vacation week!

Not too much new to report here since we had off the entire week because of the election. Yes, it did take place on Sunday and yes it did happen peacefully. Still no one went to school or work for an entire week. The results were announced and its…a tie! No joke. There will be another election on the 22^nd so there will be at least another week where no one works. Its funny to think about how much work doesn’t get done because of elections! Funny isn’t really the right word, but you know what I mean.

We still did the dispensary on Wednesday and Friday but there weren’t a lot of people. Most of the boarders went home for the elections (necessary) but there are still maybe like 25 girls so we’ve done a bit of English and played some soccer. Ive never exerted so little energy and gotten so sweaty. We’ve also watched a few movies and yesterday was the best day ever because we watched The Sound of Music (la melodie de bonheur in French). All of the songs were translated so the lyrics were different alas I was not able to sing along to the entire thing. A real shame, but I enjoyed it anyway.

My French is coming along, but the boarders are still really hard to understand. The accent plus the fact that they don’t slow down when they talk to me can make things pretty difficult. Overall though it’s getting easier and I guess it’s good that there aren’t any other English speakers because like this I have to speak French. I can usually get my point across even if this sometimes requires the use of wild gestures. I’m basically a semi-professional mime.

This morning was cleaning day so I gave my bedroom/bathroom a serious scrubbing and then I went to the market with Sr Vicky to buy fruit. I found the market depressingly dirty the first few times I went, but I enjoy it now and it’s always quite the mix of things. Lots of fish, next to someone selling bras, next to someone selling gold jewellery, next to someone selling rice. Also, I’ve also never seen so many plastic bags. They put everything in little plastic bags- water, juice, spices, yogurt, pigs feet. You name it, they got it and they will be happy to give it to you in a bag that you will later toss onto the street because there are no trash cans. These little plastic bags can be kind of tricky because you bite a little hole in it and then squeeze it to eat/drink it. The first time I tried it, yogurt went all over the place and it was a mess. Then last weekend one of the boarders handed me a bag of water, half of which ended up on me and the other half on the ground. Probably for the best since I didn’t know where that water came from but really didn’t want to ask, ‘is this filtered?’. That would be like asking one of these fishmongers if they had anything sashimi grade.

That’s it for now. Im going to go play soccer and hopefully tonight when I go to take a shower the water will be on. Last night it had been cut and the timing was unfortunate since I had just played soccer and was looking to bathe in something other than my own sweat. Sorry I know you’re not reading this for an in-depth description of just how sweaty I get here so that’s it for now!