Greetings from the BF,

I’ve gotta start out by saying thanks to everyone that sent me snail mail. I never actually thought I would get excited by snail mail, but I’m telling you, it’s the little things these days! Anyway thanks for the letters, especially from those people that were born into the world of email and internet and still decided to send me one old school style anyway (I’m going to have to give my Cale and Bess shout-out at this point…)

This week was a big week for us here at Camp Peace Corps… the week that our future sites would be revealed to us. I found out that I will be living in a fairly large town, I believe around 30,000 Burkinabe residents, and will be residing incredibly close to the Mali border. For safety reasons which Denny emailed me about, I guess I am probably not allowed to reveal the name of the town on the blog, although he has also said he will be happy to show anyone my town on the map if you’d like to get into contact with him. Huh. Anyway the site has electricity throughout most of the day from 7a.m until 11p.m. which is crazy! It also has three rooms in it, although I’m not really sure what all of them are for. It is cool to think that I am only 22 and live in my very own house.. Even if it is in Africa..! There was a girl that was living there before me and left some pretty nice things behind, so I guess I am not really going to be ‘roughing it’ in the African bush for the next couple of years. As disappointed as I was to not have mud and a thatched roof, I actually got over it decently fast! The only real bummer about the site is that I am the only Peace Corps Volunteer for about 100K… So I’m probably going to get a dog. And quite possibly a goat which could bring back some nice childhood memories of Snickelfrince, my old buddy I used to ride around the grandparent’s farm. If you have any suggestions on pets or names for my pets let me know!

Also this weekend a couple of us ‘city girls’ took a trip out to the villages to see our fellow trainees. Village life was awesome. Not only was the ground not littered with trash, it wasn’t as dusty and therefore we could see pretty much all the stars in the universe at night! You definitely get celebrity status in the village as well but it’s a different kind. In the village everyone waves hello to you and tries to help you carry your things, which is a nice change from the city where all they do is point, stare and yell. The people there were really welcoming and fun to be around… Not to mention how wonderful it was to sleep outside under the stars. It actually made me wish that I was going to a smaller village where, well, everybody knows your name…!

Us SED volunteers also started working on our Income Generating Activities this week. We split up into three groups and have each paired up with a local businessperson to help them come up with ways to improve their business, both through actual sales and through other ways like accounting and marketing practices. Our group proposed the idea of iced coffee to a vendor that we frequent and she was very open to our suggestions. She sold our iced coffee one day and the next day came up with her own idea to sell iced chocolate milk and tea. We were definitely ecstatic not only because she was making changes to her business by introducing new ideas, but also because we got our very own Starbucks in Burkina! Not sure if she will keep selling all this stuff once her loyal American customers are gone but we can only hope! The business style here, both on the selling and consuming end, are quite a bit different from everything were used to back in the states… I think that’ll be a great subject for the next time…

Today (Sunday) was also cleaning day and I did wash my clothes again today by hand, although one of my sister was telling me the whole time that I wasn’t getting them clean… And then they made me clean my shoes as well, (brown Asics included although I kept trying to tell them that I had gotten them because they were brown so I wouldn’t have to clean them) although to their credit my shoes really do look like they’re fresh out of the box. My clothes are another story… Pretty sure they think I’m the most unclean human being on the planet! But oh well, they still like to paint my nails.

Much love.