The joy of cheese

Due to lack of computer time…this blog is ripped from an e-mail that I wrote to my parents. I tried to change a few things so that they weren’t just addressing them!

In the US my family likes to count deer on walks in the local park…here in Africa I don’t count deer, but I could start counting the lizards and skinks. My groupmates have decided to nickname me Jane Goodall because I'm constantly pointing out animals. They've requested that I be their safari guide b/c I'm always finding stuff that no one else sees :)

Yesterday we met the head of the European Commission (European Union) it was a pretty big deal...we're really into meeting big important people here. He was telling us that the EU gives $50mil a year in aid, PC has $3mil here, France is going to start sending $110mil a year for 5 years, and the US embassy has $1mil here. Aid accounts for about 10% of the Cameroon budget. Corruption here is ridiculously awful, money just doesn't stay where it's supposed to be!

I got my information on my host family...10 people in the family, the father is a farmer, and the mother is a housewife. Sadly, that's all I know for now. I'm pretty crazy excited to meet them. We're all going to smell pretty bad by the time we meet our hostfamilies because we will have been on a non-air conditioned train for atleast 24 hours.

As for me beginning to eat meat....we got served fish heads 2 nights ago :) I tasted it, but that was enough for me. Yesterday we had fried fish with dinner and I ate most of it. I was very proud. I trust all of the fruits here, I actually chose to eat a banana yesterday! I don't eat as much bread anymore because all of the stuff they serve us is moldy. We definitely continue to eat it occasionally anyway.

Ooo...we have rats in the ceiling of our hotel room. No big deal really...they don't come into our room, so the room remains clean...we just hear them running around. Very exciting.

I got a hot pink shot yesterday, I thought that would excite Courtney :) It was the first in the rabies series. Good fun.

Well it's almost lunchtime here, and I can't walk back to the hotel alone, so I'll wrap this up. I tried to upload my pictures for you, but it's not working for anyone so far so it will have to wait. :( I've taken lots of pictures of food so far (avocadoes, fish heads, tomato salads...etc)

Anyway, I'm not sure when I'll have computer access again since we're heading north this afternoon, but keeping sending e-mails, I'm enjoying them!

P.S. I actually had cheese yesterday! It was a good day :)