It was supposed to be 3 months, but I could only hold out 10 days...

Hello people... I'm back!!! Peace Corps set a goal for us to make it three whole months in at our site without leaving. The original plan was for to come to town to bank, eat pizza, and then go home, but I sort of ended up spending the night. Ten days was plently long enough for me.

I really like my site, but the problem is that I really can't figure out what I am supposed to do. Peace Corps wants us to sit around for three months and figure everything out, but after a couple of days, this is actually pretty boring. I've had a lot of attaya (it's basically brewed green tea with a lot of sugar), read a lot of books (but I tell people that I am doing official PC research), and played a lot of snake on my cell phone. I can now really see why people want to go home!!! It's really not that bad. Everyone is actually really nice, although I learned Mandinka, and most people in my village speak Jola, but we do a lot of smiling and greetings in Mandinka at least. My favorite person is my host niece. She's 14 months old, and probably the largest child that I have ever seen. She's larger than all of the kids in my compound under the age of five, and she's got to be about 25 pounds. I lift her up over my head in the air everyday and I count that as a arm workout.

The problem is also that because I am an American, apparently I am not capable of doing a lot of things. I'm always given the least amount of things to carry, and every time I go anywhere, someone practically holds my hand. I'm developing a nice case of learned helplessness. I wish that I had a really exciting story to tell, but nothing much has happened. I painted my house last week, and managed to get myself covered in oil-based paint. I tried EVERYTHING to get the paint off (I even rubbed my skin with dirt) and nothing would work. Finally I went outside, and my family laughed. My host father than told someone to get the kerosene (well I'm assuming that's what happened, I really do not speak Jola). Then one of my host sisters preceeded to wash off the paint with kerosene and dirt. That was probably one of the most humbling experiences of my life. After that, I was afraid to go near open flames for a couple of days. Not that it mattered anyway, because the burner on my propane tank was broken. Basically for the past 10 days I hungry ALL of the time because I could not eat any food that I wanted to make. My family feeds me, but rice and fish does not do too much. I went and got my burner fixed yesterday, so now I plan on eating a whole lot more!!!

I really do not have too much else to say at this point. I'm surviving and I'm happy, and that's all that really matters. I figure that eventually I'll figure things out. Everyone that I've talked to says that the PC is really all about doing whatever job you want for two years.