Getting a little bit older

I'm 27 now. I'm now closer to 30 than I am 20. When did that happen? Wasn't it just yesterday that I was walking across my college campus or at the vary least leaving home to go to Africa? But it was a good birthday none the less. I wanted to avoid just sitting at home on my ass staring at my white walls contemplating the fact that I am another year older so I made plans with Meagan. She is friends with missionaries in a neighboring town and they make their own ice cream from time to time so I asked Meagan if she could talk to them about us comming over and making ice cream for my birthday. What I thought would be a simple, yet very tasty birthday turned out to be a three day birthday extravaganza. Day one was not even suppose to happen. It was the day before my birthday and I hadn't planned on going up to Malanvile till the next day. I was hanging around the house cleaning up and doing laundry when Meagan texted me. She was bored. One thing led to another and I ended up going to her place.

The night turned out to be a typical night of cooking watching Dawson's Creek. We made a really good salad with breadsticks dinner that night. If you could understand how hard it is to get vegetables up here you'd understand the importance of us actually eating a salad, but anyway. For dessert we tried to make this pistachio pudding Meagan's had for ages. You may be wondering how it is we can make pudding here, but instant pudding is a miracle. Cold water stirred into it and voila you have pudding. It's great! But for some reason it didn't really work for us that night so instead we used it to dip cookies into.

Here we are with our awsome salads and bread sticks.

Day two was birthday day! The day was started off with a coffee bread that Meagan had made the day before.

Me eatting the bread, yumm!

Since it was Sunday we decided to go to church. Like I said earlier Meagan has befriended these missionaries who live in the neighboring village. Each Sunday they hold service not terribly far from where she lives. Sometimes I go with her. They are nice people (man and wife with you child) and it's a really good way for me to practice my french. But anyway, since it was my birthday we did a couple things that we don't normally do, well I don't normally do I should say. The first being trying to look nice. It's hot as well as dirty here. So I am usually of the opinion why bother with makeup or doing my hair or any thing such as that because honestly I sweat off the make usually before I leave the house and am dirty within an hour. But it is fun to dress up once and awhile and so when Meagan suggested doing so for church that day I was like what the hell. I hadn't brought any of my nicer dresses with me so I couldn't look too nice, but I put some make up on and did my hair a bit different than what I was use to. We then possed for "glamour shot" in the living room. Sorry none of those pictures got posted. In honor of my birthday Meagan made me a balloon crown. Yes, Meagan is one of those people who knows how to make balloon animals and such. The crown was awsome and I wore while I walked through town on my way to church. Needless to say the local loved it. Many stopped up to ask us where we were going or what we were doing because obviously we don't wear balloon hats every day so they knew something was up.

Me with my balloon birthday crown before leaving the house.

Me outside the church, wearing my birthday crown.

After church we went to the market trying to make for my birthday dinner. We settled on burgers made from beans. I know that sounds probably horrible, or at the very least increadibly strange, but they are rather tastey. You cook your beans in one pot and in the frying pain you saute onions and garlic. When the beans are done you drain them stir in the onions and garlic add an egg and some oat me, mix to together. Make patties and then fry. But anyway... we got the ingrediants we needed for dinner and made it back to Meagan house at which point Meagan asked me if it was ok if Melanie came over for my birthday as well. I am not as close with Melanie as Meagan is obviously, but I still consider her a friend so I was like sure. By the way Melanie is a german graduate student living here working on fish ponds for school. So she came over and we decided to go tchucking. Tchuke is a localy made beer. It is kind of sold on the sly in these shacks around town, but not really on the sly because everyone knows where they are or where to get it if they want it.

Me, Meagan and Melanie with our tchuke.

After tchuking we went back to Meagan's house to prepare dinner.

Here I am with our dinner, burger with sweet potatoes, yumm!

What a great day! The following day was just as good to. This was ice cream day! The missionaries were cool with hosting us and making ice cream for my birthday. The only thing we needed to do was bring ice since she couldn't make enough to feed all of us. So that morning before we left Malanvile our mission was to find blocks of ice. It took some time, but it was actually suprisingly simple. I was afraid that we weren't going to find any because the power get cut a lot up here so often people don't have electricity enough to keep things like fridges running in order to make something like ice. But after asking around a bit we were able to find people who sold ice. So we packed up the ice and headed down to Guene. The missionaries were cool enough to also make the lunch of our choosing as well. We chose pizza and salad.

Here I am making ice cream. Since it was still my brithday weekend I was allowed to lick the beaters.

So that was my birthday extravaganza. After eatting ice cream we hung around for awhile and chatted. We also did henna tatooes, which here are call lalo, on our legs/ankles. After this I knew it was time to head back to post I had been gone too long as it was. So as it stands I am another year older now, any wiser, well that's debatable. But I'm still standing and I guess that's all that counts.

Until next time...