Marcel's Goatee

Marcel's goatee allowed me to shave last week. Most of the single guys (a grand total of 5 or 6 of us) had a bet going to grow out our "beards" until swearing-in in mid-December. Well, thank god Kate gave Marcel an awful haircut (short but lumpy) that prompted him to shave down to a goatee, giving Matt and I free bottled water as part of the bet (the brand is called Tangui - pronounced Tangy - these are things you need to know) and baby faces. It took me atleast 30 minutes to shave that night. And, according to most people in my group, there went my child molestor moustache. Yeah, we're a friendly group.

The stress of this last week really did make everyone in the health group start snapping at each other is the most sarcastic way possible. Last Tuesday was the funniest and meanest day of our stage. It was just one crack after the other. We figured out we stay sane by just making fun of each other nonstop.

We took a (pointless) field trip up to Mokolo and Touro Friday farther north. We were visiting a badass PCV who has done a lot of great stuff in his village. He has an awesome house that has definitely got all of our hopes up. There were a couple upsides to the trip: a night away from Pitoa; a night away from Pitoa at a hotel with a bar. It was the first time where we were able to drink in a "safe" situation, and we took severe advantage of it. The downside? Well, how about a two hour drive on the worst road you've ever been on from Mokolo to Touro to visit said super-PCVs house for two hours, then turning back around and driving two hours on that awful (unpaved) road) then four more hours on a bad paved highway. They're not kidding when people talk about bad transportation in Africa.

My French is improving. I started off as a Novice Mid and now I'm at Intermediate Low. You pass the PC language requirement at Intermediate High. I'm about 100 percent sure I'll get there, it's just that the stress of training is getting to me more in the last few weeks than before. I'm having no problems with my homestay family, but I'm ready to get to my post and have my own place. Isn't it crazy that the first time I "move" out of my parents house, it's by myself in some remote Cameroonian village? I find out where that remote village will be this Thursday.

I'm pretty out of touch with the world right now. I caught some of the news at the hotel Friday and saw mass chaos in the Gaza Strip, so I haven't really missed much. Matt and I were talking and we decided that it's such a stress going through our day to day lives here during training - the food, having enough water, tech sessions, god those tech sessions - that being bombarded by news is too much. That being said, I'm about to go check out cnn.com and secretly hope someone mails me some magazines, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

As you can see, I found out how to use commas. You can press alt-shift on a French keyboard and it turns into an American. Sadly, the keys don't magically fly around and rearrange themselves like I had hoped.

Happy birthday, Ben! Hope Mizzou is going well. And the Cardinals? That's the equivalent of the San Antonio Spurs winning the NBA Championship: Boring.