One week to go and counting! Its so exciting! In just a few days I will be off to fun and exciting Edea to live for the next two years! I'm sure I'll feel like a giraffe at a lion convention with people thinking, "What is he doing here?" (a fun game for that quote is to repeat it five times, accenting a different word each time to get a new meaning- and all of them apply)

The past week has been, and I'm sure the next one will be filled with mixed emotions. Happy that we're free to live our own lives and make our own schedules, happy that we are moving to our new homes, happy that the "evaluation" period has ended, but sad that the good friends we have made over the last three months will be scattered all over the
country. It will be a lot more difficult to see them, but at the same time, it gives us an excuse to go traveling around the country every once in a while.

A birth announcement: the goat who lives down the street from our training site has just given birth to three of the most adorable baby goats you have ever seen. They don't even know how to walk very well yet without tripping. We haven't named them as yet, but I'm
voting for Larry, Moe and Curly.

We had two of our big parties this past weekend. The first was for the small local companies we have been working with for the past few months. My guy, Jean Guy Kuate, was one of only about five that showed up at the party. We ate a bit, and after all of the local business folk left, a group of us went out for a few beers (a few too many, perhaps). It was a little rough on Saturday morning, I must say...

The second party, on Saturday night, was for the families. I had been asked by David, the training director, to give the speech that night, in French. Once I shook off the effects of the night before, I buckled down and wrote a short and thankful speech with bits of humor. I had to write it mostly in english to make sure it flowed right, and then translated it into my best french. Luckily, Francois, the head language trainer, was there early to do some last minute editing. I'm happy to say he didn't make that many adjustments. So, the party went off very well...I was very nervous making my speech, but I received a number of compliments after I was done. I was just happy people understood what I was saying! We danced after dinner in the Prefecture, the equivalent of city hall, until after eight when the music stopped and my Papa informed me we were going to Grandma's place.
First of all, I love Grandma. She has about three teeth and cannot speak a lick of French, but she's always smiling and is always happy to see me. The thing about Grandma's house at night is that she doesn't have electricity. We drove in Papa's car, and when we got out of the car, I had to take Papa by the hand so he could lead me up the mud path to the front door. When we got inside, there were about 35 children and adults lining the walls of the large, dark living room. There was my uncle sitting at a desk in the middle of the room with two kerosene lanterns lit writing in a notebook. This was the big annual family meeting, and I was being welcomed as a special guest. After talking about money in the patois for a while, they broke out the food. This is, of course, after I had just eaten at the party just a couple of hours before. It was pork and plantains. The plantains were too spicy for me, but the pork was excellent. It had been slow cooked over a fire for many hours and was juicy and soft. I ate some and past the rest of the food on my plate to some of the children who had not yet been served.

Yesterday was a big day. I found out that I had passed my French exam that I had taken on Friday, which means I am officially competent to live and work in the french language! Very exciting! I also made both of my final presentations yesterday, in French, for about a half-hour each. I received good feedback from the trainers on them, so I'm pretty happy at the moment.

Tomorrow, my family is having a big party to send me off, with parties to follow every night until we leave on Saturday morning! Wish me luck as I move my stuff seven hours away!