Big suprise, I suck at blogging.

Why hello there friends and family, let me tell you a little bit about my Mauritanian experience. The most common question people ask me when I blow on tea that just came off a fire, or I sweat in the middle of the day, or I pull burned fingers away from steaming food is: "hami?" "It's hot?"
My family consists of lots of people whos relationships to one another is unclear and they seem to come and go for days at a time... with the exception of some of the children who are there all the time making trouble for the goats who tend to chew on my notebooks which are filled with notes from four days of Hassaniya training. Today is the fourth of july, happy independence America! The bulk of the PCTs (that's Peace Corps Trainees to you lay people, otherwise known as future PCVs, Peace Corps Villains) are gathering at the center for some good old fashioned American burgers... which may or may not turn out to be camel.
On a scale of most irritating insects I've ever encountered I'm moving Flies up to the top of the list, closely followed by Mosquitoes (which are much less annoying thanks to my lovely mosquito net tent) and scorpions and biting ants at distant third and fourth respectively.
People are constantly coming to greet me in my home, which is often hopping with visitors until one or two in the morning, and upon discovering that I have learned the greetings they then attempt to hold a conversation with me in Hassaniya until my blank stares and pleas in French convince them that I really am relatively ignorant. After that they sometimes attempt to hold conversations with me in French to varying degrees of success or they look at the others present who shrug and say "Bilal, mange!" (my Mauritanian name is Bilal, he was a slave that the prophet freed who became the first muzzein, the guy who calls people to pray. It's a big name around here. Mange is my poorly spelled rendition of the French command "eat") after which I try to explain that I normally don't eat two lunches and three dinners per day and that I really am full (ana shabaat is the first phrase I learned in Hassaniya, I'm stuffed). I think I might be the only American guy in this country actually gaining weight. Ridiculous!
Last night was my first duststorm, kicked up by a rainstorm that was rolling in hard and fast. It was beautiful, if only you could have seen it. This fantastic ominous cloud of swirling sand and dust rolling over the city like a steamroller, followed closely by a whopper thunderstorm.
Anyway, we're in Rosso for a few months of wicked six-seven hours language training days 6-days per week with the exception of a week around July 21-28 which are our visits to permanant sites.
Okay, last things last. A few explanations:
PCT- Peace Corps Trainee
PCV- Peace Corps Volunteer
CBT- Community-Based Training
CD- Country director, Obie Shaw
PCMO- Doctor
GEE- Girls Education and Empowerment
GMC- Girls Mentoring Center
AGFO- Agroforestry volunteers
EE- Environmental Education Volunteers
Ed- English Education Volunteers


I hope everyone is having a great fourth, I'm gonna go have some amazing camel burgers.