Making a new normal

The title of this post has been basically my mantra for the past month. We've officially been here for a month now! Yay!

Anyway, here are a couple ways that I can now tell that Guinean life is becoming my new normal:

• I no longer think it's strange to eat cookies wrapped in old school work touched by people's hands and flies in the open market. The cookies are good. Like sweet pie crust. 
• When men hold hands, I know they're not gay.
• I can hold an entire 5 minute conversation just greeting someone. More importantly, I expect to do that with every household I walk past.
• I respond to Foté more than to Mary.
• I have a z-tan on my feet (yay chacos!)
• I have become more used to seeing topless women everywhere. It's not sexy, mostly they're saggy.
• I have a tailor. I can haggle with her. (Not very well)
• The lady who sells me bean sandwiches knows my name. Though she can never remember not to put oil on it! (then i add avocado and laughing cow cheese and buy some cookies =best lunch ever. Cost? 4500 guinean franks. i.e. a little more than 50 cents)
• I've mostly stopped calculating American money equivalencies. I get 8000 a day for lunch, which makes me pretty wealthy. Sometimes I just buy whatever I want.
• I forget what it feels like to take a hot, running shower. (but we're gonna get running water later this week when we travel!)
• Riding in a taxi with 6 other people seems normal. 
• Africa smells familiar now.

So, things are starting to get normal. Of course, tomorrow morning we leave to meet our supervisors and have a workshop in the cooler area of the country, and then we all split off to go to our sites! For me, that means coming back to Basse Cote region, and finding out where I'll be living for the next two years! It's exciting and terrifying at the same time!

Sorry no pics today, I got online too late.