Hello lovely people,

ONE YEAR!!!!!!!! That's right, I've managed to combat suffocating heat, battle the African wildlife (and this is more along the lines of cockroaches, rats and bats and less along the lines of lions, elephants, zebras or giraffes...), not fall into the abyss that is my latrine and do just a little bit of work in the process! Basically it feels good to have survived! One down, one to go...

Since this is nearly our half-way mark of service us in the Small Enterprise Development (SED) group got pulled into Ouaga for our mid-service conference. During that time we got a thorough (seriously) medical exam and started filling out our first of many mountains of paper. It was sooooooooooooooo incredibly good to see everyone since we haven't all been together for about 6 months now. We also had our own little 'show and tell' section of the conference where we all got up and shared our past few months, what went well vs. what didn't and projects we plan on doing in the future. Like before when we presented it was so cool to see what everyone's life was like in their village and how successful they've all been in the past year. Legitimately, despite the fact that I'm incredibly biased, this SED group that I swore in with is incredibly impressive. The whole time it was just this huge brainstorming, teamwork fest where everyone was giving out ideas and helping solve problems. There are people starting their own loan systems, people planting fields of Moringa, people starting clubs of all sorts, basically anything we can think of that'll keep us busy enough not to watch that 3rd season of Gossip Girl. It's very easy to feel alone during this Peace Corps process since normally you are the only minority, spend hours in a day talking to plants and animals, get stared at by ever male, female, child and toothless old man, go weeks and even months without seeing another American.... With all those factors working against us, I find it a bit astounding that our group can be so much more team orientated. Basically without all the support that is passed around, I don't know if I would have survived this first year.

The past week has pretty much been a reflection period of the year that's past and the year that is to come. All I can say is that I cannot wait to see what's going to happen this second year. Already I have a sweet present to bring back to my village.... Soccer uniforms!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to the absolute generosity of my old coach and team (for those of you who didn't closely follow my career that would be the UWEC Blugolds) I'll be giving my soccer team the awesome present of a complete uniform (Normally the teams here just wear shirts that resemble each other so this is huge!!!), T-shirts to practice in and 3 brand new shiny soccer balls - also a huge feat since quality balls here are basically non-existent and very expensive which is why most kids end up forming plastic bags into soccer balls. Not incredibly durable believe it or not.... Anyway despite the fact that this team is decently terrible and has yet to figure out the concept of 'team' and 'teamwork,' it's still really cool to see the younger girls trying to play games on the sidelines in attempt to be like the older ones and to see the men at our practices actually make positive comments about how the team is playing. Other things on the agenda for the upcoming year: continue to utilize my knowledge of crafts thanks to my Girls Scout training and my mother's love of craft fairs to turn 'trash into treasures/lots of money;' attempt to win thousands of dollars for my women's shea butter group; give out trainings on Moringa, composting and other good stuff over the radio; start an English Only club; work with village women groups to teach them the basic soap making skills, and anything/everything else that I can find. I'm looking forward to the next year and hope I won't even have time to carry on long, deep conversations with my tomato plants. :)

One thing which will remain constant throughout this service is that I still miss all of you guys!! Thanks for all of your emails, calls and mail - definitely makes living over here a lot easier.

Much love.