So this is the part of the story when I'm reminded that, despite all my crazy adventures here, I've got it good. Real good.

Below is the latest from my amazing cousin Leslie, who just began her service doing agricultural work in Cameroon with the Peace Corps. Incidentally, she studied poly-sci, not biology, and didn't know a word of French or Fulfulde before she arrived. She has my thoughts, prayers and admiration.

I ate a banana this morning that should have been used for making banana bread. The peal was brown and the fruit was pretty squishy, but I ate it with a huge smile. And that's something for me because I usually only eat nearly green bananas. And that's when it hit me that I have grown and changed in the last 2 months of training in Cameroon. It's not just that I now speak Ful-fran-glish without thought (Fulfulde-French-English; it's normal for me to say Oui, me dilli chez moi, "Yes, I'm going to my house"). And it's not that I can identify trees I didn't know existed ten weeks ago. Changes hit me in eating a banana that I never would have eaten two months ago or in strapping a little cousin to my back and pulling up water with my sisters from the well by our house. It's been a crazy ten weeks of life changes. This past week has been really hard. As in spontaneously crying during classes kind of hard, but I constantly think of what my dad says, "Do the next right thing." And I realize that life is not that much different here than in the US. Things get hard wherever we are and we need to simply do the next thing.

And the changes have only begun.

On Wednesday, I will swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers. Thursday morning I leave for Kolofata with other volunteers and Frida night I will spend my first night alone in my house. That's scary. But I know that I can talk it one day at a time and that God is with me each step of the way. That first morning I wake up I'll walk to Iyagna's house and buy beans from her, just because she's a person I know in the village. And I'll smile at my new neighbors and remind myself that Kolofata is home for the next two years.

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Attention: my blog will be ugly and in flux a few days while I hack around with the blogger template. Thanks for your patience while things are under construction. xo.