Sunday, July 31, 2011

(Insert Generic Blog Title Here)

What to write about? I am at the point now where this whole experience has become quite normal for me. So when I sit down to reflect about what I have done and where I have been it all sounds terribly boring. I think to myself "there is no way they will want to hear about that," when in truth you all might find it very interesting. I already updated my blog on what I am doing with basketball and I have more or less been sticking to that. Had another camp just finish and come September after Ramadan I will hold my reffing clinic. I guess that is one thing coming up, Ramadan shall be starting soon. No I wont be fasting, sorry but I drink too much water to even think about attempting it this year. I am curious to see how it goes though, I will be working and living with people who will be fasting all month long. They can only break fast in the early morning and late evenings. This includes water not just food, so ya its tougher then it looks. I will be heading on my first vacation come end of August though. Me and about seven others are heading to Guinea Conakry, we will be hiking some mountains over there. Should be exciting, they have thick forests, waterfalls, and REAL mountains there. Not the hills people call mountains here.

As far as work goes I just got done working on my cashew orchard for my village. Still a lot of work to be done on it but at least the seeds are in the ground, now all we need is rain. Its been a pretty dry rainy season thus far. Also got a village tree nursery going, that one goes a little slower as I am still experimenting with what works and does not. Lets see went on a couple of moringa treks, which is where we bike around the country planting moringa beds. For those of you that don't know moringa is a tree that grows here that is CRAZY healthy for you. It has many many uses and is great for feeding malnourished children. I helped plant over 5,000 of these trees, the goal for this year is 50,000. Also got an HIV trek coming up where we bike around teach students about HIV and STD's.....yep staying as busy as I can and I love it.

Lets see what else? I am now a quarter of the way through my service, pretty crazy really. Its been a roller coaster so far. I have gone from absolutely loving it here to getting ready to call peace corp and telling them I am going home and then back to loving it and then back again to hating it. However I finally feel though that things are stabling out for me. Things are flying now, heck we got new volunteers in country so I am not even the newbie anymore.

Ill finish with a list of goals I want to accomplish before leaving:
-Become good at live trapping (really want to eat some of the wild bush meat here..monitor lizard, bush fowl, bush pig, hyena, you know the usual)
-Leave 30 trained basketball officials behind.
-Read at least 120 books (currently sitting at 20 so I need to pick it up)
-Travel to four new countries
-Leave behind 100 healthy cashew trees for my village to make bank off of.
-Meet the president
-To leave the country with an advanced understanding of the language (due to my recent basketball involvement my language progress has halted)
-Oh and figure out what I want to do with my life when I get back!!!