le 14 decembre

Today

I have...
- finished my journal last night. Will start in a new one tonight. Very happy they are exactly the same (thanks mom and dad!!). Boy, where I was when I started the last one...
- woke up not feeling mentally 100%. Wondered why I seem to be more anxious in the mornings and more at peace at night, when usually it's the other way around.
- ran by a donkey peeing
- discovered a way to keep my keyboard and screen cleaned when the computer is stored
- again asked a great question that did not receive a proportionatly (sp yikes) enlightening response
- bought two materials for pants and brought them to the tailor. One is a beige and the other is a black with blue pinstrips. One can never have enough pants here and I need some better dressy ones. Next time, I'll look for a pair of jeans or something. I may save the black pair for installation...I have my outfit planned I think. Def wish I brought my white blazer.
- made multiple people happy with small gifts
- randomly bought a Brazil soccer jersey (kids size XXXL). The guy wanted 1500, I said no, offered 500, he said no, I said that's cool and walked away, he said 750 (this is about $1.50 USD) and I took it. Got a sketch pair of shorts too that someone commented were mad short even though they're twice the length of my 2.5 inseam running shorts. I'm stoked about the jersey though. It has a collar to pop and everything.
- listened to the best presentation of all of PST so far by a RPCV (returned PC volunteer) who was in Niger in the 80's. I won't recap his entire resume, but he's returned to Niger (this time anyway) poss on a Fulbright or something to do work on his Ph.D. He's a agriculture guy. He was real sharp, has great experience (including being in our exact shoes), and delivered a well organized, well prepared, and highly relevant presentation on food security. It reminded me how many of our sessions are kinda...fuzzy, which is real frustrating. I wonder how much the language barrier has to do with this, which is of course worrysome because our trainers' Eng is way better than my Zarma and I'm going to have to give presentations in Zarma. Anyway, if all our presentaitons were like that, I would feel much better. It was a big morale booster because it kinda reminded me that oh yea, we're here to do some legit work and that people do endure it, and grow from it and move on to do really cool stuff. 
- refocused some of the technical side to this experience, again had the desire to have many books, both from my library and from my wishlist, shipped to me..which then made me wonder when exactly I will read all this stuff and learn all the stuff (it's very intimidating to think about all the stuff it seems we need to learn) we need to learn. People say there is tooons of free time at site, but I dunno, I can think of lots of ways to fill it that doesn't include sitting in my booca and reading, so we'll see. I would like to have a few hours every day to read stuff. Some people read half a dozen books over lang immersion; I read one chapter of one book. But I studied a buttload.
- actually felt some of that old feeling of excitement, rather than despair, about moving to site
- succeeded in studying a little
- had the highlight of the day again be the dinner and fakaray (recall, conversation or chat) with my baba and his friends in our new concession. When I can speak will well learned words and structure, I speak pretty quick. When they talk to me, talk slowly, and re-explain stuff, I can get everything they say. I can catch bits of when they talk to each other. Today, I got a huge laugh for emphasizing "Chime no" and "Walai" (which means It's true...like in response to someone saying "Really?" and you reply "Really.") which one of my favorite phrases picked up over lang immersion "A sinda siika" (which means no doubt) with the flick of my fingers to make the snapping sound that Kush and I spent a semester learning from Ali G. I was also further able to impress them with blessing their travels tomorrow. These convos have been real fun, huge confidene boosters, great learning time, and I like these guys. They're leaving tomorrow, their job done, and I will miss them. I asked if I could help them tomorrow, but another guy is coming in to do the pump or something like that.


I have not...
- been satisfied with the results of the language assessment of yesterday. Pretty much every Zarmaphone scored at the same level, the level which we needed to reach by the end of training to get officially sworn in, despite the fact that there is great disparity between some of us. I think they should think about adopting a pass/fail system instead of the different "levels" they have now, but since some Hausaphones scored real high on the first LPI, now is a weird time to group everyone together. My class from language immersion was looking to dominate.
- found a Niger soccer jersey.
- known quite what to do with my garden. Feeling miffed at peanut products after they were implicated again in my not feeling well last week, I ignored my garden yesterday, but after two inquiries about my garden today, I went to water it twice. There are mad plans in both of them...but most of the time (besides the peanuts) I cannot tell what is a weed, what is a plant, and which plants a which (the watermelon was pointed out to me). It's also hitting home harder that this exercise is not exactly...I dunno beause we will leave before the plants bear (homophone confusion?) fruit