Monday, January 4, 2010

New Year's!

Happy New Year, tout le monde. I’ve just returned from vacationing in Mali with a few other volunteers in my training class. We counted down to twenty-ten overlooking the desert from the top of the plateau in “Dogon Country”. We hiked between the villages where we stayed at night. Some were cozily situated at the base of the plateau. Some teetered on its edge. The ancient villages are built right into the plateau itself. In all cases, we slept on rooftops, on rather uncomfortable slabs of foam. Believe it or not, it got unpleasantly cold up there. Winter in Africa…

Posting a few pictures of the trip below, if bandwidth permits.

It certainly is strange to be abroad for the holidays. Volunteers are good at assembling themselves, though. So there was plenty going on. We cooked breakfast and dinner on Christmas. One of the higher-ups in the Peace Corps bureau donated a bunch of turkey and other goodies to our cause. Expatriation is pretty cushy work. Mom sent along the annual family end-of-year letter along with a few too many Christmas packages. It’s from this letter that I learned my family went skiing in Telluride after Christmas (they’re keeping things from me…).

It’s almost seven months in. That means four months of volunteer service are nearly complete. With the first trimester finished, things are feeling more natural, more normal, and I’m learning the plausibilities and possibilities of the various work (and play) I hope to do here.

Thyou likes to have me, there’s no doubt. My colleagues at the school are somewhat dismissive of my presence—uncomfortable getting involved in my work, more wary of what counsel I might have to add—though I do think they will warm up to me in time. I’ll need to extravert myself a tad more.

I’m a little nervous about the summer. During the school year, there’s hardly time to do more than lesson plan and teach. Yet, when summer comes around, I’ll have an empty schedule—I’ll have to do SOMEthing to work. Perhaps that’ll be helping other volunteers with their projects, or working in training. Probably a selfish amount of traveling. Anyways, that’s for later. Now I’ve got to gear up for the next trimester. I’ve got the routine down, so perhaps it’ll get easier. Maybe an extra-curricular project will materialize.

Not much more exciting on this end. Thanks to mom and dad for sending a spanking new laptop battery. With this sucker, I should have a decent amount of battery life to write out in the bush.

I haven’t made any official new years resolutions. I’m still working on last year’s! Hope everyone has a spectacular year. I should be making it home in June or July. Roll out them carpets.

A la prochaine.

Jon

Pics:


From the base


The Dogon hunted monkeys for practice in battle. They display the skulls to scare off enemies.


View from the top.

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