Vive le Dash

FINALLY!  Care packages!  The oldest was sent in November.  There were Christmas cards inside.  Apparently they've been sitting in some warehouse Lord knows where.  It matters not; they are here now and mine, all mine! LOOK AT THEM Now I don't suppose you can just sit in some Cameroonian prison and walk away with no scars.  Two of them sufferred attacks from mice (judging by the size of the holes, they were nothing like the rat demon that haunts my home).  Losses were minimal, but acute. Found the cheese... Why, God?  Why? I cannot express how awesome a day was this day.  So many delicious things.  Candies and cookies and sauces and shit I can bake into brownies and cakes!  CHEESE-ITS.  I'm going to have blueberry fucking muffins!  There are tears.  I cannot express this level of graditude.  CHIPS.  Look at all the loot! There were probably other things of worth in that vast pile, but under the circumstances our more primitive nature surfaces.  Food.

Cleanliness is next to godliness or so the saying goes.  If there is any truth to that, I've fallen quite a ways from the heights I was perched on back in the good ole US.  The sand is untamable.  I just can't keep it out.  The dust is literally in the air so it is a question of sand or locking myself into a hot box.  Breeze is life.  There are bugs too.  You get used to them.  You've got to clean up any trace of food or you'll be dealing with flies and cockroaches within the hour.  And obviously keeping yourself clean is a must.  I've been dreaming up a whole post describing shit I didn't expect in regards to simple skin care.  Sand, sweat, and swarms of insects.  These things can be dealt with and adapted to. But rats?  No. Just going to my kitchen to grab a late night handful of peanuts (basically my only snackable food) and I turned the lights on.  There is a scurry.  That's not odd; bugs scurry when you cut on the lights.  You learn to light the

Catchy title?  Some of you have likely and rightfully assumed that I'm holding back.  I dish out the simple, the good, and the funny.  You might get a taste of bad if I can successfully wrap it in enough sarcasm and humor.  That's pretty much how things go with me on a normal basis unless it's one on one and I've had a sufficient amount of booze that I can later credibly blame.  Here, in this public venue, the need to be cautious is doubly so.  First, my mother reads this.  While she's a strong woman and, lord knows, has already survived plenty raising a son like me, being oceans away I can't reassure her as quickly to my actual well-being and general survival.  Second, there is probably someone at the Peace Corps reading this and they are technically my employers (so stay tuned for the novelization when I'm no longer under their thumb… and wallet).  And finally, I've already had one chief walk up and tell me he found my blog.  Luckily, he is THE BES

The Boss, Tony, posted an interesting link about language the other day.  It was really about defining someone's age and it was something that hadn't crossed my mind.  You should check it out.  I'll wait. Also, he's just a really good writer and makes a hilarious joke about "et cetera": http://tonythev.tumblr.com/post/33042231075/linguistics-lessons It struck me, because it is the same in French.  You "have" an age or number of years as opposed to "being" a certain age.  I am twenty-six (for at least a couple more weeks), but really I'm about to complete my twenty-seventh year.  I knocked off and have been toting around more than twenty-six years with every passing day of the last year.  The Italians do it the same way.  I kinda like that system.  I'll be saying "I have twenty-seven years" when I get back.  Well, by then I'll have finished twenty-eight of them... In Fulfulde, in case you were wondering, they say

Those of us whose relationship goes beyond this blog probably saw pictures fly up on Facebook.  You may have noticed that I'm pretty shitty about posting pictures.  Luckily not all the volunteers are so slack.  A grand thanks to Jaclyn who is responsible for eighty percent of what goes up online.  This does weight what you see toward our vacationing and partying.  I promise my life isn't like that the vast majority of the time…  It has just been that way from the past month. After all that hard, hard work during training--all those late nights playing capture the flag and discovering a bar that actually had DRAFT BEER--I needed a little vacation.  It was actually slightly forced upon me as anyone who regularly reads  BBC might know.  All the same, I headed west to the closest ocean available: Kribi beach. It was, as all oceans are, beautiful.  Plus westward oceans get sunsets!   I spent four or so days there.   A whole mess of us went and basically took over a small

It was called IST which is an acronym I should probably know.  Pretty sure the "t" stands for training though.  My whole training class got together for the first time since we first departed to posts.  It was, as one might imagine, a bit of a shit show.  Extreme isolation ending suddenly with being surrounded by a language and culture you actually understand can lead to… certain excesses.  A couple weeks of that can take it out of you. The training itself was relatively useful.  We brought our counterparts from all over Cameroon.  It was incredibly interesting to just watch how different people from all over interacted with one and other.  Cameroon is bilingual too; everything had to be in both English and French.  This kind of draws everything out, but can be pretty useful to someone still learning French.  Actually, it got really interesting when we broke into groups and I found myself in the middle of anglophones and francophone translating.  The classes or subjects w