Summer Break!

This summer has gone by pretty much as fast as I thought it would, which is why I haven't had the chance to write. I'll go ahead and skip to the good part- backpacking West Africa. In three weeks, two other volunteers and I went to 4 countries: Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo and Benin. I won't bore you with the whole saga of our adventure, but these are the highlights (in no particular order):

-Being in Djenne, a city with a beautiful mosque for the first night of ramadan
-Having tea on the rooftop of a new friends house
-Two boys getting into a fight on said rooftop ending in one slathering himself and the roof in lighter fluid (we made a quick exit)
-Meeting a Malian who had been to the US and I quote “I took my tea at Times Square HAHAHAH” good old Ibrahim. He called himself a nomad but then we saw him giving a tour and put two and two together.
-Getting spit in the face by someone trying to swindle me (unsuccessfully)
-Getting giardia on the PLANE RIDE there. First I tried antibiotics, which controlled it but as soon as I stopped taking them, it came back full force. This ended with me taking a rickshaw motorcycle to a pharmacy, doubled over with stomach contractions (I think it was similar to labor) and the pharmacist was like what the heck did you eat? He gave me some magic pills that kill everything in your body, and I felt better within 5 minutes.
-Sleeping on rooftops while hiking in Dogon Country
-Fanmilk in Burkina- its a delicious milk treat
-Jewelry shopping in Burkina- best artisan market EVER
-Bush taxi accident- see pics on facebook
-Sleeping at the chief's house in a small village in Togo- that spicy sauce for breakfast was firey!
-Best moto ride ever- up the mountain in the rainforest to see the butterflies
-First skin infection since coming to Africa from a mosquito bite in the foot
-Hunting for a movie theater in Togo....we finally found a hotel/resto that projects movies onto a white wall while serving pizzas and popcorn...AMAZING
-Pizza, pasta, cheese, asian food and ice cream
-Couchsurfing for the 1st time!
-Hitchhiking from Burkina to Togo and the people in the car were so mad because we had to get visas at the border and they were waiting for so long
-My monkey friend at the hotel
-Dennis and Jessica, who drove me from Kpalime to Lome in their mercedes for no charge, while playing the complete Michael Bolton collection
-Meeting a real Togolese fashion designer and watching videos of her fashion shows
-The beach in Grand Popo, Benin
-Pissing off the taxi drivers in Grand Popo, who then attacked our new taxi driver and we had to lock ourselves in a car
-The prostitute who asked me if I was from Finland...really, is that your first guess?
The words to describe this trip would be crazy, amazing, beautiful, tiring.

When I got back from my trip, I delved into a Training Design Workshop for a new program coming to Cameroon, Youth Development. We spent a week developing the plan for training 13 volunteers in a completely new program. I'm going to be facillitating training sessions in Bafia, where I was trained, in late October/early November on some of the work that I've been doing in the field. I also found out I got into the first grad school program I applied for. In October, I am going to start teaching classes at the University of Maroua. Pretty much couldn't ask for more professionally at this point. Oh and did I mention I am coming home in 10 months?!