Dump 'um out

I have no overarching theme for this blog post, so I have decided to make use of the timeless writers tool, utilized by all the great authors: the bullet-point. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the bullet-point. Now You may view this as a weakness in my writing skill--my inability to seamlessly thread these thoughts together--but really it's a sign of my capabilities (and many years as a student). Without further ado, the long awaited for points, by bullet:

-A quick note on comfort, and how perspectives change: Last Thursday I was traveling home from Makeni when about 2 minutes into the ride I thought to myself, 'this is pretty comfortable.' Two  more minutes into the ride and I start to ponder how my standards for comfort have changed, because I realize that I'm sitting in the front seat of this car with 3 other people!! (That's 4 people, total, for the mathematically impaired.) Mind you this is not some big spacious SUV. Imagine a small (...well I'm not very god with cars, so insert any make and model of a small 4 door sedan) car not some big (...again the dearth of car knowledge-thanks dad-so pick your favorite style) house on wheels, piled high with 9 full grown humans. Yet I find the amazing thing, in all this, is that I genuinely felt comfortable in that car. Welcome to Africa.

-Overall village life is treating me well. For those of you who wonder what I do with my days, the answer is: not a whole lot. This morning I woke up, read for a while, went for a jog (still a huge source of entertainment for the town), boiled some water to make oatmeal and tea (which I promptly expelled via copious amounts of sweat-hot drinks and tropical climates don't mix), and read some more. I would estimate that 90% of my days are spent either sleeping or reading. The other 10% is eating, thinking about foods I wish I were eating, and talking to my neighbors. I assume once school starts these figures will change, but for now my days are mostly sleeping and reading-my two favorite activities.

-Sleep: I can't believe I ever poked fun at Robin and Whitney for going to bed at 9pm. Here I'm in bed by 7:30 and lucky to still be awake by 8:30. I have adopted new ideals on an acceptable bed time.

-School: school is technically supposed to start in a week, but the government hasn't paid the teachers in months, so rumors are flying a out a teachers strike. I have decided to adopt an African frame of mind and not worry a out it. School will start when it starts. If that means I have to crunch all of biology down into 3 weeks, then so be it.

-A shout out to the Visalia French's: I've identified my first bird! Well, I've tried at least. I've seen some pretty cool birds so far, but I picked 3 of my favorites to look up in my bird book. The first is either a Bar-Breasted Firefinch, a Red-Billed Firefinch, or a Blue-Billed Firefinch. When I first saw it I thought, 'small red bird, the female is grayish, shouldn't be hard to identify.' Wrong! There are apparently a lot more small red birds in Sierra Leone than I had anticipated. There's a similar story for my next identification, which is either a Yellow-Mantled Widowbird or a Red-Shouldered Cuckoo-Shrike, but the variety with a yellow shoulder, not red (or if I'm really honest with myself there's a good chance my birding skills are so poor that it was neither of those birds). When I saw the bird I was pretty confident in what I saw, but by the time I got out my bird book I couldn't quite remember how long the tail actually was nor could I recall if there was a slight fleck of yellow on the bill. My first lesson in attentiveness to detail in bird watching. The third bird I decided to look up I'm pretty sure is a Pin-Tailed Whydah--at least it's black and white and has a really long tail.

-Spiders: I promised my mom no snake or spider stories, so all I'll say is: eeeek!

I'm happy here and enjoying African life, but I still miss ya'll back home. Hope everyone is happy and healthy!

Toiletpaper for Pillows

Last night I had the pleasure of using 4 rolls of toiletpaper as my pillow.  Only in Africa, right?!?  It was, as you might imagine, not that comfortable, but I've found ways to sleep in almost any conditions here (particularly the weather being hot and muggy).

Right now I am at the Peace Corps hostel in Freetown.  We are very lucky to have a hostel for volunteers to use because not every PC country gets one.  It is fully furnished with beds, running water, electricity, internet (wireless too!!), computers, couches, and at this particular juncture, tons of friends.  I have now been at site (Yele for those who need a small reminder) for 3 weeks and these are my first nights spent away from home.  My mother has expressed to me that there might be some interest in hearing about my current living conditions, now that I'm at my permanent house for my service, so I will do my best to provide ya'll with a picture of my house and my village.

My house in Yele is actually really really nice.  All the floors are tiled, which is very uncommon, especially once you get out towards the villages and the bush.  I have an indoor toilet and washing area, which are also tiled, and very clean.  I do not have running water, so the toilet is a pour flush, but I'm not complaining.  I think I've finally got the hang of the pour flush toilets.  I never realized how much water it takes to flush a toilet until I was physically pumping the water and lugging it back to my house.  In the beginning I thought if I poured a few cups of water into the toilet that would suffice.  But no, it takes a good bucket full of water to flush those puppies.  (Which probably lead to a fair few half-flushed toilets at the beginning of my homestay--sorry host family.)  Never fear though, I now know what I'm doing; some might go so far as to say I'm a toilet flushing master.

Ok, enough about the toilet.  My house is more of an apartment than a freestanding house.  I share a wall with another family, although the wall between us actually goes all the way up to the roof, so the sound proofing is not too bad.  My roof is tin, which provides for some great white noise when it rains at night and I'm trying to go to sleep.  My house consists of 3 rooms: the front parlor area where I keep all my food, my bathroom, and then my bedroom.  It's the perfect size for one person.  I've got about 6 windows that let in tons of light, so my house is very well lit, at least until the sun goes down.  I've only got 1 door to the outside world, and it leads out on to my covered veranda, also tiled, where I spend a majority of my day reading and being oogled by passerbys.  My daily routine consists of waking up in the morning, going for a run, cleaning my house, then sitting and reading.  Occasionally I'll walk around, but mostly people who want to see me come to me.  Every other day or so I walk over to my paramount chief's house, which is right across the road, and say hello.  I thought that when I got to site there was the potential of me getting bored, but I have not yet tired of reading, nor do I feel like I will any time soon.  I also recently got a couple packages with boku reading material, so good work mom, sister, and sister-in-law.

I'd love to write more but it's time to go feed the beast that's living in my stomach.  It's been growling at me since I typed out the first line, and I don't think it's going to stop until it gets fed.

Sending all my love!