Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Community Help

Hi everyone. I know, two posts in one week. How lucky are you? Anyway, I'm writing to let you know about a project my site mate, Mike, is working on. Classrooms here are incredibly crowded (up to 100 students). There is always a vast portion of the students forced to sit on the floor, making it difficult to take notes as well as making it difficult for the teacher to answer students' questions. Mike is trying to raise money to buy more desks for his middle school where he is an English teacher. Donations can be made through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, a non profit organization. Any donations, even just a few dollars, would help a lot!

Thanks so much. I hope you are all doing well. You can find Mike's project here: Help Kiffa Schools


P.S. On an unrelated note, mark your calendars! I will be back in America between July 10-31. My plans so far include eating ice cream, going swimming, and sitting in the air conditioning!

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Women's Day and Pictures!

Hey everyone! Things here are going great in Kiffa except, of course, that is already incredibly hot but the Mauritanians are still telling me it’s cold. But anyway, last week was Women’s Day, and I would say it was a huge success. There were tons of activities going on all week, and our girls did skits about the importance of girls education and the dangers of forced and early marriage. In all, and would say they had an audience of about 60 people! We were really proud of our girls. They wrote and organized their skits completely on their own. Basically all we did was make sure they kept their skits under the 15 minute time limit. In general, it was just a festive week where I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with cooperative women I usually only see at the Women’s Ministry.


More importantly, I have posted some new pictures. Some of them are repeats because my mom couldn’t get them printed off the new program, so I’m back to the old one. So yeah, enjoy pictures of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Tabaski, and Women’s Day.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Facebook...

Okay, so here is the deal. People always say that being in Peace Corps changes you, but for me, it just has not changed me exactly in the ways I was expecting. After five years of heavily resisting the idea of joining Facebook, I have recently come to realize that it is slowly becoming a necessary part of life, and it is inevitable that I will join eventually. The longer I wait to join, the more pride I will have to swallow before I do it, so I guess it is just time to suck it up and join. So yes, I am now on Facebook, which means you can now come find me.


I hope you are all well! Can't wait to hear from you soon.