gone to look for America

So I'm leaving in five days for my trip to America. I'll be visiting 5 different med schools, giving Peace Corps talks, eating American foods, and going on dates. I am unbelievably excited about this trip! Before I go I have to get my house keys copied for my new post mates, find 6 weeks worth of food for Zaari, pack, and clean my house.

The last few weeks here have gone by incredibly fast. I lead the science classroom at an art and science camp, helped talk about and put in contraception devices, talked about HIV/AIDS and helped with testing, did end of the month reports, went to the swear-in of the new volunteers, made untold numbers of cakes and pies and cookies, discovered that I'm not as gluten sensitive as I thought, got my wedding venues booked, changed my wedding colors, changed my wedding colors again, planned my new tattoo, red like four thousand books, watched Avatar a hundred times, fretted over med school application stuff, found out my stepmom is pregnant with a baby girl, said good-bye to sooo many volunteer friends ETing and COSing, lost 20 pounds, became vegan and gave it up, tried again, gave up smoking, wrote four chapters, learned more Dendi, and planned my first date night out in Kansas for the 30th. It's been a whirlwind.

Anyway, I'm so ready to go home for a while and just take a break from Benin. I also have a lot of work to do while I'm home but I have no doubt that I'll thoroughly enjoy myself as well. I'm really worried this time about reverse culture shock, but I think I'll be happy enough after a couple days. Pizza? Movies? Air-conditioned gyms? Yeah, I think I'll do just fine.

Med School Apps, Dog Pizza, and it's Always Sunny

"We're making brownies."
"...the drug filled kind."

Oh, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I'm sitting here in Nati watching TV with Jonny and the Spencers. We've been laughing and plotting. More on the plotting later.

First off, I FINISHED MY MED SCHOOL APPLICATION! I haven't submitted it yet, but all the information is entered in and ready to go for June 1st. I'm so excited to be finished with it. It took about twelve hours to do the whole thing and I spent the last two days up here in Nati to use the good internet to finish it off. I am now officially ready to apply. I'll send it in and wait for secondaries to arrive in July. Woo hoo!

One thing I'm worried about. I've been here two nights already and Zaari is all alone in my house. I know for a fact that she will be hungry today and I feel bad about this. I left her a lot of water and a clean litter box with two days worth of food. As long as I get back tomorrow morning she'll be okay. Sometimes she refuses food for a couple days anyway. But I still feel kind of bad.

But I have to stay in Nati an extra night. Why? Because of dog pizza, the cause of the plotting. We have decided to buy dog meat and create a pizza with this dog meat. It sounds, frankly, a little unappetizing. And there is the whole vegetarian thing to consider. However, I am also down for trying new things and this Peace Corps time is ripe for thinking outside the box. So for most of the afternoon I was torn. Then finally I just decided to go for it. We are right now making the crust for the pizza. I have no idea how it will turn out, but I'll try to get a picture or two up here later. So I'm staying one more night for this spectacle and part of me thinks Zaari would approve.

And I'll just leave you with this gem from It's Always Sunny:

"street rat!"

*UPDATE: The dog pizza was amazing. Like delicious and amazing:

Jonny looks appropriately creepy standing there behind me in the kitchen. Yum, dog pizza. I might not be able to go back to vegetarianism after this. You know what I'm talking about.

R & R

I came to Nati yesterday to think very hard about my plans for the next year and a half and get some laundry done. I hung out with a couple cool cats and we had dinner and watched movies. I've been sick so it was nice to just chill out a bit and use the internet. I spent way too much time doing wedding planning stuff and just thinking about life and priorities and making difficult decisions. No one can please everyone all the time.

But, I am headed back to Djougou today after I go to the bank and do the dishes from yesterday. This weekend I am getting my hair done with the braids and the weave; I'm super excited about it!

Well, that's all for now I suppose. The family planning week didn't happen, but I'm still hoping to get more involved with the nutrition stuff with H, the Japanese volunteer in Djougou who works at the health center on Fridays. Last Friday we talked to sixty women about the importance of only feeding their babies breast milk for the first six months. Then we filled out health cards and they all got vaccinated for several different ailments as well as weighed. The health center is very efficient and I was pretty impressed at how unnecessary I was; in fact I was more in the way than anything! That seems to be happening a lot lately.

Elaina

Journée Mondiale SIDA 2010

My first big PSI event went wonderfully! I'll try to get some pictures up soon to show you all, but there were hundreds of people! Speakers and performers and awards and dancers! It was great and I took a bunch of pictures of all the activities. I handed out condoms and was PSI's official videographer. A few of us set up various tents for free dèpistage (HIV testing). The day was almost six hours long, but a delicious meal of french fries and johnny walker red awaited us at the end! This place is crazy sometimes but I wouldn't have it any other way,

E