings were less than slim, at this point they were non-existent. So I had to go shopping didn’t want to go to Marina, but I knew I needed meat which they didn’t have the shopette where I like to go. So I headed to the Palais de Viande or meat palace I had passed on my bike once, but it was closed down… for good. Sad. So I went to the shopette to get my other stuff and had kind of resigned myself to having to make another trip, this time downtown. Not high on my priority list. But I decided to make a last attempt and check at the meat section of the market. Some place I had ventured to before. I must have been feeling especially brave. I had even asked a woman if they sell ground beef there and she said no, but I didn’t believe her so I went anyway and what do you know I see signs for ground meat all over. So I pick the little window that looks the nicest and order my 1 kilo of meat. Thing was there was no ground meat in sight, so I was getting a bit confused. I say ground meat because frankly I don’t know if it was ground “beef” or some other kind of meat. After I tell the guy my order he takes this huge hunk of meat and cuts off a good size slab, weighs it and then cuts it up into little chunks. At this point I think I am semi thinking that may have ordered the wrong thing, maybe I got my verbs wrong… oh no! BUT then he hands the pieces to a young boy who walks over and grinds the meat. SO I got ground meat ground right in front of me. Talk about getting deeper into the culture and, well, more definitely more integrated. I also bought all sorts of veggies and fruits :) I usually only buy as much as I know I can easily carry on my bike, but I didn’t want to go back out so I ended up struggling to carry a very heavy bag and a full backpack on my bike. BUT I made it.
I got home and started making the meatloaf. I had gotten a package of meatloaf seasoning from Leanna so I used that, which was also kind of the inspiration for the meal to begin with. I also soaked my green beans and strawberries in bleach water. I took the tops off and froze the kilo of strawberries and got the beans ready to cook later that evening. As I was about done with the meatloaf I realized I didn’t have any eggs! They were on my list and I thought about stopping to get them, but with my bags so heavy I was like, oh no I’ll just get them later. Wrong. Lucky for me I was able to ride my bike to the nearby university kiosk vendor and buy some eggs there. Not a huge problem, but just another one of those when you go, “Why does life have to be so complicated sometimes?!” I finished up in the kitchen and went back to work, right on time in fact.
In the afternoon I worked on emails and had visit from Nicolas. I then went to the library to meet with lady about the network access. We finally submitted the form, now we just have to wait for an approval response and then register with the publishers. It is not an easy task, but it is worth it and I hope that by mid March the information is made accessible to the 2iE community.
I also talked to Susan who confirmed that the possible Toastmaster’s trip to Accra in May looks like it is a go. How exciting!? The sad thing is Susan is going back to the States for two weeks at the end of March. Good for her, sad for me. I will be so lonely! Another highlight of my afternoon was chatting online with Joanna and making a really inspirational picture. I will post it after this entry. I hope you like it :)
So the dinner was very nice. The meatloaf turned out well and so did the green beans although they could have been cooked longer and I may have gone a bit overboard with the garlic. We didn’t end up eating until 8:00pm so I was hungry… Susan made a fun mango pie for dessert. It was good, the mangos were a old squishy though…so… anyway, I got home around 10:30 and spent a good half an hour trying to get my own personal water filter to work. One of the filter candles is broken and the replacements weren’t fitting right and it was just a huge headache. I finally went to bed at 11:00 just wiped out completely. I had had late nights Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Not good.
Today Tuesday did not start out too well. Actually last night before I went to bed I wasn’t feeling so hot, just upset stomach and ugh… I did go to work and put in a full day. I even ran double the microbiology tests and prepared some filters for suspended solids testing I will do later this week. I have to say though, MAN it does get exhausting walking back and forth, to and from the filter station. Another odd anecdote is that the lab technician was sleeping on the floor in the lab during the repos today which was when I planned to do my tests. So what did I do? I did them anyway. I probably kept him up, but… yeah, it is a lab, not a bedroom, so I win. In the afternoon I went home and wrote this post and then came back to my office for my French lesson. My teacher was really late again which was not okay this time because I had my tennis lesson at 6:15. All the while I am feeling about 60% as well as I normally do. I’m not keeling over, but I am really low on energy, can’t eat anything because it upsets my stomach and just want to go to sleep. So I have French for only 35 minutes and then head to tennis. I should have just cancelled my lesson. That would have been the smart thing to do, but no. I went and struggled through. I felt like a slug I couldn’t get my feet moving! I think in the future I will stick to morning lessons. After work I am too tired to do something like tennis, or at least not when I am feeling lousy. Anyway, from here I am headed to Petites Delices to post this entry. Sorry for any typos, I don’t have time to reread it… I am supposed to be talking to my Mom so… Au Revior!
Sending you a warm hug from a girl who is now all of 23 years old!
Love,
Sara
Thursday Happy Valentine’s Day. What a day it turned out to be! No I didn’t get any secret admirer cards, which was actually a great relief ;) To start off the day I had a tennis lesson in the morning. So even just with that you know it is going to be a good day. I got back from tennis and was able to complete the microbiology tests before lunch time. I was on a role… Thursday I finally had lunch with my housemates at the rec center. We got there around 1-ish and the girls worked out while I laid down on the sofa in the TV room and watched some cheesy movie, It Could Happen to You with Nicolas Cage. I had already had my tennis lessons so I saw no need to workout twice and besides I was terribly tired. As I watched the movie I did make some really fun Valentines for my friends. I made one for Susan, Leanna, Tyler, Ben, Maggie, and Bianca. When I got back to work in the afternoon I googled Valetine’s Day jokes and put a little joke on each one. They were way better than the kind you buy in the store. Lunch went well. We had a nice conversation. I was rather taken aback when one of the girls asked me how much I am getting paid. I kindly said I was not comfortable with discussing that. I my head I was like, “Really? Why would you ask that? I mean we are getting along, but we aren’t really what I would consider friends and I can’t imagine what motives you have for wanting to know that!” Anyway, later talking to Bianca she pointed out that it could be a French thing, they aren’t quite as private about that sort of thing in France as we are in the States. And it’s not like it is a huge secret, but I just felt like they had ulterior and not such noble motives for wanting to know.
The afternoon at work went by very fast. I left about 5:30 to get to Paradisios for Dinner. Bianca, my friend in the Peace Corps, had just gotten back in town and since I hadn’t had a chance to get her a Christmas present I offered to buy us dinner :) I was great. We split a Hawaiian pizza. Highly recommend it. On the way to WIRED from there we stopped by Maggie’s house and slipped her Valentine under her door since she teaches a class on Thursday night. When I saw her on Friday she was so cute about it. She wasn’t sure it was me or another Sara! SO to end your suspense… the lesson at WIRED went GREAT! Really really well. You should have seen there faces and anticipation when they realized what was going on and that I wasn’t talking, but was able to predict everything they would do or have questions about and put the right slides in the presentation! It was tough because I really wanted to talk. There are so many things you want to add or get them to think about, but I remained silent. They have missed a couple of things in the lesson, but it surely a week they will remember. At the end we also played a bible verse draw game where I put up a verse on the screen and two players race to find the verse in their bibles and read it out loud. It was boys verses girls, the girls won by an impressive margin. At WIRED they had amazing snacks of cookies with Valentine’s Day M&Ms. I had about 6 or more… I stopped counting. Anyway, I was pretty done for and then Tyler suggests we all go out for ice cream. Yeah! So we went to the Creparie and got Belgium waffles with strawberries and ice cream. It was great except I was SO full after having had one too many cookies at WIRED. All in all it was a great day, and my friends got a kick out my jokes ;)
Friday was the first day of the SOFANWET softball tournament. It was held at ISO and there were teams there from Burkina Faso and the neighboring country of Niger. The morning at work is really kind of a blur I was busy trying to get everything ready for next weeks experiments and finishing up proposals to send to Professor Maiga regarding two master’s thesis topics. I was thankfully able to finish those! I had to be at the softball field at 2:00 which was a stretch with trying to finish the proposals. The real problem was there was no deadline for these proposals. No one tells me I have to do anything. I could have just as easily said, eh… these can wait until later. But thankfully I have been getting my motivation from the idea that I work to honor and please God so I need to do my best. Not to impress others, but because if I don’t I am wasting what God has given me and frankly I don’t want to be the servant who buries his coins…
At 2:00 I reported for the game. We were playing the ISO kids and wouldn’t you know we lost pretty badly. Our pitcher was having issues and the kids were walking one by one. It was so frustrating not being able to do anything. My only consolation was that when I was up at bat I got on base each time. I definitely had to work to stay positive. I am just way too competitive a person and this was the social league so… that explains it. I was just happy to be playing at all though. And we got some really neat t-shirts that say the Ouagadougou Geckos, which was the name of our team. Most of the team members were embassy employees. Since we were at first short on players I invited Maggie to join us. She at least had some softball experience… It was hard though for her to adapt to the slow pitch rather than the fast pitch she was used to playing. After the game was over I hung around a little bit and chatted with some people I hadn’t seen in a while and then went back to work. I got Bernard to sterilize some bottles for me and I had a French lesson. The lesson went well and I think it was because I was in such a good mood from playing softball. After work I did 20 minutes of Abs of Steel since I didn’t feel like I got much of a workout playing softball. For dinner I went over to Leanna’s and had soup with Leanna, Tyler, Maggie, and Bianca. Ben, Will and Tyler B came later to play games. Bianca had found a LOST board game at the Peace Corp hostel and we tried to play it but it was way too complicated and required much more strategy effort than any of us were willing to put in. So in stead we played Phase 10. With 8 people it took a while, but we finished the game. We lost people before finishing on account of the time, but at 12ish Will finally got to phase 10. I was only on phase 7 which was a bummer. I left my bike at Leanna’s house and she drove me home because it was too late for me go back alone.
Saturday there was no Toastmasters this week. I did, however, get up around 8:00 and go into the office to rerun the microbiology tests from the last two weeks. There were some interesting results and I just wanted to check again. It was so nice to be there when there was no one else around. I like being around people, but the lab is one place I like to be alone. I finished just in time to walk to ISO, about a 20 minute walk… I left my bike at Leanna’s remember. This game we played against the Peace Corps team and again we lost. But I made 2 outs catching fly balls down the third base line. I was playing third base… and I had a couple of nice hits. After the game Susan and I got Sloppy Joes for lunch. Gotta love them Sloppy Joes… and watched the next game for a while. I also checked out all the wares the different craft vendors were selling. I wanted to know how much I should bring on Sunday ;) I have decided to start buying people souvenirs now so I don’t have to scramble to stuff in June when it is time to go. Around 2:30ish I walked over to Leanna’s to get my bike, she only lives about a half mile from ISO. On my way there I stopped and bought a really cool three tiered basket to hold my fruits and veggies. Once I got my bike I rode back to ISO carrying the basket rather clumsily as I went. I put on my swimsuit and sat by the pool for a bit and then jumped in a swam a few laps as exercise. It was nice and refreshing.
From the pool I headed back home to chill out a bit. I ended up trying to make pita bread again, but to no avail… again. I had found a different recipe so I thought maybe it would work this time. This was attempt number 4. This time the dough looked and smelled more like pita bread, but again it never rose properly. I am going to wait until I get measuring utensils before I try for a fifth time. I can’t be sure what I am doing is precise and I feel like with yeast, sugar, and salt you have to know what you are doing. I left my house about 6:30ish and rode to Leanna’s house. From there we promptly left to go to the Edge Service. It was great worship and having missed it the last time I really appreciated it. Afterwards, Bianca, Tyler and Ben wanted to watch 28 Days. Leanna and I don’t like scary movies so instead didn’t so we cooked some brownies for the softball tournament, baked up some chips for my birthday the next day and that was that.
Then after the movie was over Leanna cut my hair! I know I am so picky about my hair. I usually make a big stink about getting it cut and where I am going to go, but I let her cut it. Thankfully she did an amazing job and I really like my new haircut. I was actually a bit concerned because it was like already after midnight and I knew she was tired but if she didn’t cut it then I would have had to wait for a long time. SO I took the gamble and won :) That night I slept over at Leanna’s house ;) and before I went to bed I got some movies on my hard drive from Bianca… Good movies! Also, I would like mention that when the clock struck 12, Happy Birthday was sung to me…
Sunday, February 17. What a great day. It also happens to be my Birthday… Is that what makes it great? I will let you decide that. All I know is that 2/17/1985 was a big day for me! My first day on this Earth in fact. So Happy Birthday to me, and to my parents :)
Waking up at Leanna’s was fun. I was glad to be with friends on my Birthday. Leanna and Bianca had to leave about 9-ish to run errands and get to the tournament. I went home at this point to get my stuff together for the game and to read my test results from the day before. Well I got home and realized I didn’t have much to eat for breakfast. I decided I would make a cheesy egg sandwich, but then realized I only had two eggs. I wanted to also make brownies to donate to the Prom committee to sell at their bake sale and those take two eggs. I thought I was going to have to choose between breakfast or brownies, when I got a text from Susan inviting me to come over and she would make me French Toast for my Birthday breakfast. Talk about awesome! So I whipped up the brownies, stuck them in the oven and headed over to Susan’s house. The french toast was excellent and it was just such a nice gesture on her part. She also gave me a really nice Birthday card and a purple scarf. Breakfast finished up later than I had planned and I barely had enough time to pack up the Brownies and the rest of my gear for the day, walk over to read my tests and walk, yes walk, to ISO again. I wanted to walk so I didn’t have to deal with my bike later in the evening after my birthday dinner and everything.
We played our last and final softball game against the Japanese team. They are really good and so we lost pretty badly again. We went 0-3 in the tournament. Not the shiniest of records… The only reason why they didn’t absolutely annihilate us was because another embassy guy joined our team for this last game and he had some mad skills. After our last and final defeat, they have everyone get together and I am thinking we are going to get the good try team at least we had fun pep talk… BUT then they all start singing Happy Birthday and Susan brought brownies for the team to share! What a awesome surprise :)
I had fun walking around and bought a bunch of stuff from the vendors that I had scoped out the day before. Susan bought me lunch of Sloppy Joes, again. It was either that or pizza and I was more up for another Sloppy Joe… The rest of the afternoon I watched the other games that were going on and went to the pool. I listened to HTB sermon, it was Sunday you know! When I went swimming Bianca came by and watched a little bit to give me some pointers. Next time she said she will bring her suit and we will have a swimming lesson. Fun! I had tried to tlak to my family earlier in the afternoon, but it was church time at home so just before we left I checked one last time and wouldn’t you know I caught them! I didn’t get to talk long, but it was great to hear their voices. My Mom was actually down in Florida since the 14th visiting her parents so it was a bit trickier than normal to connect.
After the tournament stuff was all cleaned Bianca, Leanna and I all went back to Leanna’s house for my Birthday dinner. The menu consisted of Bar-B-Q chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The boys took care of the meat and Leanna and Biance made the veggies. Ben was in charge of the rum punch. It was a great dinner and so nice to have friends to share it with! Dinner was nice and drawn out. I could linger at a table to talk for a long time :) To my surprise after dinner I got open some presents! I was not expecting any presents, but my friends all chipped in and got me some great kitchen stuff like a glass bread pan, non-stick cookie sheet, glass sealed flour canisters, and 4 tall glass glasses. The glasses that came with my house were so small, if you take 3 sips you have to refill… I was also gifted a bottle of red wine. I prefer white, but the red will go with a nice meat meal sometime as well. It was SO thoughtful of my friends to get me these things! All day long I was just surprised time and time again…
Once the excitement of the presents was over we sat down and watched Atonement. It was nominated for Best Picture so I really wanted to see it. It was definitely weird. Good, but at the end you aren’t sure what was real and what was not. The actresses they got to play the main women throughout the different stages of her life were so convincingly the same character. We paused the movie in the middle to have dessert, which at my request was a fruit pizza. Everyone sang happy birthday and I got to blow out my candles! It was a very memorable 23rd birthday. Leanna drove me home when everything was said and done. She had no school on Monday so she was able to stay up ;)
I would like to note that my friend Ben made a comment about how I am only 11 months older than he is but that I act like much more of an adult. This is true.
Monday was tough waking up. I really just wanted to keep sleeping, but I knew that I had things to do at work so I got up and went to work, literally. When I checked my email I had such nice emails and birthday wishes from friends. I wasn’t able to check email later on Sunday so I got to receive a bunch of fun Birthday wishes on Monday… which continued onto to Tuesday :) I think one of my favorite ones was Lillie’s poem she wrote using the letters of my name and the fact that Caroline sang me Happy Birthday on facebook.
Monday morning I washed out filters, because there had been some major algae growing in the bottom of filter 1 and the test results overall were showing a deteriorating quality. This little exercise took longer than planned, but I got it done and was out of the office about 12:30 for lunch.
Sunday I offered to help make a meatloaf dinner with Susan for 3 other Peace Corps people. I really needed to go shopping. I hadn’t been to store in two weeks. The pickings were less than slim, at this point they were non-existent. So I had to go shopping didn’t want to go to Marina, but I knew I needed meat which they didn’t have the shopette where I like to go. So I headed to the Palais de Viande or meat palace I had passed on my bike once, but it was closed down… for good. Sad. So I went to the shopette to get my other stuff and had kind of resigned myself to having to make another trip, this time downtown. Not high on my priority list. But I decided to make a last attempt and check at the meat section of the market. Some place I had ventured to before. I must have been feeling especially brave. I had even asked a woman if they sell ground beef there and she said no, but I didn’t believe her so I went anyway and what do you know I see signs for ground meat all over. So I pick the little window that looks the nicest and order my 1 kilo of meat. Thing was there was no ground meat in sight, so I was getting a bit confused. I say ground meat because frankly I don’t know if it was ground “beef” or some other kind of meat. After I tell the guy my order he takes this huge hunk of meat and cuts off a good size slab, weighs it and then cuts it up into little chunks. At this point I think I am semi thinking that may have ordered the wrong thing, maybe I got my verbs wrong… oh no! BUT then he hands the pieces to a young boy who walks over and grinds the meat. SO I got ground meat ground right in front of me. Talk about getting deeper into the culture and, well, more definitely more integrated. I also bought all sorts of veggies and fruits :) I usually only buy as much as I know I can easily carry on my bike, but I didn’t want to go back out so I ended up struggling to carry a very heavy bag and a full backpack on my bike. BUT I made it.
I got home and started making the meatloaf. I had gotten a package of meatloaf seasoning from Leanna so I used that, which was also kind of the inspiration for the meal to begin with. I also soaked my green beans and strawberries in bleach water. I took the tops off and froze the kilo of strawberries and got the beans ready to cook later that evening. As I was about done with the meatloaf I realized I didn’t have any eggs! They were on my list and I thought about stopping to get them, but with my bags so heavy I was like, oh no I’ll just get them later. Wrong. Lucky for me I was able to ride my bike to the nearby university kiosk vendor and buy some eggs there. Not a huge problem, but just another one of those when you go, “Why does life have to be so complicated sometimes?!” I finished up in the kitchen and went back to work, right on time in fact.
In the afternoon I worked on emails and had visit from Nicolas. I then went to the library to meet with lady about the network access. We finally submitted the form, now we just have to wait for an approval response and then register with the publishers. It is not an easy task, but it is worth it and I hope that by mid March the information is made accessible to the 2iE community.
I also talked to Susan who confirmed that the possible Toastmaster’s trip to Accra in May looks like it is a go. How exciting!? The sad thing is Susan is going back to the States for two weeks at the end of March. Good for her, sad for me. I will be so lonely! Another highlight of my afternoon was chatting online with Joanna and making a really inspirational picture. I will post it after this entry. I hope you like it :)
So the dinner was very nice. The meatloaf turned out well and so did the green beans although they could have been cooked longer and I may have gone a bit overboard with the garlic. We didn’t end up eating until 8:00pm so I was hungry… Susan made a fun mango pie for dessert. It was good, the mangos were a old squishy though…so… anyway, I got home around 10:30 and spent a good half an hour trying to get my own personal water filter to work. One of the filter candles is broken and the replacements weren’t fitting right and it was just a huge headache. I finally went to bed at 11:00 just wiped out completely. I had had late nights Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Not good.
Today Tuesday did not start out too well. Actually last night before I went to bed I wasn’t feeling so hot, just upset stomach and ugh… I did go to work and put in a full day. I even ran double the microbiology tests and prepared some filters for suspended solids testing I will do later this week. I have to say though, MAN it does get exhausting walking back and forth, to and from the filter station. Another odd anecdote is that the lab technician was sleeping on the floor in the lab during the repos today which was when I planned to do my tests. So what did I do? I did them anyway. I probably kept him up, but… yeah, it is a lab, not a bedroom, so I win. In the afternoon I went home and wrote this post and then came back to my office for my French lesson. My teacher was really late again which was not okay this time because I had my tennis lesson at 6:15. All the while I am feeling about 60% as well as I normally do. I’m not keeling over, but I am really low on energy, can’t eat anything because it upsets my stomach and just want to go to sleep. So I have French for only 35 minutes and then head to tennis. I should have just cancelled my lesson. That would have been the smart thing to do, but no. I went and struggled through. I felt like a slug I couldn’t get my feet moving! I think in the future I will stick to morning lessons. After work I am too tired to do something like tennis, or at least not when I am feeling lousy. Anyway, from here I am headed to Petites Delices to post this entry. Sorry for any typos, I don’t have time to reread it… I am supposed to be talking to my Mom so… Au Revior!
Sending you a warm hug from a girl who is now all of 23 years old!
Love,
Sara
Two random things I would like to share...
And here they are :)
1. I have a co-worker who feels it necessary to say “Sara!...” every time he sees me. This would be fine if I saw him like once a day, but his office is two doors down from mine so this incredibly annoying exchange happens at least three times a day. Really can’t he just say like “Hi” or “How’s it going?” or “What are you working on?” Any of these things would be fine, really. But, he just says my name... like it is some sort of accomplishment he knows it. The next time he does it I want to be like, “Yes, that is my name. Is there something you want to ask me? Or are you merely trying to break my concentration and make me wish you would find another job somewhere else…” Okay that might be a little harsh, but seriously.
2. On TV last night I saw the funniest commercial. Picture a very nicely dressed woman coming up to admire a moto. It is new, shiny and obviously pretty cheap in construction. She touches the handles, runs her hands over the peddles, a smiles as she sees the fancy speedometer dials. In the background you see a guy standing a gate watching this girl checking out the moto. He is dressed up very snazzy, and is clearly happy by the fact the moto has caught the woman’s attention. All the while all you hear is some cheesy slow music playing… Then the screen flashes to say “Crystal Motos, L’irrésistible”. Even I know what that means… Crystal Motos, The Irresistible. It was ridiculous. Like in the states how girls like guys with fancy cars, this ad was trying to say girls will like you if have this moto… Haha! Same thought processes, just different products. It was just too clichéd not to laugh.
1. I have a co-worker who feels it necessary to say “Sara!...” every time he sees me. This would be fine if I saw him like once a day, but his office is two doors down from mine so this incredibly annoying exchange happens at least three times a day. Really can’t he just say like “Hi” or “How’s it going?” or “What are you working on?” Any of these things would be fine, really. But, he just says my name... like it is some sort of accomplishment he knows it. The next time he does it I want to be like, “Yes, that is my name. Is there something you want to ask me? Or are you merely trying to break my concentration and make me wish you would find another job somewhere else…” Okay that might be a little harsh, but seriously.
2. On TV last night I saw the funniest commercial. Picture a very nicely dressed woman coming up to admire a moto. It is new, shiny and obviously pretty cheap in construction. She touches the handles, runs her hands over the peddles, a smiles as she sees the fancy speedometer dials. In the background you see a guy standing a gate watching this girl checking out the moto. He is dressed up very snazzy, and is clearly happy by the fact the moto has caught the woman’s attention. All the while all you hear is some cheesy slow music playing… Then the screen flashes to say “Crystal Motos, L’irrésistible”. Even I know what that means… Crystal Motos, The Irresistible. It was ridiculous. Like in the states how girls like guys with fancy cars, this ad was trying to say girls will like you if have this moto… Haha! Same thought processes, just different products. It was just too clichéd not to laugh.
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