A Long Day, and Some Other Things

The last 24 hours have been a bit rougher than I would like. I’m not sure whether it’s something I ate, something I drank, or jet lag, but I’ve been pretty lousy since dinner last night. The symptoms include being either really cold (at night), or really hot (in the morning), upset stomach, and simply all-around discomfort. I’ll let you be the judge..

The suspects:

-Food

The dinners have comprised an assortment of dishes, including salad with avocados and a really oily dressing, French fries, whole fish (with what appear to be really sharp teeth), steak, plantains, and more. Last night the steak didn’t have the customary red and green peppers on it, so I decided to cover it with some of the red sauce in the adjacent bowl. BIG MISTAKE. That sauce was, easily, the hottest, most painful thing I have ever put in my mouth! My body immediately started sweating and my mouth ached throughout the rest of the meal.

Also, yesterday afternoon a group of us was at the beach bar and one of the PCV’s bought a bunch of cookies from a girl with a basket on her head. The cookies were pretty tasty, but I still cringe a little at eating something from a vendor off the street.

By the way, and I know Noah has been wondering about this, we’ve had goat twice since I’ve been here.

-Water

I’ve been very careful about drinking only bottled water, as the tap water here is
filled with parasites to which an American’s body are not immune. However, I, like everybody else, have been brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth with the tap water. A few other people are sick, so it could be the common link, but I use a minimal amount of water and feel like this isn’t the one.

-Jetlag

Granted, it’s been a few days since we got here, but I feel like this might be it. One of the other times I felt like this was when I returned home from Italy back in 2005. The symptoms are exactly the same, but the fact that it’s been four days makes this scenario somewhat suspect.

Okay, fun stuff behind, let’s get serious! I have some pictures for you. They're not the ones from the street or beach which I had hoped to show you - our trainers said to not take pictures in public without each person's permission, because it shows disrespect, and some very strict Muslims may get upset if they see me taking they're picture. Therefore, all of my pictures (except the one from Philly), were taken from the roof of the Peace Corps transit house.

Noah, me, Ryan, and Laura on my last night in the states. They made it a memorable one and I couldn't have been happier to have them up there. Thanks guys :)



Zoomed out view of the beach:



Zoomed in view of the beach...:



Mosque in the distance:



Some boys in an alley near the compound:



A family in a house bordering the compound:



Lastly, some extra info:

On Friday we had our language interviews, where we each sat down with a language instructor and they evaluated our French skills in order to place us in classes. My interview went a lot better than I'd expected and I received intermediate mid marks, which means I'm only one level shy of the mark necessary to be sworn in after 11 more weeks of immersion training, and that will be a piece of cake (mmm I miss cake already). I thought other people would do better, but apparently not as much as I thought. My marks put me in the top five group in my stage (training group I started with in Philly), which includes a guy born in France and another girl who majored in French and is fluent. Because of this, we were all placed in the advanced Susu (tribal language) class together today.

All that said, that doesn't mean my French is very good, but I guess it's not terrible. We had our first Susu class today, and the teacher didn't say a word in English. Why? Well he didn't know any, so the entire class was taught in French. It was a very intense, but very fun and rewarding two hour class. The trainer is an old Guinean with only three teeth on the top of his mouth. He laughs a lot and because of his lack of teeth, I often had trouble understanding him. In spite of that, I was able to pick up everything we learned in class today. Here's an example:

A: i xili di? (what is your name?)
B: n xili Hunter

Yeah, say that five times fast! And the word for teacher is xanerandeba. Mmm.

Okay! Tomorrow morning I leave for Forecariah to move in with my host family who won't speak any English. I'll likely be away from the internet for at least a few weeks, but that doesn't mean you can't e-mail, comment on the blog, or -- send me letters! Here's that address again:

Hunter Dreidame, PCT
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 1927, Conakry
Guinea
West Africa