C'est octobre!

Ahh, it's October already! Where did the time go? Less than 2 weeks left in this country, and lots of stuff to prepare/pack. We're allowed to bring 80 lbs of luggage to Burkina Faso, and I feel like I might be close to, if not over, that limit. All those small, light bags of Goldfish crackers and granola bars really add up.

Peace Corps has been sending us more emails as the departure date draws closer. Apparently our training site is now Koudougou. Not that I really know the difference between that and the city they told us earlier, Ouahigouya. Also, it seems like our typical day during our two month training starts at around 7 am, which is about 4 hours earlier than I've been getting up lately. I'm hoping that with jet lag, my sleep schedule will get messed up anyway, and then I'll just naturally adapt to going to sleep earlier and waking up at dawn. 

Another thing I'll have to adjust to is being in a place where I absolutely don't speak the language. I've learned enough French now to say "Je parle seulement un peu français" (I only speak a little bit of French), and I'm not even totally sure that's grammatically correct. I think my greatest accomplishment so far has been deciphering the French words in Lady Marmalade. Still, it'll be interesting to learn through immersion into the culture and the language of Burkina Faso. I figure if the 10-week Dartmouth Language Study Abroad programs work pretty well, my intensive Peace Corps training will probably achieve a similar result. We'll also be learning the most wide-spread regional language, Moore. I'm excited to study that, and not only because everyone will be in the same boat of not having any idea how to speak it. There are over 60 languages spoken in Burkina Faso, and depending on where we're placed, we might have to learn yet another language. All this language studying kind of makes me want to keep up my Spanish and Mandarin, so if anyone wants to be my language pen pal, let me know!