I have Internet for the first time in a week, so I might as well update!

A lot has happened since we left our hotel in Philly. Our flight from JFK was delayed, and we ended up missing our connection flight in Brussels. So, we spent one night there. We then flew to Douala, Cameroon (since there wasn’t a flight available to Yaounde), and spent the night there, filling out lots of paperwork before we went to bed. Then, the next morning, before we took a bus to the main Peace Corps office in Yaounde for orientation. We had a few sessions, including one on medical stuff and also got some advice about living with our host families. (When someone asked if there were any major cultural taboos we should know about, our training manager told us, “If you cry, your host family will panic.”) We also had a lovely dinner at the Country Director’s house. We spent the night at a hotel in Yaounde and had more orientation the next morning. Finally, we took a two hour bus ride from Yaounde to our training site in Bafia, where our 50 host families were waiting for us. So, it was just pretty hectic to sleep in a different place every night for a week (parents’ house, Philly, airplane to Brussels, Brussels, Doula, Yaounde, and Lable), and it was nice to finally settle in.

So, we have 11 weeks of training before we get sworn-in as Peace Corps Volunteers on December 1. We’re currently considered Peace Corps Trainees, or PCTs. There are 24 health PCTs and 25 agriculture PCTs. Right now, the Health PCTs are experiencing rural life in two villages a few miles away from Bafia, while the Agros are living the semi-urban life in Bafia. After five weeks, Health and Agros will switch homes.

Life in my village of Lable has definitely been interesting. I live with a mom, two of her kids (age 14 and 12), and a grandmother. We speak French to each other, but I have to ask my family to repeat themselves a lot. My siblings are pretty good at speaking slowly, luckily.

Every morning, I wake up between 5:30 and 5:45. I first go to the well with my siblings to draw water for my bucket bath. We have a pit latrine, which took a lot of taking used to. And we usually have electricity – it consists of two lightbulbs and two outlets. I don’t have a lightbulb in my bedroom, so I just use my headlamp. If the electricity is out, though, we use kerosene lamps.

My first night in Lable, my host mom gave me my bucket of water, and I went into the latrine to take my bucket bath. I closed the door, and my mom knocked on the door. She then came inside, closed the door behind her, and told me to take off my clothes and my glasses so that she could teach me how to take a bucket bath. Yup, awkwardness. I had to tell her about 10 times in my not-so-great French that I could do it myself, especially since I did it in Ghana last summer. Then, later, while my mom was preparing dinner, she asked me if I was American, since most people here seem to assume that all Americans are white. So, there’s been some awkward moments – and there still are – but overall, it’s been good.

We’re almost done with our second week of training, and it’s been full of ups and downs – how I’m sure the rest of my time will be. We have another class on medical again (we’re going to talk about diarrhea!), so I should run off.