THE HARD CORE

So I guess Peace Corps purposefully does not allow you to have internet at the beginning of HomeStay because the average Peace Corps Trainee would write some unfriendly things about the village they are staying in! The past three weeks have been the hardest weeks of my life! Yes, I have traveled many places and done some pretty difficult things but i guess it was much easier knowing that I only had to do these things for a short amount of time, and for the majority of my trips, I did not have a handsome fiance at home waiting for my return! Over the past three weeks I have grown immensely as a person! I have had to test limits that I did not know I could surpass. I have learned how to use the restroom in a hole while a hundred huge flies attack me, and I have mastered the techniques of bucket bath (next to the hole with the poop flies!) For those who truly know me...I JUST USED THE WORD POOP!!~This place is really changing me! I have been more sad, mad, happy, excited, nervous, anxious, and downright miserable in the last three weeks than I ever have in my life! I have experienced true HUNGER, and THIRST, and some serious homesickness!! I've had nights where I knew I would pass out from the heat, or blow away during  one of the super scary rain/wind storms that pull my tin roof up and slam it back down!
Recently I was reading the Peace Corps Wellness Handbook and discovered something that completely freaked me out!...If you know anything about the Peace Corps, you have heard about the Eastern Europe 'Posh Corps," where the circumstances are much easier than the rest of PC places. There is the 'Beach Corps' where lucky people spend their 27months on an Island like Samoa or freaking FIJI! and then there is the HARD (CORPS) that consists of four West African Countries, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad!! (NEWS FLASH: Peace Corps had pulled out of Mauritania, Niger and Chad)!!!! So here we are in the only HARD CORE country left, MALI!! and let me tell you, it is HARD CORE, two of our small 23 people group have been hospitalized, and one of our NOW 22 people group has already Early Terminated :( he is missed)!! I don't know why my pink loving, makeup wearing, bubble bath taking self wound up here, other than the fact that God has one heck of a plan for me!! So tonight, while you're eating something that doesn't have parasites in it think of me, and say a little prayer!! :) I miss and Love yaLL*