Safe and Sound

Hey guys, I have arrived. Sorry if you've been checking, but it's a bit harder than I thought. Training has been intense and our breaks are only enough time for me to head home in the evenings and take care of my house and my bucket baths and all of that. Other than the fact that I miss all of you, this is exactly the life I've dreamt of having for the last year or so, and I can't wait to tell you all about it. Every day so far has basically been the scariest day of my life, but I guess that's what it's all about, and the peace corps takes great care of us. I'll upload pictures this weekend at the latest. My village is awesome and I live about a 30 minute bike ride from the city. I wake up each morning to the sounds of horses, cows, water getting fetched, greetings in French and Moore, goats, sheep, camels [yes, camels], and my family buying me bread. And at night, the stars are beautiful and they seem to drip out of the sky. I love y'all, and you have no idea how much you're here with me right now. I'll end with my journal entry from two nights ago, sorry but I never use commas or anything related to punctuation when I write for myself...

in africa the night is the night and little else. it begins early and to keep myself occupied i meditate and write and study my french and african languages and read and think of dr. pepper and fat tire and mexican food and the shortcut to work in the morning and my family and friends and lilly and ronald back home. i think of these last thoughts until it is no longer a vacation to do so and then i work on my languages for a while until i can go to sleep. thinking of family and friends isn't dangerous as long as you think of specifics; it gets bad when they connect themselves and then you know you'll be awake until early in the morning. I mean that it's good to miss your momma and then dr pepper and then a snickers bar, it gets rid of the 110 degree heat and the mosquitoes and you are happy to do it. but then you remember the time when you were in middle school and got your braces off and had planned to go with your mom to the gas station on fm 685 on the way home from school and buy a dr pepper and a king size snickers bar to celebrate being able to eat those things again. and when you get to the gas station your mom only has enough change to get a regular snickers bar instead of the larger one, but you are happy to take it because you realize for the first time that your mother is a human being just like anyone else and probably had other things to do than think all day about candy at a gas station, and finding that out makes everything she does better and you are so glad to have her for a momma and at the age of 12 or 13 you want to repay her and make all the work she put into you worth it. that is the point when missing people is no longer a vacation and you wish you hadn't started in the first place. but, make no mistake about it, you are always glad to have people to think about and daylight is always less than 12 hours away and then there is work to do to keep busy.