The End is Near

Camilo and I spent the last 3 days at our Close-of-Service (COS) Conference. We got to spend a night at the Islands, I'll upload pictures before I leave Conakry tomorrow. After a lot of thought, we decided not to extend our service and we will be returning home with my mom and aunt in late September. Just in time for the economy to really be doing poorly!!

We have many things to look forward to this summer - only one more month of school and then we have Girls Conference in late June, the new group arriving in July, Cam's family coming to visit, spending all of August training the new people and then saying our final good-byes. It's been a really interesting and fun two years, but I'm ready to move on.

I think the most surprising element of my PC service was how much fun I've had. My expectations were that it would be extremely challenging and difficult, but that hasn't really been the case. Even this last month had some bright spots! My service has been fun and interesting and I am really glad I decided to do this rather than immediately apply to grad school.

After a hectic and fragmented service, I'm ready to go home and spend quality time with my friends and family. I miss you all!!!

Director's Visit

The visit went off without a hitch. I was very impressed with the Director and the group he traveled with. One of the women helped out with the evacuation and it was really fun to see her again. We had a delicious spaghetti dinner with all of us who returned to the program, senior staff here and the Director and his entourage. Camilo and I finally got to meet the Ambassador, who is just the friendliest, coolest guy. He was so helpful and willing to talk about our post-PC plans.

Anyway, above are 2 pictures. They are from the lunch we had on the compound - a group of drummers came from Forecariah and 3 PCVs danced with them, it was really impressive. And we had a sheep that the Director received as a gift and asked to eat for lunch! All in all a fun and successful visit.

Unfortunately, I am officially out of time. It's 10:30 here and I'm leaving at 8am tomorrow!! And the post after this one was actually written before this one, Blogger is weird. I wanted to post some other photos, but it will have to wait another 2 weeks. I *should* be back in 2 weeks with the Mail Run to do more work on Girls Conference.

Today one of our staff members got married in a 2 hour ceremony in an Anglican church. Then we all went to this really nice place for the reception. Camilo took lots of pictures, but they'll have to wait!

Okay, I'll be back online in 2 or 3 weeks and am looking forward to hearing from you all!!!

Who needs a groom?

Aren't these two so cute? At first I thought it was weird that the groom didn't come from Conakry for the wedding, but I've rethought it. Doesn't everyone say the wedding is really about the bride anyway? So does it really matter that the groom wasn't there? She was adorably happy and running around taking pictures and we had such good food. All my students wore their "uniforms" and we took lots of pictures.

The girl on the right was a student last semester who apparently flew under the administration's radar the whole semester and then got busted and told she couldn't return for the second semester. She picked me up since I didn't know where the wedding was and we stopped at her house along the way. She has a husband in Spain that she's seen twice - once for the wedding and one other time. But her house is gorgeous - even nicer than mine. I do feel a bit bad for her though, now that she's not studying she told me she's really bored and I don't get the feeling her husband will be sending for her soon.

One of the problems with polygamy and moving to developed countries is that many men take "village wives" here in Guinea but have another family in their new country. That means that the Guinean wives will never get visas to join their spouses. This is a particularly big problem in Timbi because so many men are abroad. My student has financial security, but is bored and lonely. I don't really know what to think about that. Eventually he'll come back and she'll get pregnant. He will leave again before the baby is born and not return for up to 10 years - one of Cam's friends just had his brother return to meet his 8 year old son for the first time. It's such a different conception of fatherhood than we have in the US...even within Guinea it's normal for the immediate family to be broken up. It's much cheaper to pay for a family in the village and to work in Conakry than to have everyone live in Conakry.

It was a fun wedding party, even though there was no ceremony. Everyone treated me really well and made sure I had enough food and soda and everything. It was the first party I've been to where I knew almost everyone and had plenty of people to speak French with! Good times.

Swimming...

I'm not looking to return to the US with schisto again, but the water was not exactly the cleanest. That being said, it was the 8th year of the camping trip and no one has gotten sick before. Some of the tough people jumped from about 2/3rds of the way up. Not me. I promised my family I'd do everything in my power to return in one piece!

One of the highlights was seeing a pack of baboons on the way back to Timbi. There must have been 25 of them! My mom always asks if I've seen any animals recently. Since she doesn't count chickens, goats, sheep or lizards I always respond no. But not the last time we talked! It was cool. Unfortunately, my camera is pretty cheap and we had to stay far away so we didn't scare them off, so all the baboons look like branches. Not worth posting. :(

A new village?

The woman on the right is the housekeeper at my friend's place. We set up about 10 huge tents, which was really distracting for all the Guineans that kept riding by on motorcycles. We asked Mariama what the Guineans thought of all of us and she replied, "Whoa, look at all those white people building a new village!"

Our tents probably were the size of a lot of huts, so that's not too farfetched! At any rate, there were about 10 adults and 20 kids. Most of you who know me know that I love babies and kids, so I was pretty much in heaven.

Camping Trip

This is the dry season, so I can't even imagine how big the waterfall will be this summer. Camilo and I are really hoping to take his mom and sister there, it's breathtakingly beautiful. My photographic skills do not do it justice.

Camping, a wedding, and COS

I arrived in Conakry 2 days ago but keep on forgetting to bring my camera to the computers, so I'll just write a quick update...

• I finally got to go to a wedding! But the groom wasn't there. Which is actually not that abnormal here. I'll write more when I have my photos.
• About 30 American missionaries went camping for 3 days 15km from my house and I spent 2 days with them. It was sort of surreal to be with so many American kids and to eat tacos and to sleep in real tents. The scenery was gorgeous, it's too bad the road is terrible and there's no drinking water or food or anything there because it'd be too much of a pain to bike it.
• The DC Director is here and all of us who got evac'ed and came back are having dinner with him tonight. I have no idea what to expect, but our staff has been impressed with him so I'm sure it will be fun...or interesting at the very least.
• Spring Break was a good time, but it started early. I got to school last Wednesday and was told that I couldn't teach...even though my students were there and I had a lesson plan. I gave them all extra credit and then we all went home. Weird.
• My birthday was really nice, except that Cam and I got food poisoning from a chicken reheating error at the missionaries! We all got really sick and my friend felt so bad, even though I was just as much at fault as she was.

The biggest news is that, depending on what happens during our conference from Tues.-Thurs., I will likely be finished here in September and coming home after the Morocco trip with Aunt Diane, mom and Cam. I'll keep you posted!