Rashes, Baby Goats, Bicycle accidents and more!!

Hey everyone! So right now I am back at the training center at Yuna battling the insane amount of bugs slamming into my computer screen, only to tell you all what I have been up to.
The past few weeks have been great (minus the fact that apparently being in humidity all day makes me super rashy). I have been learning Mandinka nonstop and hanging out with my host family when I'm not in class. They are hilarious. Whenever my host mother and father are gone working in the bush, my "aunt" who is 15, named Mimi, has all of her friends over and dances in the yard...house party Gambian style. Bodo, my 5ish year old (none of them really know how old they are) host sister, loves learning American words. I like to teach her things that make me laugh like "later brah" which she now says whenever I leave the compound. The neighborhood children like to peek in my screen door and windows when I am inside of my hut. I pretend that I don’t see them and then sneak closer and closer to where they are and then I run at them screaming and scare the shit out of them. Hey, I have to take what entertainment I can get. Last week we took a trip up country to Janjanbury to go to a teacher training workshop to see how the teachers are trained here. I personally was more excited about seeing a hippo in the river. We got back and our entire group got sick...most likely from the feral monkeys that were EVERYWHERE including running around on the table stealing our food while we were eating. I can now say that I have punched a monkey.

Another thing, baby goats might just be the cutest things in the world. and they are allllll over my training village. One day, Abby and I were walking down the road after language class and spotted one lonely tiny baby goat in a compound. I felt kind of weird walking in there and asking to play with that families baby goat (and didnt know how to say it in Mandinka anyway) so i didn't. the next day we were walking by and decided that it would be an excellent stress reliever and it was necessary that we got some baby goat playing action. We walked up to a group of children and using our broken Mandinka, managed to tell them "I want baby goat!" "N lafita baaringo" Their eyes brightened and they were off...all 20 of them running after the baby goat and its mother. The goats bolted which resulted in a mad chase through the village. For 20 minutes Aby and watched, chanting " I WANT BABY GOAT" and rolled around on the ground laughing. They finally caught it and brought it to us resulting in 10 minutes of baby goat heaven and my new picture.

I've decided that if I get med-evacuated it will be due to a bicycle accident. I am more clumsy on a bike than I am walking (imagine that). I think to date I have fallen off 6 or 7 times. The most dramatic fall was when I decided to answer my cellphone while I was going downhill. Brilliance at work. I put on my brakes with one hand and next thing I know, I'm flying over my front handlebars and laying on my back with my bike on top of me. Luckily the roads here are like giant sandboxes. As I struggled to get up all of the Gambians within a mile radius come running up yelling "SORRY SORRY SORRY!!! " Yes, I have found time and time since that when you fall down they stand over you yelling sorry at you. By the time I got home that night my family knew alllll about it and now they bring it up at least once in every conversation. It's awesome being reminded everyday.
The rain here is ridiculous. I have never seen rain come down as hard as it does here...and its always unexpected (at least for us toubabs, all of the locals somehow always knows when its going to rain). So I biked to class one day at Baboucars. That day a huge rainstorm came and went. We sat on his porch and watched the children run around playing in the rain and lightning for a few hours and then it stopped and I decided to bike home. The roads here basically turn into one big muddy river after a big rain so biking home was pretty impossible. About halfway home my bike and I got tangled up in a barbed wire fence on the side of the road. Dont ask me how, I was probably lucky that I didnt end up at the bottom of a 4 ft deep mud puddle. So I was standing there helpless, so tangled up that I couldnt move and out of nowhere 4 rastahs appeared,and with their nimble fingers, without a word, untangled me and lifted me and my bike out of the mess and sent me on my way.

Now I know you all know that I am terrified of spiders...that hasnt changed, but the amount of spiders around me at any time has increased by roughly 1000%, and their size as well (they even have a spider that they call scoprion horse-another trainee showed me a video she took of one in her hut and I havent slept a full night since) so here are a few inopportune times I have found spiders crawling on (or too close to) me for your entertainment:
1) During dinner. Where I proceeded flip out and then flick it right onto my host aunts shirt. She was not amused.
2)In the middle of language class...everyday.
3) While playing with the children outside. I freak out and they think its hilarious, pick it off of me, throw it on another child. and then reenact me running around screaming.
4) While using my pit latrine…its pretty hard to jump up and run from a focused squat.

Quotes from my favorite teacher ever: Babboucarr
“I thought that if you belch in front of a Westerner…you die”—right after he told us that he thought that all Americans carry guns all of the time
“I’m having a hard time dropping those kids off”—every morning around our 9am break in reference to using the bathroom
“Can I rub it?” –before erasing the chalkboard
“with the balls…I like it”—referring to a coos breakfast dish
“you are conjugating the bread!!”
“Mandinka sex-beer” –his pronunciation of Mandinka Shakespeare
“4 dudes, same bed, nothing happens”—talking about the close friendships men have in The Gambia
“They can’t take the joke. They are too Francophone. They’re too civilized and intellectual”—referring to the Senegalese sense of humor, or lack there of.
“Is it Jay?? Or Gay?”—Trying to remember the name of another trainee
“Then they fold them into their beauty shapes”—Possibly my favorite thing he has said. Beauty shapes apparently are folded clothes…this was said during a lesson on laundry and tailor terms.