From May 4th. Here it goes!

Well! That certainly was an interesting little bit of time there, now wasn't it? Travel restrictions, stand fast, lock down, consolidation...us PCVs here in Burkina experienced a whole bunch of all that as our lovely host country went through a bit of turmoil and what could be classified lite civil unrest. (...though is it “civil unrest” when it applied to the military? Military unrest? Well, there was a bunch of that too).

Knock on wood, but it seems like things have simmered down. School is back in session (mostly) all over the country (and in most cases, it has been for almost a month now). Those of you who are invested in my good friend Denise Kinda's educational experience will be happy to know that she is totally continuing to kick butt here...eighth in her class of 51 for the second trimester, and she's also become the class president. WAY TO GO! I will be sending her letter of thanks home soon so that it can be shared with all of you.

So yes, school is in session, the police have stopped shooting their guns into the air during the night (once here in my town), the military has stopped ransacking markets and shops, shop owners and people who sell things at the market have stopped setting fire to government buildings in retaliation, the grossly unfortunate death toll seems to be stopped at six...everything seems to be back to normal.

Have you knocked on wood?

So here I am, officially at the end of my service. For those of you counting, there are exactly 22 weeks left until I am no longer a Peace Corps volunteer as of today...this number, of course, is subject to change. How will I be spending the next 147 days of my life? Well, I've been planning little adventures here and there to give myself things to look forward to, little bits of differentness to break up what are otherwise very routine (and not necessarily very busy) weeks.

For example, last week I decided to hop on a 6:30am bush taxi (old, slow van) to join my neighbor 12k to the south for a delicious breakfast that included the yogurt produced in her village. Man, I love that stuff. There are three distinct varieties of yogurt between my town and her village and my addiction rotates. So anyhow, I woke up with the rising sun, walked on down to the road, and chugged on south past the Center North's beautiful hills to enjoy some yogurt, tea, and bread with cinnamon and sugar as well as some lovely conversation. Was back in my town by 9:00 and enjoyed a whole bunch of walking around until the hazy clouds lifted and it became too scorchingly hot for my delicate white girl skin.

Another thing I did last week was bike out 7k with my village momma Claudia and her youngest daughter (who I honestly do not think I could love any more than I do) to visit the village where she was born and raised. The trip took a little bit of time to get started as it involved some tire pumping and reparation (which involved waiting for the bike mechanic guy to open up his little shop for the day), but we arrived in good health and spent most of the day in a little grove of mango trees. Prisca ran around playing with five of her cousins – making airplanes out of leaves, chasing each other on a too-big bicycle, playing some sort of hopscotch/rock kicking game. I thought a lot about me and my cousin – playing in trees, running around our Auntie's back yard – and was just so tickled by and happy with the universality of childhood. Claudia and I napped in the shade on a tarp spread out over the dirt...you know you're really friends with someone here when you nap together. At least that's been my experience. The whole trip was just so comfortable, so nice...I loved meeting Claudia's father, I loved spending time with her younger brother and his children, I loved being charmed by their puppy, I loved eating mangoes pulled off the tree, I loved (loved!) having Prisca on the back of my bike on the ride there and on the ride back. And it rained that afternoon, as soon as we returned to our houses. Big fresh rain that cooled the air and sent Claudia's other daughter, Rose, mischievously over to my house with the hopes that I would let her in to wait out the storm with me (I did). It was just a lovely day.

What other lovely days will I have in my near future? Well, I am planning a trip to a town called Boromo, which I've heard has elephants for the viewing. If everything works out, I will be taking a little Molly trip down there to see for myself. Sometime in June or July I will be taking two or three weeks to lead sessions with the new training group that's coming in soon (how y'all doing out there, you ready? Yeah?) and in July or August I will be traveling to the loveliest named country on the planet, Mali, whereupon I and my travel companions (hoping to have a few of those) will enjoy some hiking and some meandering down one of the most important rivers in West Africa (and not just because it's one of the only ones, ba dum ching). So those are big adventures.

But small small small is good too. I've got extra classes scheduled for this week (what a good teacher I am). I plan to hike my birthday hill again before leaving my little home here. I plannnnn toooooooo watch a rugby match with my friend Ousmane whenever it being on television corresponds to him watching it. (When my friend Stef was here visiting me, we went over to visit Ousmane and he made us omelets composed of something like 20 eggs, it was unreal and delicious.)

For now, I have a class to teach (actually a test to give, mwahaha) and will probably bike into town after this (after, of course, fixing an inevitable flat tire). Maybe some very routine but not un-delicious town food will be eaten. Yum. Also, I want to walk around the market tomorrow just to say hello to my friends there, and I'd also like to do some future-related research on the internet either this evening or tomorrow morning as well.

One day at a time, all 147 of them that I've got left.