I’m officially a volunteer! (well, practically)

So tomorrow I will swear-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This means I am officially employed by the U.S. government! Yay for a permanent job! It also means that training is over! And that our whole group made it to the end without anybody leaving yet! Sorry for all the exclamations, it’s just all a very exciting time.

So I also leave for post on thursday and am on my own once I get there. It has been a crazy two months of emotions. It’s been stressful, exciting, nerve-wracking, touching and more. The group spends every day during training together and we’re family now.

I am thrilled to leave for post and settle in where I will live for the next two years but it will be hard to leave everyone. I have heard numerous times that the first three months at post are the hardest because it is a whole another set of adjustments we have to acclimate to. And we are on our own to figure it out. Wish me luck! And let the ride continue…

Oh my love of bicycles and tomatoes inspire my writings

Last Saturday we received our mountain bikes and a full four hours of how to make them work. Okay, so it was more like how to fix and maintain them which I guess is pretty useful information. Anyways, I was still pumped to get a bike even though it is a heavy mountain bike…road bikes just can’t handle the Cameroonian terrain. I finally took it for a spin the other day with a couple of friends around the village. Let me tell you, there is nothing more breathtaking then riding my bike through the hills of this gorgeous town. I mean the views are amazing (I wish my camera could capture the beauty in the same way I see it) and after pedaling up some of those hills, I literally couldn’t breathe. But the downhills are intense! I’m a little afraid not to brake a little on them but they are so exhilarating. But about halfway through the ride, my bike decided to break and a part just fell off. I was going slow enough that it didn’t matter but I couldn’t ride without it so we ended up having to walk an hour back home. Still made the 7 pm curfew though!

Another story I would like to share is about tomatoes. A lot of the Cameroonian dishes are made with a tomato type sauce, therefore a lot of tomatoes are diced up. But there are no cutting boards here. So what do ya do? Oh, just cut it in your hand! But don't you worry, the knife is too blunt to cut yourself. My mother definitely laughed at me when she had to show me how to cut the tomato. I tried to explain that I know how to cut a tomato, just in a different way but I could clearly see on her face what she was thinking – ‘stupid Americans’. After cutting a whole bowl of tomatoes, I would have to say I’m not bad at it. Not good per say...but not bad.