Quick Feet. Gallons of Sweat.

*since I don't have access to the internet on a regular basis, I'll be updating my blog every so often with past entries in my journal...This is from our first night in Ouahigouya*

Vendredi, 25 Juin 2010

Tonight was a blast - the most fun I've had in months! We'll start from the beginning:

We started out in the Dragon Hotel in Ouagadougou! ::

Wake up - get breakfast: consistent of bread, egg & coffee. The bread, croissant, is amazing. The eggs were hard boiled - so they were okay, but great to have. The coffee - well, I hope we all know that I don't, and still don't, drink coffee...I hear it's just okay for all the coffee lovers, and pretty great for those who don't drink too often. After breakfast we had our first session. We met our PCMOs *Peace Corps Medical Officers, Sylvie and Jean Luke who told us about how they help us medically, emotionally, etc. - Just a quick overview of what they do for us, how we can reach them, when we can reach them and what we should do in certain situations. They are hilarious! And so nice. The best part is that they care so much about their job, and about what the volunteers are doing. Then we got our shots... yay? I received three vaccinations: typhoid, men-a-something... and Hep A. Two shots in one arm, and one in the other. My arm was SO sore!! I couldn't lift it for the rest of the day, and when I did - I could only go half way. Next: Survival language! For those of us who can speak French already - they moved on to Moore. As for me and a good handful of people - we got a survival French. It was pretty easy, but a good overview. I really don't have any excuse as to why I can't remember my French - I took four semesters in college, and did well in all of the classes. I blame this filter in my head - it's not allowing me to retain any of the language that's seeping in, and everything I have in my head isn't able to filter out of my mouth. Our teacher for the day was Theo! He was great - and was really thorough about our pronunciation and writing things down so we could see what he was saying. Overall - I'm really excited about the language classes.

Off to Ouahigouya via bus!!

North-East is where we were headed. I sat shotgun in the big bus - not the safest place to sit (we came to learn later on in the week of training) - but it was really amazing. I got to see everything with ease - no dodging people's camera's or heads or worrying that I wouldn't see where we were going. Front row seat. Du Rien. It's all so beautiful - flat - but beautiful.

My planner has my journal entry from this bus ride - I'll put it in when I have my planner on me

Destination complete: Ouahigouya.

When we arrived ALL the volunteers were here to greet us and welcome us into the city. It was really great - so touching. Quite an eye-opener: to see all the volunteers exuberantly cheering and clapping just because there are more people here to help them out and to help out Burkina Faso. It's such a close-knit family here. So we moved into a little hotel - room for three - and got our luggage from Ouaga! FINALLY!! I was really worried about my computer and camera being stuck on top of the buses en route.

Then came the food! Veggie dish: rice avec legumes. OR you could have gotten fried chicken with french fries. Had a Brakina - a local beer here - it's pretty light, but I couldn't finish all of it...gave half of it away. But it was good none-the-less

After dinner came the best part!

Wait

Wait

Wait...

D A N C I N G !

A band from Mali (Je pense) was playing drums, a xylophone thing and singing. There were dancers and just full of energy. They invited all of us to dance with them and that's exactly what we did. It was, by far, the best time ever. We all were *attempting* to flow with the music, some were succeeding, all were sweaty and all looked like fools. The dancers were so fluid, and so energized. It was the best!

It was really hard to put this night into words...and I'm sure I didn't succeed at painting an unbelievable night - but this is what you got. I loved every second of it. The only thing is that I wish I were able to capture it on camera - my camera was lacking in that department - night shots ce n'est pas bonne when there's moving. At least it's in my memory.

Let us see what tomorrow brings...