Don’t really have any exciting things to write about but It has been a busy few days. I arrived Philadelphia 16th and meet my fellow peace corps trainees. There are 32 of us either in the health of agroforestry Program. The group is really chill everyone gets along fine. It is crazy how well you get know people in such a short time. My birthday was a great day of traveling. Woke up in the morning got yellow fever shots; 3 hour drive to JFK; 5 hour chilling there; 8 hour flight to Brussels; then 7 hour flight to Cameroon. Still feeling the jetleg.
Cameron is great. We are in Yaounde which is the capital of Cameroon. Yaounde holds roughly 2 million people and it reminds me a lot of LA- just urban sprawl , terrible driving but no nice ocean. Yaounde is very green a lush. We are the in the middle of the raining season and it downpours every afternoon. We are staying in a relatively nice hotel- rooms have Tvs some work, AC and 3 meals a day in the hotel. We are pretty much on house arrest; you need a Cameroon id to walk around which we don’t have. In the morning we are bused to the Peace Corp center and have had basic language, orientation and health classes. Night time people just hang out play cards and other games. There is a nightclub attached to the hotel and we hit that up last night. The place was pack, it was surprising similar to an Evanston dance.
Thursday is when my peace corps training really starts, life is sure going to change. We move to a smaller town called Bangangte and I move in with my home stay. I got placed in the lowest French level so it should be interesting trying to speak and live with the family. I should have some more interesting stories in then, hope all is well at home. And GO BEARS, Good as Gold
Patrick
