It's Sunday morning right now at about 9:30am. (I'm only 4 hours ahead of you so it's 5:30am on the east coast.) I slept in this morning which means I got out of bed at 7:30am rather than 6:30am - slightly different than my sleep schedule back in the States.

I guess I'll start with my host family. Now that I've been living here for exactly 2 weeks, I have a much clearer picture of who's who in the family. The first few days were a little confusing because there were always people visiting and I wasn't really sure who was part of the family and who wasn't. There are 3 daughters and there ages are 13, 8, and 2. There is also a servant girl who's either 15 or 16. Servant may not be exactly the right word. I believe she's somehow related to the father and that she used to live in one of the villages. I think they let her live here in the city and go to school in exchange for being like a maid. From what I understand, this isn't too uncommon.

Things are going good with the family. The meal rotation has stayed pretty much the same and the communication has gotten 'slightly' better - I still have a long ways to go. I was able to provide some entertainment to the family when I asked the Mom to show me how to do my laundry. I think they got a kick out of it in a couple of ways. One was seeing a male doing his own laundry and the other was just how bad I was at it.

Speaking of communication, my French is getting a little better. The majority of my training time is spent in language training - 21 hours this past week. There are 10 different language levels. At the beginning, I tested in at Novice Low which is the lowest level. By the end of training, I need to be at the Intermediate High level which is the 5th level in order to swear in as a volunteer. I get tested 2 more times - once about halfway through training and then at the end on the 19th of August. I've also learned a few of the greetings in one of the local languages (Moore), but I really need to focus on my French since that's what I'm going to be tested on and using to teach. As a matter of fact, first thing tomorrow morning I need to prepare and teach a 10 minute math lesson in French - should be interesting.

There's nothing too eventful to note from this past week - mostly just more training. We did get to meet the governor of the region this past Friday night. He provided cold drinks to us (Coke, Sprite, Fanta, beer) which was a nice treat. I've still been very lucky with my health and haven't had any problems at all. Quite a few of the other volunteers have gotten sick by now including a few cases of e coli. If someone is sick, they're very on top of getting the person tested and treating whatever it is. We did receive another vaccination this past week which brings the grand total up to 10 shots so far and still counting. This isn't including when we had to prick ourselves in order to make a couple of practice blood slides for malaria testing. We were given kits both for doing malaria slides and for stool samples - luckily we only had to practice the malaria slides.

As far as the beer is concerned - there appears to be 5 different brands. They are Castel, Flag, So.b.bra, Beer du Burkina, and Guinness. I've tried them all except for the Guinness which I believe is the stought rather than the draught that we're used to having at bars at home. I think Castel and Flag are the more premium brands with So.b.bra and Beer du Burkina being the local 'Budweisers'. The beer bottles are about twice the size of the ones in the US and cost about 500 francs each which is about a $1.

I have taken some pictures that I would like to post, but that's probably going to have to wait until I can get on a better internet connection. The one I use here is like a slow dial-up connection at best. I think they may have a decent connection at the Peace Corps office in the capital which I think we may visit during week 5. If I can, I'll try and post pictures then.

I would also like to revise my earlier statement about not sending anything but letters. If anyone ever feels up to sending a care package, they would always be greatly appreciated. I definitely have all the gadgets I could possibly use, but any type of snacks or drink mixes from home would be great. Drinking a few liters of 95 degree water a day gets a little old after a while.

Also, I just want to say a quick thanks for both the comments on the blog and for the emails. It's always great to have new stuff to read from people when I get a chance to bike over to the internet cafe. Ok, that's it for now - hope everyone's week is off to a good start!