I would have written a story...

...but it seems to be really difficult for me to coordinate motivation, memory, and access to the internet. ...but here I am! I haven't really said anything yet, have I? So it really doesn't matter what I start with, or if I even start. Right? Right. Ok. So there was my rambly intro to get me warmed up a little so that I can actually write something that is worth reading.

Maybe I'll start with a picture or two. That's a good idea. Let's see how long it takes to upload a lil' somethin' for your viewing pleasure...

Hey, that's me learning! I do that a lot these days, in theory. I think in this picture I actually am doing something kind of productive...in fact, I was working on part of a little "what is the Peace Corps speech" that I'm giving with a few other volunteers next week. In French. Est-ce que vous etes impressed? I am. It's actually been pretty cool to see how confident I am with just speaking French out and about and around with folks.

The lil' speech I'm working on in that picture there is going to be given in front of the Girls Education and Empowerment volunteers' counterparts, whom we will be meeting for the first time on Monday! Each volunteer has one main Peace Corps-assigned partner to work with on projects and such over the course of the next two years. My counterpart is the gym teacher at an all-girls boarding school run by nuns. I will in fact be working very closely with this school. Boarding school partnerships is a brand new part of GEE, which is itself a brand new program, so I am pretty excited to have the opportunity to blaze some new trails. After we all meet our counterparts, we'll be travelling with them to our new sites to check things out, ask some questions, see our new digs...I'm quite excited. I was just told today by the GEE director that my living space is beautiful. Near a lake. Lac Bam. That's right. I'm really looking forward to getting out and about in this here country!

The gentleman in the background of that picture there is my friend Jon, an important character to know about in my Peace Corps life because we're pretty symbiotic. He may be contributing a guest blog entry or two in the near future.

Ok, time for a new photo:

The reason this picture is cool to add is because it was taken TODAY. Talk about current! Chances may be slim that I get to the internet and write a little blog entry on a day where I also happened to be able to upload pictures to my computer, which is also a day that I actually took pictures! I actually planned this out a little bit. So that's blue eyed tanned nassara me at about 645 in the morning before leaving my little house to head into Ouahigouya, which is where I am now.

I really am loving my little house and my host family, which is huge. I'll be gone for 10 days because of all the counterpart-meeting and site-seeing that GEE is doing this weekend and next week, and I know I'm gonna miss it. My 19 year old host bro (same age as my real bro!) (what's up, Sam!) is this incredibly mellow, patient guy named Amidou who spends a lot of time hanging out with me and is very indulgent of my French-learning weirdness. The other night I insisted to him that we had to spend the night talking only in the future tense and we did, and he helped me, and it was great practice. My host momma is I believe 29, we have such a nice rapport with one another. Every day after I get home from traning, after I say hi to everyone around my little house and wash my sweaty dirty body and play with the boatload of kids who find their way into my courtyard and help my sisters with their sisterly duties, I head into my mom's courtyard to help her cook and talk about our days. We eat together in my coutryard after night has fallen, me and her and sometimes Amidou. It's just really nice...I look forward to dinner time.

Now it is just about time for me to go get tonight's dinner...the Secondary Ed trainees are currently everywhere in Burkina visiting their future sites, so it's just GEE here in the big city (...not really such a big city). It's weird to be here without our other halves! Tonight I'm going to indulge in a little burger beer and fries action. ...with ketchup, which I just discovered they have here! Tomorrow we all get on a bus to head to Ouagadougou for a day and a night, and then it's on to meeting our counterparts and discovering our sites. It's a big few days coming up!