Monday. The Day Vas Broke Rules 1 & 2 of This Blag.

Today was a terribly full day. I was up bright and early at 6:15 messing around with This American Life, check out the episode cry-babies by the way, and waking Jade and Eva up at an ungodly hour of 6:45. Our embassy ride came to pick us up at 7:50, when our schedule said 8:30 so that was a slight confusion. I was super excited for the day and it was great, though we spent the entire day indoors.

Today we went over teacher training with Jen, whom Fulbright had flown in from Finland where she teaches university. She was one of the TEOFL pros who did the workshop with us at the Fulbright orientation in DC. She’s really, truly awesome. Today we went over how to evaluate students and how to structure classes, how to focus groups, and how to utilize resources that aren’t highly technological. It was great, I felt that I learned something from everything she said.

We also had a Managing Expectations from a PC Coordinator, Gabbie, who knows Kelly whom we’re having dinner with tomorrow! Small world in the American Ex-Pat-riverse. He taught us a really useful skill of ‘community mapping’ which is where you make your own map, start keeping track of when things happen and over a three month period create a picture of your community that is feasible and working. I’m pretty excited to put what he taught us into use. He also told me that there will be two PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in Bertoua, which is a huge weight off my shoulders.

The final orientation that we had was a “staying healthy” orientation where we mostly talked about malaria, how sick you can feel from eating peanuts off the street, how Eva and I really ought to get rabies shots before going out into the boonies, and a whole feast of other parasites and evil critters. Man. There’s a lot to worry about if you let it take over. Gerald basically told us that we are all going to get malaria. Yay. Malaria, and typoid, and parasites too!

After the embassy we dragged Jen with us and met up with Mackenzie because we thought we were going to go to the American school to meet up with Lindsey and Brian (the entire English department). Unfortunately, our session got out kind of late so Brian and Lindsey had already gone home (they did, after all, have French lessons at 6 so it was a small window of time to begin with). They texted me though and we’ll switch files and info tomorrow, I’m truly grateful that they’re being so generous with us poor novice ETAs.

So we asked Antoine to drop us off a place that served Cameroonian food, since that was the leftover goal from yesterday. We had amazing food, I love the savory beneits that they served along with these greens/onions combo that rivalled even Mary’s spinach palya. I know mom, don’t freak out, but it was that good. I had a bean dish (koki maybe?) and some fish in green sauce and a wide assortment of Cameroonian food from a buffet. It was pretty cool because we were the only les blanches in the facility, which makes me feel like it was better tailored to local tastes (that could be perception but I’m sticking with it!).

Joe called us during dinner and we pledged to meet up at the hotel at 8 for drinks. He had a small (as in two) roach problem at his apartment and had been MIA for the past two days so it was really nice to see him and see how he’s doing. He’s promised to let me come back to Yaoundé and shadow him on his research, he’s doing work with wildlife conservation through the WWF and some other organization and it sounds really interesting. It was nice to sit down with other Fulbrighters and talk about life, the universe and everything. We also used big words like deluge, cacophony and dramatical. Because we’re awesome and well-read.

I consumed the normal amount of wine that Sara and I would partake on a night where we had dinner. Apparently it might just be an ‘us’ thing Sar, who knew? At any rate I’m ready to do my homework and head for bed. It’s going to be an early morning because Eva (and maybe Jade) want to head to our egg-shack for breakfast.