Site announcement!

Things have been a little crazy around here the past week or so!! because of some things that had happened in burkina, we were all pulled out of our host families and moved into a hotel. We hope to move to a new city soon, but right now, we are all just rolling with the punches :)

We missed a couple days of classes in the move, meaning site announcement was moved from wednesday to today!! (we were a little nervous that would happen, but two days wasn't the end of the world :P) I have been instructed not share my location on such a public forum, but i can tell you that i will be north of Bobo-Dioulasso (or just Bobo) and south of Degoudou (it is on my facebook, because i have higher controls on who can see my info there, if you're really curious!! or just send me an email and i'll let you know)

I know that i will be the first education volunteer, and i think the first volunteer there at all!! I believe there have been health volunteers in the area before, but not in my city/village. The region i described is part of the cotton bowl of burkina, meaning it is greener than the parts of the country i have seen so far!! I did find out that i will NOT have electricity. that definitely makes a minority in my sector, but i knew it was certainly a possibility. I am certain that i will have more to write on that after i've lived there for a while. But right now, i'm at a hotel with free wi-fi, so that is a little hard to imagine a life without electricity at the moment.

Next week we have our counterpart workshop next week which means that we all get to meet the person from our sites who will be our go-to person for the next two years!! For teachers, our counterpart is typically another teacher at the school or a parent on the PTA (APE in french). After the workshop, i get to go to my site!! For five days next week, i will get to take a bus, a bush-taxi and my bike out to my site. i'll get to see my school, meet all the important people, see my house (hopefully) and get a feel for what the village is like. I will hopefully also get an idea of what subjects are not being taught at my school, which typically translates into what subjects i will teach! I'm super excited to get a little bit of independence and see how things work here when i'm not being chauffeured around in air-conditioned government vehicles. (not that i don't enjoy air-conditioned vehicles!)

Well, that's all i've got for now! i think my next update will be after my site visit, and i'll let you know how everything went! Also, today is the one month mark of landing in burkina, and i can't describe how crazy it seems that i've only been gone a month!! it seems like so much longer (but in a good way!)

as always, miss you all and love all the little updates and messages i've gotten. they really mean a lot! :)