Thanksgiving in Guinea!

Well, I'm in Conakry for Thanksgiving, which is really nice, because our regional capital is just not equipped to cook any sort of real meal. No cooking supplies at the house, no oven, and definitely a much smaller selection of food. We are managing to have almost all the traditional dishes, except sweet potatoes (they're different here) and cranberry sauce. Cranberries are unheard of here. We even managed to get a turkey, thanks to a lovely lady with embassy connections who happened to buy extra. I'm in charge of stuffing, but we're going to have apple and pumpkin pie, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, carrot cake, brownies, mac and cheese...I think that's most of it!

I've been doing much better at site recently, after a sort of really terrible week that seemed to mark a turning point. School is going slow and is still stressful, even with much reduced hours, because I am behind on the program and I have to give evaluations and the kids still aren't getting what I'm telling them. I think my French is too fast, which is a problem, but I've been trying to slow down and simplify and make things interesting. My community life has gotten better, with many less fotes and many more Mari Fofanas. Taxi drivers and gendarmes can still be a pain in the butt, but its so much better. My susu is also improving, though I haven't had any official lessons!

I'm going to try to set up a bunch of blog posts to post at week intervals so that you'll have something to read while I'm not in internet access.

The view from my front porch