Bien. Glace. Ici!

Good. Cold. Here. That's the sign in front of businesses that sell Coke. I use "business" loosely, because sometimes it's nothing more than a hut with a refrigerator out front.


So here's what I've been up to, because you probably have no idea from these sparse posts. The 80 something trainees in my group have been split into 10 or so groups for language training in homestay villages near Bamako. Mine is 35K from Bamako. There are 4 trainees and one Peace Corps teacher, and varying accounts of the population of the village-300 is the most I've heard. And it's about as authentic Africa as you can imagine.



The view from my classroom...





































My daily routine: get up at 6:30 for a bucket bath, eat breakfast (bread), walk to my teacher's house for 4 hours of Bambara class, go home for lunch (bread), go back to school for another 3 hours, free time-I usually rest or read or ride my bike 2K to the next town to drink a Fanta. Another bucket bath in the evening, then this:




















My family and a million random kids watch our favorite Brazilian French-dubbed soap opera, Au Coeur du Peche, on this TV powered by a car battery. I don't know how many of them actually understand it, but they don't complain. It still hasn't ceased to amaze me that this happens every night. I think they were unprepared for this picture, by the way-they don't look like zombies in real life.






After that I eat dinner (bread), go to bed and do it all over again the next day. We eat with our families 3 times a day, but I've taken to only eating the bread they give me, because I'm finding the food really hard to get used to. Twice, on market days, we have cooked our own dinners at our language teacher's house. Last week was 2 chickens, purchased live in the market for 1500CFA each ($3), slaughtered hilal style in front of us, and boiled...risotto cooked over a propane stove...and "bruschetta" consisting of french bread, tomato paste and olive oil, and laughing cow cheese. you take what you can get here. I'm never taking refrigeration for granted again. I miss real cheese!

We've been spending about 2 weeks in our villages with 3 or 4 day breaks here (at our training compound with good food and internet and FANS). So no..I don't have a wireless connection in my village. Next week we actually get to come out of the comfort bubble and visit our future sites. So far we've been shuttled in peace corps land cruisers every time we go somewhere, which makes me feel like a diplomat. Next week, though, we have to take public transport alone. My site is in the Segou region, near San, about 6 hours from BKO by bus. Public transport is how most everybody gets around, but is unreliable at best (so i've heard). Accidents, tire blowouts, breakdowns are common, and one of our training coordinators told us schedules run on "west african international time." (aka WAIT). So 8 am departure might not really mean 8 am. And 6 hours might really mean 12 (but let's hope not....) Wish me luck!