End of Training!

Hi Everyone!

I hope you are all well in the states. Things in Burkina are going very well.

Thanks for everyone who posted an entry to the "Create my Fake Husband" Contest. You can all vote for your favorite entry on my blog kaitlynbrown.blogspot.com the poll is on the side and you can read the entries in more detail by looking at the comments posted on the "Create My Fake Husband" post. The winner will receive a great prize!

This morning I moved out of my host family's compound and tomorrow, I will go to Ouaga (the capital) for a few more days of training and "official business" before we swear in at the ambassadors' home on Friday.

Last night I made my host family an "American dinner" of pasta and homemade tomato/eggplant sauce. it was pretty delicious if I do say so myself. My host father killed a chicken for us to eat, which I took to be a huge honor (the only other time he has slaughtered an animal for our meal was when a previous host daughter came to visit)

This morning I toured the village to say my goodbyes and many people (semi) jokingly offered to give me their children to keep me company. I was tempted to take a couple of them up on the offer-some of my favorite kids were offered to me! For others, I was very glad for the "sorry I cant breastfeed your baby, he/she will starve" response. Everyone laughs and I dont end up taking a baby home.

In other exciting news, I tested at "intermediate low" on my Fulfulde language test (this is the 4th level from the bottom on the Peace Corps language scale). I was very pleased with that level after only 2 1/2 months! This is especially good news because the level of French spoken in my new village is not very high. However the downside to this is that I currently spend my days speaking franglais or franfulde and don't speak any language correctly.

I will be going to my site early next week, and I'm a little apprehensive! especially since we have travel restrictions for the first 3 months so that we can "integrate in to the community." I'm hoping next month I can get special "I don't want to turn 25 celebrating alone in the middle of the bush because my village is fasting for Ramadan and cannot party" leave permission or something like that.