Hey everyone!
          So I'm wrapping up my Peace Corps service.  Today I arrived
in the capitol to start going through all the red tape Peace Corps
puts us through to let us leave.  Gonna get all checked out medically
too so I'll find out if I have worms or not.  (by the amount I eat,
you'd think I did)  But we'll see.
           I've been keeping myself occupied now that school's out.
I wanted to go visit my neighbor Andrea, so I waited for the bus to
her village to arrive, but once it did, I didn't think they'd have
room for me.  Already there were people standing in the aisle and on
the stairs and sitting on big water jugs next to the driver.  At least
8 people were on the roof along with the bags and bikes that were
piled up at least 5 feet high.  I didn't think they'd let me on, but
they did.  (any chance to make an extra buck, always room for one more
seems to be the motto here)  I even got to sit on a water jug and I
was thankful!  There were even people standing in the gap between the
knees of seated people and the seats in front of them.  Crazy.  So we
leave, but 5k later, I smell burnt rubber and then hear a pop.  We
pulled over and yep, we had a flat tire.  So everyone piled out.  I
counted the number of people on board.  51!  How many is the bus
supposed to hold?  22.  But the crew had a spare, 2 in fact, which
goes to show the condition of their vehicles and the condition of the
roads.  They got that tire switched in 12 minutes, which shows that
this happens often enough that they have lots of practice.  While this
was going on I was fending off the men who were hitting on me in Mooré
by telling them I didn't want them in Mooré which cracked everyone
else up.  Glad to entertain.  Anyway, we finally piled back in and I
got back on my water jug and we got there without further incident.
         Here's another transport story; transport always makes for
interesting stories.  I went to go visit my friend Bryan.  He's
technically only 90k from me, probably 75 as the crow flies, but buses
don't travel the road frequently, so I had to go around another way,
which was 250k.  Took awhile on the unpaved road.  On the way back, I
sat next to a guy whose father has 11 wives and 72 children.  He was
lucky and was the first child so he got an education and a good job in
the capitol.  But now he's paying the tuition of 19 of his younger
brothers and sisters.  Life here isn't easy.  People are finally
starting to figure out that having lots of kids isn't the way to go if
you want to be able to feed them and educate them.  Unfortunately they
don't know much about contraception. Speaking of wives, my landlord
got his 3rd one.  She cannot even be 17.  At least she wasn't pregnant
before the marriage unlike the 2nd one who had already had the kid.  I
heard this 3rd one was his girlfriend before.  He told me that he has
the 2 other wives to work in the field so he doesn't have to pay
anyone to do the work.  So basically slave labor.  I'm sure he gets
other benefits too.
          Anyway, on the way back from visiting my friend, the bus
was trying to turn onto a main road, and halfway through the turn, the
bus decided it didn't know how to turn anymore.  So we backed up and
tried again, knocking over some poor lady's mango stand in the market
multiple times as we kept trying.  Finally they shut the bus off,
still in the middle of the intersection and tried to fix it.
Apparently this has already happened at least twice before.  Inspires
confidence in the quality of the bus, that's for sure.  I had to get
to the next town to catch the bus to my village so I found another bus
and got there in time to catch my bus.  While I was waiting for my bus
to show up, an old Muslim guy was in the process of praying on his mat
and started hitting on me in Mooré. (my mooré still isn't very good,
but I know when guys are hitting on me or when people ask for money.
So I know how to refuse the guys and also how to tell people I have no
money and to tell children I have no candy.  That's about the extent
of my mooré, haha)  Turns out he was asking me to be his 4th wife!  I
was like, I don't think so buddy!  His bus came and he got on, then I
found out he was hitting on another lady out his window, asking her to
be his 5th wife!  I was like, hey, I didn't agree to be the fourth
wife, get it straight!
          In other news, the results came in for the exam to get into
high school.  The success rate at my school was almost 70%, which is
really impressive for here!  Last year it was 50%.  I'd like to think
that the solar lights being there really helped the kids.  They
definitely used them to study at night.  Thanks again to everyone who
helped out with the solar light project!!!
          One of my goals before leaving Burkina was to see elephants
and I finally got the chance!!!  I'm friends with some missionaries
here and we all went in their truck to go see the elephants in the
wild.  I had called a guide I knew of and we picked him up in a town 2
hours from the capitol near a park where the elephants are.  He guided
us down this dirt path outside of town, past giant baobob trees,
fording small streams, sliding through mud puddles, avoiding cows and
goats.  Totally felt like a safari!  The path was barely large enough
for a truck so we kept brushing up against trees, which would snap
back and smack those of us in the back if we weren't paying attention.
 Some of them had 2 inch long thorns too that were really thick.
Don't want to mess around with those!
          We get to some random spot in this forest and stop the
truck and get out to walk around.  The guys immediately squats down
and examines the ground and sees that the elephants had been there
recently and could tell which direction they had gone.  So we all
follow him, sneaking quietly through the trees, tracking elephants!
It was so cool!!!  We found the watering hole, and then he figured out
that there was a herd of elephants just off to the side in some trees.
 We all squatted down, cause closer to the ground there were less
leaves and we were able to see what first looked like gray tree
trucks, but then they moved and we realized they were elephant legs!
The herd moved through the trees, they had babies too, so we couldn't
get too close, otherwise they'd charge us.  Suddenly a big elephant
came out of the trees and looked right at us!  We all just stood
amazed at the sight of an elephant in the wild.  Then he went and
rejoined his herd.  The guide said there were probably 60 of them
there.  There were about 500 in the park.  We let them leave then went
tracking them again.  You'd think that many elephants would be easy to
track, but they weren't!  They were so quiet!
           Apparently the elephants ran across our truck and got
scared and split up.  We tracked one group and little by little we got
closer and closer to them until we were about 30 feet away from some
big ones.  There were lots of trees though, so it was really hard to
get a good picture.  They knew we were there, and hustled the babies
away.  The big ones kept eating though.  Then another one looked at
us, then took a couple steps forward, and we all got scared that he
was coming towards us so we all ran really fast in the other
direction!  He didn't follow though.  Then the guide realized that we
were between the two groups of elephants and if the two groups came
together and we got stuck in the middle, that might be a little bad
for us.  So we left and tried tracking the other group by the trail of
fresh elephant dung, but only ended up seeing their legs and couldn't
get closer.  So with that we decided to end our safari and headed back
to civilization to get cold sodas.  But man, what an adventure!!!
           So after that I went back to village and started packing
up my house.  Peace Corps isn't replacing me so I had to move
everything out.  For my house being as small as it is, I sure had a
lot of stuff!  Gave a ton of it away, then packed the rest of it up to
give to a Volunteer who's moving to the town near me.  I had already
said goodbye to a lot of people in village.  The government leader of
the village invited me for drinks with several other top officials in
village and said how much they appreciated all I had done there, so
that was really nice.  Then the next day the missionaries came to move
me out of village.  I had been so busy with packing that I hadn't
really thought about the leaving part.  But as we were pulling out of
village, for the last time, I started tearing up.  Said goodbye to a
couple more people on the way out, got back in the truck and couldn't
hold back the tears anymore as we headed out of village and I looked
back until the village faded into dust, tears rolling down my face.  I
loved my village.  I'm really going to miss living there and all my
friends too.  It was hard living there, but I loved it the past 2
years.  It's sad but it's time for me to move on to something else.
My time here is done.  It'll be nice to get home and see everyone and
eat lots of food but I think it'll be hard for me to readjust to life
back in the States.  I've pretty much totally adjusted to the culture
here.  I've heard that the hardest part of being a Peace Corps
Volunteer is coming home and going through reverse culture shock and
no one being able to really understand what you're going through.
Hopefully I'll manage alright though.
          Anyway, I finish my Peace Corps service on August 14th,
then head to Paris on the 19th and get into Austin on the 25th around
8pm I think.
          Thanks everyone for supporting me these past two years
here!  I couldn't have managed here without the emotional support from
all of you who sent packages and letters and emails.  Thank you so
much!!!!  Also thanks again to everyone who helped out with the solar
project.  I'm really happy that I was able to provide my students with
that, thanks to y'all's support.  This is probably the last update
from Africa I'll do, so thanks for sticking with me and following my
adventure these past 2 years.  I look forward to seeing all of you in
the near future hopefully!  Au revoir!

Hey everyone,
         So my career as a Peace Corps Volunteer seems to be winding
down.  Just a month left!  I'm excited, I'm looking forward to going
home and getting out of here.  Don't get me wrong, I like Burkina and
have lots of friends here, I just don't want to be here any longer.
I've had enough fun.  Time to go home.  I'm tired of living here.  Now
I can't go a single day here without someone asking me to stay a third
year, or asking me for money, or asking me to take them to America, or
asking for my number, or asking me to marry them and take them to
America.  It was sweet at first that they didn't want me to leave but
now it's really irritating.  I don't even want to leave my house
anymore.  But sitting in village by myself while everyone is off in
the fields isn't fun either.  I read 5 books in a week.  I'm glad I
only have a little more time here.
        I haven't been doing too much since school let out.  Went to
visit my neighbor Andrea and we painted another world map, ate smoked
rabbit, got fat on american food, fun times.  We also went to Dori to
see friends and hang out.  I put pictures on my blog, go check them
out.  My school had another party for me, this time so the members of
the PTA and the prefet (local government leader) and the police chief
could thank me for my work.  I dressed up again and gave a speech in
French and it went well.  The PTA also gave me a gift of a traditional
piece of cloth that the women wear as a skirt.  Also got a picture of
that online.
        The weather here has been nicer, since the rain finally
started coming.  It started late though, so people are worried the
harvest won't be spectacular.  The harvest wasn't great last year, and
now people are out of food to eat.  If they only have a little bit of
millet left, they eat it instead of using it to plant more.  A lot of
people are going hungry and it's only going to get worse.  And they
don't have the money to buy more.  I helped one of my good friends buy
some but I can't help everyone.  All's I can do is pray that the rains
will be good this year.
         I finally got to see what a hospital is like here.
Unfortunately it wasn't under the best of conditions.  One of the
teachers at my school was really sick with malaria.  Had a fever,
coughing, throwing up whatever he ate, very fatigued.  He finally
broke down and went to the hospital at the town near our village and
got hooked up on an IV and meds.  I went to visit and wow, it was
really primitive.  Everything was open, open doors, windows, no
screens, no mosquito nets even, which boggled my mind because malaria
is transmitted by mosquitoes, as are many other diseases.  There were
just a couple doctors and nurses running around.  The nurses really
didn't attend to the patients' needs.  The family or friends of the
person were expected to do that.  So my colleague's friends were
taking care of him, getting him water and juice and stuff.  They
brought him a fan too.  The hospital rooms really weren't much to look
at.  Just two beds, and you had to bring your own sheets/pillows.  I
saw 2 rusty IV stands, one bedpan, and one small cabinet for syringes
and stuff like that.  That's about it.  No bathrooms, just latrines
that someone has to help you to.  And the bedpans were just emptied
outside on the ground if it was just pee.  Kinda crazy.  I told them
about hospitals in America, how you can push a button to get a nurse
to come, and it boggled their minds, haha.  My colleague's brother
came up from the capitol to see him and decided to take him back to
the capitol to a better hospital so he didn't even stay there one
whole day.  Luckily he's all better now, but I was worried for awhile.
             Random story: one day I was sitting at home and saw that
a storm was coming in.  I realized I didn't have any water so that if
they storm lasted for awhile I wouldn't be able to drink or bathe.  So
I decided to go to the pump real quick to get a 20 quart jug filled
with water.  I got there and as I was getting the water pumped (I
usually don't have to do my own pumping, someone else there usually
will step up and do it for me, usually a student) the pre-rain dust
storm blew in, and this one was a doozy.  Wind blowing really
strongly, dust everywhere, couldn't hardly see.  Finally got my jug
and strapped it to my bike with an old strip of rubber inner tube and
started pedaling back to my house.  Unfortunately I was going directly
against the wind.  It was so hard to pedal with the wind and then the
dust getting in my eyes and mouth.  My pants were a little wet and the
dirt stuck to them.  It's hard enough pedaling with 5 gallons of water
sloshing behind you, but against a strong wind, it's almost
impossible.  Had to stop a few times cause I was getting pelted by
sand and dirt and it was too hard to pedal against.  Finally made it
back home just as the rain started, covered in dirt, even under my
clothes, and crunching sand in my teeth.  Crazy.  I'm so looking
forward to having running water again!
           Other random facts:  I was looking at the registration
book that my school has to keep track of all the students, and I
looked at their ages.  Quite a range.  In my 6th grade class the ages
range from 11 to 18 and in 7th grade the ages range from 12 to 22.
I'm only 2 years older than the oldest!  There's kids at my school in
9th grade who are the same age as me.  Definitely makes teaching
challenging.  But my kids didn't know how old I was until the end of
the year and even then they didn't believe me that I was that young.
I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or take it to mean
that Africa has aged me too much.  I've got wrinkles now!  I think
it's from smiling and laughing so much so I guess that's not so bad.
          Oh, another random fact: Burkina is now number one in the
world for illiteracy!  Last year we were second, beat by Niger, one of
the few countries in the world harder to serve in than Burkina I
think.  But this year we came out on top, or on bottom, however you
want to look at it.  I heard that 80% of the country is illiterate.
Definitely a lot of work still to be done here, but I won't be here to
help.  I did my part already.
          Anyway, my last day as a PCV will be August 14!  I'm
leaving on the 19th to fly to Paris to meet my dad on the 20th, and
we'll get back to Austin late on the 25th.  After that I'm not sure
what I'll be doing.  We'll probably take a trip up to North Dakota in
September to see the family up there and I may continue to Wisconsin
to see the other side of the family there.  I turned in my application
for Peace Corps Recruiter but I haven't heard anything yet.  I really
hope that works out, otherwise I have no idea what else I'll do.
Still want to move to DC though.
         I hope everyone's doing well and I look forward to seeing
all of you sometime soon after I get back.  Thanks for reading and
don't forget to check out my new pictures below!