Happy Halloween

Back from Dakar and in Velingara to pick up the students that will be staying with me this week. Had a great time in Mbour with Jen and Alexis and Chris. And the trainees there. Then came to Tamba and stayed a night in Mary's village with Nathaniel and Ben. It is SO much fun to be in another volunteer's pulafuuta village. I enjoyed talking to her family with the other volunteers. We can talk to her family alone or in groups and we can help each other with vocabulary because since we're not in the same class anymore, we learn different things, but some of it would never come up in regional house conversation. It's reassuring and low pressure and plus I really enjoy being with the other pulafuutas. I still sort of feel like they're my family within peace corps.

Had a wonderful stop at the mailbox today: two letters (Mon and Cha), two postcards (Yvette and the Harts), and one package (Katie). THANK YOU ALL!!! I still haven't seen the package from the sunday school class, but I'm keeping my eye out and I'm not too worried yet. It just takes a long time to get from Dakar to here and it's probably sitting in the Kolda post office waiting for someone to realize that maybe it should be sent to Velingara already. Katie, I know you're curious so here's the state your package arrived in: definitely opened, but I guess everything passed. The flower and heart fell off, but the butterfly made it, although he's surely seen better days. However, the effect was not lost and I loved it. The pumpkin was fully intact, as were the candy corns--only minorly melty. Really very successful I think. Nice pics of the sky diving.

For Halloween I was in Tamba and dressed as Medusa (paper snakes in the dreds and a toga, so much fun) and over the weekend made 5 batches of brownies from scratch. Thanks Martha Stewart, for inspiration for the brownie grave-yard, and Kay Lekk (the PC vol cookbook) for a recipe. It was a success... (and merited the 2 encore batches).

It is good to be back in the village though. It's much more settled and I sleep better out here than I ever do in a regional house... although the bed at the med hut was probably the best bed I've had since leaving Texas. Fun stuff ahead this week: harvesting peanuts and rice, hopefully, cooking with the women and the volunteers, checking out the health hut, sitting in on classes at school (hallelujah there's school now), and henna. I bought henna from the market today and my neighbor Mari is supposed to be really good at it, so we'll have henna feet and hands in the best Senegalese style. Yay. At the end of the week I'll accompany the 2 students back to Kolda where they'll head to Dakar, and I'll await the new volunteers who swear in on Friday and will be installed next week. So I finally get my new neighbor, Mike. Super Yay! And, there's a new Tostan volunteer in Velingara, Jessie. I met her at the Halloween party in Tamba. Seems nice. Yay for her too!

On to the village... Check in next week!