more life in africa

first of all, thanks becky for putting all those pix up of matt and kristin`s wedding. geez i feel far away now... IST has been a really great experience for putting everything in perspective. i can talk to all my friends and hear about their problems and successes and get new project ideas. most of yall already know, but i started teaching an english class 3x/week. i do it from 5pm-7pm monday and thursday, then saturday i do a review of mon and thurs at the same time. I am going to begin work soon with a real life african ¨garden club¨ or what they call a ¨groupement dàgriculture,¨ and will give lessons on things like crop diversification for food security, proper spacing between plants for better yields, composting, organic pesticides made from neem leaves, live fencing with nitrogen fixing trees (which put nutrients back into degraded soil), and nutrition in general. I am also going to work with my Chef Cantonnement Forestiere to create a tree nursury of 5000 trees to reforest some deforested areas around my village. I am also interested in starting an environmental education class in the elementary school and have them create their own school garden and tree nursury so we can have hands on classes and teach which trees do what for the soil, or how to use leaves as green manure. anyway, for all yall wondering, that is what i hope to accomplish in the next two years. i listen to the bbc (on my shortwave radio) every morning and night as i eat breakfast (oatmeal with powdered milk and cinnimon-plz send splenda!!!) and night as i eat dinner (usually bananas with peanuts, supplemented by things i get in packages haha). the rest of my life in my village usually consists of me spending a lot of akward time sitting with my neighbor family (who has finally learned i do not like fish heads floating in a palm oil sauce poured over rice) while the mom cooks aforementioned meal. sometimes i go to baptisms which are a lot different here, less ceremony, more socializing, usually culminating in a goat having its throat slit. the other guests always have a good laugh trying to get the toobaboo (¨white foreigner¨in malinke, the local language in my village) to dance. wild. there are a lot of moments in the village i wish my friends/family could see me b/c yall are never going to believe my stories when i get home. i am regretting now my past life of exaggeration haha. anyway, i never really know what yall want to know about my life here, but IST lasts for another week so email me while yall can and say hi or whatever. I MISS YOU ALL!!!!