The Holidays

Dear Everyone,
I hope your holidays are going well and that you got everything you wanted for Christmas. I want to give a shout out to Ethan and tlel him I hope he had a great birthday and to Lisa whose birthday is coming up on the 31st, I love you guys and I hope you had/have a great time.

So what does one do in Africa for Christmas well I'll tell You.

First off I havent been home for 3 weeks adn just arrived last night to enter my house and be lovingly greeted by my cat who in 3 weeks grew up and is now fisty and kills huge cockroaches! that's my girl.

For the first week I traveled through Yaounde picking up cool people as I went. I traveled with my friend Lisa from Batouri who has quickly risen to be my favorite person in country. She has boundless energy is always smiling and get super excited over very simple things. In short she keeps me from being down and makes it impossible not to have fun around her. We went to Bertoua and then Yaounde where I was able to go shopping at Landmark- the white man store (you can say that to the taxi drivers and they actually know what you are talking about). At landmark you can get exciting things like oreos, velvet mac n' cheese, brownie mix, smelly good candles, and where they actually played Christmas Carols. I also went to Pizza Roma and got a salad, liter of Sprite, and a mushroom pizza while lisa got a pizza and a vanilla shake! It was heaven.

We then headed for Kribi where we would stay about a week. Kribi is in the Francophone section of cameroon but it is a tourist location so there were a lot of white people there which was really odd. I was able to stay at a really nice hotel and breakfast and lunch was catered from the PC and they have been going there forever so they made french fries with every meal and actually put out Ketchup. The hotel was about a 2 second walk to the beach and there was a bar on the beach where the water actually laped just below the deck with tables. There were home made hammocks, cold beer, and gorgeous waves! It was really weird to see everyone again, mostly because it felt liek forever and also because you feel a bit guilty fo rnto keeping in touch! But honestly I was super happy to see them. I had a lot of really great discussions with a lot of peopel I really respect and I seriously enjoyed my time there. My counterpart was with me and he was quiet but seemed to be excited about the ideas we were generating and I hope that we can make some changes and be more proactive when school starts again next week. He's a good guy, even if I don't agree with some choices he makes in his personal life.

I also asked our Education Director if I could head a project where I consideated all the materials and lesson plans in the different subjects that have been working for people in order to give them to our counterparts as helpful guides and to future PCVs. I think thi sis a way for me to spread my ideas of using theater in the classroom while generating some great source material. I have also started a weekly newsletter that will include teaching ideas nas stories from Cameroon. So i hope that goes well.

In kribi we foudn this really great sandwich place that had fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese sandwiches and I ate there almost everyday. If you know me you know how I feel about sandwiches and i twas good to get my fix. Finally we went to the Limbe falls which is a group of waterfalls that is about 20 mintues away from Kribi it is the only plac ein the world where fresh water flows into the ocean. It's also really neat because the falls are in a cove and you can swim from one side of the beach across the ocean to another side. At first glance this seemed like an easy feat but after swimming agains the current I thought I was going to lose it for a second but my friend Fleurange was with me the whole time and made sure I was okay. Its really nice to have someone who is totally level headed around. We ended up figuring out the current and swimming really quickly back to shore so it was all good and I felt accomplished.

After kribi we went back to yaounde for a couple days and spent our time watching Christmas movies and shaking our packages while wondering what was inside. I also went and got Egg rolls at the chinese restaurant where they play R and B favorites! Oh Yaounde you are full of awesomeness.

Next we travled back to Bertoua and stayed there for Christmas. It was really nice and layed back. We prepared for Christmas day because we were spending Christmas in Djong (i spelled that wrong) or au village with our friend Reid. His family made us a big Cameroonian style dinner (he's living with a woman down there and her kids) and we drank palm wine and have a very interesting time. His village is beautiful and very quite and we stayed in a little house down the way from his thta only had a laterine and 4 bedrooms. It felt like a Camping Christmas because we were roughing it andwe didn thave a lot of amenities but it was definitly memorable.

We then motoed back the next day which is about an hour ride and my friend Lisa and I sung Christmas carols all the way to Bertoua. I'm not sure the driver appreciated it but I know know that Fa la la la la is the best song ever and I will never forget that ride. We then got back to Bertoua and made a lasagna with eggplant, and one wiht just cheese, salad (with home made salad dressing), mashed potatoes, stuffing (sioban got some sent from the states- i think i ate it all), green bean casserole (from scratch), sweet corn, glazed carrots, and brownies. It was an amazing meal and we made it a little under 2 and a half hours, we were really proud. We then opened our packages nad le tme say thank you a million times to my mom, chiggie, jaime and stephanie! Your packages made me so happy it hurt. I actually cried when I read Jaime and Stephanies letters! I've been downloading my new media since I got so much music and its making me really happy. I can't wait to read my new books and I am loving the crazy magazines. I also smell liek honeysuckle now which is a big improvement so thanks everyone!

I'll be sending New Years in Batouri so I can do some banking and hit the dance clubs. I guess they dont really go all out for christmas here but they really love new years so we'll see how it is. One thing that is weird is that its super hot now that its dry season and when we travled yesterday it was so dusty that when we got off the car my whole body had changed colors and I looked like I had been travelign on the Sahara, I guess I wasnt that far from it.

Favorite things about my vacation:
-Body Surfing in Kribi
-Night swimming
-Wrestling in Dresses wiht my friend Fleurange and then hugging it out when we called a tie
-Hot showers
-Good food
-that my cat is still alive
-decorating the coz in Bertoua it looked like christmas
-opening my packages
-talking to my family
-my email from Chad
-new clothes
-smelling good

Love you all and miss you!
elyse