Bend is good times

Bend was buzzing... or maybe it was just me. It was like everyone graduated and is back and not ashamed to live on their parent's couch and go out every night. The entire MV graduating class of '01 is chillin in Bend! Unexpected, but I love it. If I tried to relay my many elating experiences of the week, it would just be lame so INSTEAD... a top ten list! See Davey m'friend I told you they'd come in handy!

Top Ten Best Things About My Week In My Old Stomping Grounds of Bend, Or:
1. Oregon hikes (manzanita, spruce, pine, and river) smell like a vat of honey with an entire spicerack dumped in, heated and stirred.
2. Jason's delicious delicacies; also his wit, charm and good choice of girlfriend.
3. There is still no super-wal-mart; I love the way Bend has grown.
4. I score a pair of autographed old man shorts and find a crazy boy to yearn for from abroad.
5. Hillary, Al and I... that's it really.
6. Hill and Al trying to surf the Deschutes.
7. Seeing every constellation possible, at once, from a trampoline. The dots connect themselves, I swear. (;
8. Gettin inked up- as Al tells the guy we're virgins.
9. I randomly get to see Kevin and Brian again! Brian's ski-theme bathroom and hot tub are better than I remember.
10. Allison and Hil are my soul mates fo-eva!

Since the Gambia is tiny, the tiniest country in Africa, and people always ask me where it is... so there it is!
In the left picture, there is an orange arrow pointing to the Gambia. In the middle picture, the beige worm-shaped area is the Gambia- it's just the 15 km above and the 15 km below the gambian river. In the right picture, the gambia has an orange square around it. It's entirely enveloped by Senegal, cept for the little part that's coastline. Where I will have my vacation house, my second mud hut. Right on.

Sweet! Got my staging kit!

I finally did get my staging kit... they said it would come 30 days before we were supposed to leave for ze gambia, and I think they made me wait 31. Not very nice to do to over-excited girls like me... But it didn't really say much, except that, yes, we are going to the Gambia and I will get to be a PC volunteer, and yes I'll being doing something involving the ever-elusive "environment"...ah the vagueness! The staging event is like a conference, in Philly, just giving us the run-down of PC rules and what-not. I'll be meeting the whole crew of gambian PCVs, and, I have to get shots, God help me, probably lots of them.

So I'm packing... trying not to defeat the purpose of living simply by buying too much stuff..
Things I Have Bought:
-Camera- a Vupoint, can play movies, record voice and video and play music. Lo me gusta mucho.
-Hydration Pack- which I already love like my firstborn
-KEENS- you know, the shoes- which yes, are an ugly overpriced outdoorsy-people fad, but are really doing the trick and i'm starting to love them too
-Bug spray- DEET-free, expensive stuff developed in Florida so I believe them
-some clothes, books, art stuff

I know I'll be speaking one of 5 tribal languages, which I'm gonna have to be fairly fluent in after 10 weeks in the Gambia so that I can be sworn in. During that training time, we'll living in a rural area with a host family, near-ish I guess to where we will eventually be placed. From the blogs I've read it seems like "they" decide where you're gonna go and therefore what language you'll be speaking within like 2 days of getting there. It's cool, who doesn't like surprises? Like, Hey! Here's your life for the next two years!! Why does our government expect us to just trust them so often?

They gave me a CD, that has online materials on like how to keep bees, how to dig a well, how to build a building, how to grow rice, ect. Ya know, stuff you always wanted to know. Funny, but I can't wait to learn.

So yay-ah, if anyone has any advice or good stuff like that, totally tell me. I'm SO excited yall!

The Gambia... like The Game, likes to make "the" part of its proper nounness.

Ever since I was invited to The Gambia for the Peace Corps I have been seeking out and taking in as many PCV Africa blogs as possible... Since they all started their blogs in the conceptions stages of their PCV application process, I´m thinking it´s high time for my own. Although, I'm impressed that anyone could find their application process woes interesting enough to read... a stretch even for their mom, no? (thanks mom!)

I'm leaving Sept. 20, and won't know much more till I get my a big envelope in the mail, with staging event info... till then!

So i´m a blogger, which sounds like a British slang word for something nasty, does it not? Bienvenidos.