The final stretch

Hello friends! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I have to say I got my first taste of homesickness being away from family during this first round of holidays that I’ll be missing, but thankfully I’ve been surrounded by an incredible support system, and people who are also missing home! I kept daydreaming of fried turkey, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. YUM! I’m drooling just typing about it. I actually had a pretty eventful Thanksgiving. Everyone decided to hold off on feasting until Saturday, so on Thanksgiving Day we had class for half the day and then had a Turkey Bowl football game with all the stageaires. YD won…of course. Actually…I have no idea who won, but I did catch an awesome interception. Saturday everyone got together to feast in Bokito, the nearby village where the Health trainees are training and living. I was pretty impressed with the turnout of dishes served considering our limited resources.

Entrees: We bought 6 chickens as our turkey replacement (chickens that a few trainees helped kill and prepare…I unfortunately was not one of them). Also, we had sweet potatoes (real sweet potatoes, not yams), enough mashed potatoes to feed a village, guacamole (yes weird for thanksgiving BUT Cameroon has the biggest and tastiest avocados I’ve ever seen, and they’re cheap =guacamole heaven), an awesome tofu dish for our vegetarians, STUFFING, red bean hummus, garlic bread, pasta salad, stir fried rice (sooo good), french fries…and I think that’s all. Lots of carbs…but can you really complain on Thanksgiving?!

Ok so now for the desert: PUMPKIN PIE…three of them…yes…I said it. One of the health volunteers received some pumpkin pie mix in a care package from her mother, so she graciously decided to share the love. In addition, lots of fruit salad, an amazing pineapple salad (I can’t even describe how good it tasted. Cameroon has some of the sweetest pineapples you will ever eat), BROWNIES, and cake (chocolate and marble…this is not publix cake by any means…I would say it’s almost better). Let’s just say I had a food baby by the end of the day. I haven’t eaten very big meals since I’ve been in country, and I have to say it was SO worth the additional poundage that I’m sure I gained. It was so nice to get a break from Cameroonian food and get a taste of some good American food!!

That night a bunch of us went to the club (my third time)! It was probably the best night I’ve had in a long time. You would think dancing on a full stomach would have been a problem (in addition to some alcohol consumption) but no, quite the contrary. It was EPIC! That’s all I’m going to say about that…

Training is wrapping up fairly quickly, so quickly that I swear in/graduate in A WEEK! I’ll be an official Peace Corps Volunteer in 7 days (December 8th)!! These past three months have FLOWN by, but as they say, time flies when you’re having fun! Even though training has been intense in some ways, it’s been a blast. I’ve gained so many new and genuine friendships, and I couldn’t be happier! So we have our Swearing-In ceremony on Thursday December 8 at 10:00am. We check out of our homestay families and we are leaving for post the following day. We are planning on having a big soiree the night of swearing to celebrate…so that should be fun :) I’ll keep you posted!