Heat is setting in...

I found out my assignment this past Thursday. I'll be moving to the region of Tambacounda. My village is 55k southeast of the city of Tambacounda. I have yet to memorize the name of my village, too many vowels, but its not googleable anyway.  I'm the first volunteer to be placed in this village. The population is 1117. The Peace Corps is building me a mud hut with a thatched roof. I won't have electricity or running water. Someone told me that he has lived with and without electricity and that he prefers no electricity because when you do have it, it goes out all the time anyway so its easier to just acclimate to no electricity. I'll try to keep that mentality. Someone told me that there's monkeys in my village. That's pretty cool. I'll be in the jungle and they say it gets hot there. Hmmm...

Once again, I forget if I told you how they told us our site placements. The basketball court at the training center has a big map of Senegal painted on it. They blindfold everyone and lead us to our site on the map. Then everyone takes off their blindfold and sees where they're going and who will be closest to them. A film crew from the news came and recorded it. I think they're using the footage for some Peace Corps media too. I'll have to look into it. Everyone in my stage is pretty cool so I'm near people I like, but my two closest friends are pretty far from me. They're in the desert though, in a region that has the slogan, "Where things go to die." They can come visit me. =) But it has put a sadden tone to training because there isn't much time left and I spend all my time with these guys. We've become so close in only a month. Training forces you to get to know people. Its an interesting process.

So the weather has be great here up until yesterday. Everyday before then has been 85 during the day, maybe high 60's at night. Yesterday and today have been hot. It puts a twist on things. The only thing I've been dreading is the heat. Its nasty. Of course I'll acclimate to it, but I'm not looking forward to the process. Its not even close to how hot its going to be, either. Gotta suck it up!

I just got back to the training center today from a whopping 2 day stint in the village. A little pointless, but whatever. Went to the beach, so that was nice. I'm here until Tuesday and then we leave for "volunteer visits" where we will go to our region and stay for five days with the volunteer who is closest to our site. I talked to my host volunteer the other day and she said its hot there. Good to know. She also said that they are throwing a party at the regional house the night we arrive so that we can meet all the volunteers in my region. I think there are 6 or 7 other people from my stage that are going to Tamba.

Ok, that's all I have for now. I literally just got back but since my village peeps arrived first I want to hoard the internet before the rest get back, creating a wifi traffic jam. Now I must do laundry and shower. I hope all is well. Heard the government got their act back together (well... you know what I mean). Yay, America! Love you guys! xoxo