Welcome to Cameroun!!!

HELLO!!! I'M ALIVE!

I surprisingly have wifi in the hotel I'm staying in (although it's not very reliable), so I thought I would send ya'll an email since I have some down time. We got into Yaounde safely with all baggage accounted for, contents and all. We were met at the airport by our country director, some program directors, and two volunteers that are facilitating our 5 days in Yaoude, Carlos and Mary (Mary is also my volunteer "mentor", she e-mailed me a couple of days before I left). The trip over wasn't too bad but the time change definitely got to me, not to mention I was already lacking sleep, but I'm recovering pretty well. We arrived around 6pm so it was still daylight out so we got to see what the city looked like driving through it. It is everything I expected...kind of reminds me of the Philippines but slightly more under developed. I saw people selling bbq meat on a stick on the side of the road and it made me feel right at home...it was weird haha. It's humid and hot. But our hotel room isn't so bad; we have a shower and toilet that flushes and a sink that runs, with hot water!! I guess this is considered 5 star quality??

There are now officially 54 volunteers in our group. The 9 that arrived earlier for a pilot French immersion program have joined us. There are 12 of us in my youth development group...and go figure both me and Shonna are in it. Craziest coincidence I've ever experienced!! Two "Shanna"s in Africa, in the same program...that's crazy..but seriously so cool. My roommate's name is Shannon (Shanna, Shonna, Shannon....go figure). She's one of the older volunteers with us,
but she is the COOLEST person ever. She's just really young spirited and has the funniest personality. She's an agro forestry trainee (we are called PCTs..Peace Corps Trainees, not Volunteers...because we're not yet..lot's of acronyms!), and she left her job as a farmer of 3 years to be here. Pretty cool!

Today we had our first French Placement Interview and Program Manager interview. The PM interview was with my "boss", who is basically in charge of Youth Development (YD). His name is Amadou (Ahma-doo). He's so nice, very soft spoken, and seems like he will be very easy to work with. He basically asked me about my previous experience with youth, what part of our job description I was interested in (1. Advancement of In-school girls and girls retention ratres, 2. Advancement of out of school girls, 3. Boy's engagement, 4. Mobilizing community leaders). After I read it I was immediately drawn to #2, and I think he liked that because he wrote a star next to his notes and was like "I need to remember this!". He asked about what type of community I would prefer living in: small village (>5,000 ppl), medium village (<5,000), large town/city, or a more secluded village. I chose small village since the sense of community might be stronger than bigger places. I told him I would prefer not to go to the Grand North; I don't see myself living in the desert and in extremely conservative social conditions, since it's all Muslim up there). Would I accept it and adapt, absolutely, but it's not my #1 choice. That was basically the meat of the conversation. Pretty simple!

The French Placement Interview...let's just say it wasn't pretty. I'm kicking myself for not studying more over the summer, because I was a deer in headlights. Not to mention I already get nervous when it comes to "tests"..and it was a test...so I blanked...a lot. The whole point of the "interview" was to see where my level of French speaking is, and considering I went up to Intermediate 2 in school, it didn't sound like it. I just never had experience speaking, but give me a paper with words on it or tell me to write something, I would have probably done a lot better. I was super nervous about it, but the lady was very nice, she spoke a little too fast, but I think I did alright. I'm shooting for Novie High-Intermediate low (speaking, not writing). Mary came in at the beginning of her service with no French AT ALL, only spanish, and left training at Advance Low. So I'm sure everything will come back to me and I will pick it up fairly easily.
And here I am now. We did a small ice breaker to introduce cultural interaction and now we have a 2 hour break. At 7pm we are watching a group of tradition Cameroonian dancers perform for us so I'm pretty excited for that. Then we'll have dinner and after I'm going to bed!!

I've been thinking of friends and my family constantly, but I'm too busy and tired to miss anyone yet! I'm taking this as a good thing...this experience would not be as pleasant if I weren't with these awesome people :)

That's all for now, I'll try to post before I head out to Bafia, our training city, where I'll move in with my home stay family. We leave Tuesday!