Goodnight Moon

The title's for you, Jamie. I write that at the end of every journal entry I write in and I tell myself that you hear it, too.

Today we found out where we would be staying for homestays and what language we would be learning. Like most of us here, I'll be learning/speaking/dreaming in Bambara, which is what I expected, so I'm somewhat relieved. We've only had a few lessons so far, but atleast I can say hello and count to 10. Survival, right? We leave tomorrow morning and are going to be welcomed in our village by our host families. There's about 8 of us each going to each village and the villages are spread out about 5-10k apart. Should be interesting. Hopefully there's some cute Malian babies who want to play with my hair. We'll be there for the rest of training, only separated by the few days we come back here to training camp every 12 days or so.

Cultural festival yesterday gave us a chance to buy some sweet panyas (long wrap skirts) and the guys got outfits as well; pretty sure they'll never go back to wearing regular pants after wearing drawstring cloth ones for 2 years. They look super comfy. Pictures coming soon.

Each day is an emotional rollercoaster, but emails help (Thanks Mo, Mom, & Neely), as do YouTube videos of Pauly D's antics. Atleast there are a few people here who watch crap television like I do and we can bond over that. Excited for tomorrow. I'll be back in 12 days.

Goodnight moon.