Consistency? Don't talk to me about consistency...

Variety is the spice of life, from the variety of flavors you could sample everyday in your tour through the incredible diversity of American food to the simply elegant melange of entertainments that present themselves to you every evening. So don't complain that it took me more than two months to write in my blog. Delay is good for you. It makes you crave what's coming, making it seem better than it ever really was.
So we've opened our GMC. Finalemement. Finally. And I think in French a little bit. Sometimes. Finalement.
The opening ceremony was many things, but what it mainly is, is over. Is that grammatically correct? It should be if it isn't, it's the kindof thing I'd say in conversation.
Work has finally begun. Finally. Not that arguing and acculturating with town officials wasn't work (it was) but this is different. Simpler, somehow.
Okay, so moving on. My sweet new puppy is named Maggie, she's a white-with-brown-spots dog with a sweet and pliable disposition who tries to play with the feral cats in my yard by barking at them. You'd love her.
WAIST was fun and decadent. We found an incredible milkshake/pizza shop blocks from the hotel with absolutely incredible food at reasonable prices. I played softball and I wasn't terrible. Not even bad. (see mom? I told you I knew how to play...) I've been shopping for graduate programs, some of the interesting ones I've been looking at that are probably out of my league are at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Don't pretend, I know you were wondering.
My niece was born. This was really the first piece of news for this blog post, but I figured most of you knew it. She's gorgeous and perfect in the Tyler tradition (the fact that she's not actually a Tyler doesn't diminish this in the least) and I'm going to do my absolute best to be as irritating an uncle as possible for my sister's sake. By this I mean lots of noisy and mildly dangerous toys, firecrackers, and good advice when she gets older :)
So I know this is disjointed and rather small but I felt I needed to get back in the habit of writing blog entries so that I could write good ones later on. Tough luck for you this time around, my faithful readers.
Hope you're all basking in the spring goodness of the states, and if you're not... just think that you could be where it hasn't really precipitated for six months and it's 105 degrees in the shade.

Late again, but trying

For the last week Cortney and I have been buying materials in Kaedi to bring to Mbout to try to start this GMC. Today we're going back. We rented a truck for the adventure considering we have a rather large pile of stuff to bring with us. This means that I could very well be riding inside the truck as opposed to on top of the pile of stuff in the back. I can't wait to get this underway but I'm still apprehensive. We met with the mayor and Siham (my apcd, keep up now...) when we were in Nouakchott and he was less than enthusiastic about moving out of his building and giving us the keys. Maybe today will be better, I don't know. I hope to get this thing rolling in time to have at least a few sessions before the end of the school year you know? Well it's been a nice week in Kaedi and a nice little vacation before that but I suppose it's time to go back, though I will miss the running water. I'll be back into town on my way through for WAIST in three weeks. Thanks to everyone who sent me messages or packages or called on my birthday, sorry if you got grumpy travel John on the phone, we had 8 hours in a car after four hours of sessions on my birthday. No worries though, the joint birthday party the next night made up for it. Okay, so I apologize if this entry is somewhat less comprehensive or comprehensible than expected... I'm not a morning person and I procrastinated doing this until the morning I have to leave. Happy early inauguration day everyone, I wish you all the best of luck in coping with the blizzards and cold and stuff. It's cold here too. Got down to about 45 the last few nights ;)

Yeah yeah I know

Firstly, Happy 2009! Secondly, I'm well aware that this is way overdue and all that nonsense, but I'm not going to apologize so you can just relax and be happy with what you get. That was me digitally sticking my tongue out at all of you, so you know. Alright, any death-defying adventures this time? Well there was the usual harrowing trip into Kaedi on the back of a truck, the lovely little party in Aleg to christen their new region house (not as cool as Kaedi's or Selibaby's by the way), Christmas in Nouakchott was a blast with cheese and food and stuff, and then there was the brief running from the police thing when our taxi driver got in a fist fight with a gendarme captain and the man inexplicably held a grudge. After that we went on down to Rosso for a night, then St. Louis for some sun and surf and some lovely relaxing beach sitting. Now I'm back in Nouakchott and I'll be here for some four or five days for ETR and then after that back to Kaedi for a few days followed by a trip to home sweet Mbout. I'd make this longer and more detailed but there's a line of people waiting to use these computers and so I'll just put off the real blog entry thing until I get back to Kaedi, maybe sometime around my birthday :) Happy new year everybody!

Turkey day without the turkey

Alright ladies and gents, no spine-tingling tales of death defiance today, just the run of the mill details of my everyday life, hope they suffice. First of all, I'm visiting my wonderful girlfriend which is groovy. We've now seen each other two more times than we expected to in this particular four month period, which is great but not enough. So it goes.
Selibaby Thanksgiving was spectacular and by seven o'clock there were fifteen people writhing on the floor in food comas. Literally. Those of you who called in that time, no I wasn't drunk, just full. Very very full. Okay a little drunk. ;)
Our funding for the M'Bout GMC has gone through, we asked for the stars and got the moon which was about what we expected. We should have four laptop computers arriving with our APCD the day after we get back in M'bout and we'll finally be able to say we did something! I was kindof looking forward to telling you that we were finally handed keys to a building for the GMC but, surprise surprise, no luck as of yet. The minister has to come and approve the move to the new building for the mayor's office which would default the old one to us, but he hasn't seen fit to visit yet.. despite saying he would come the past few weekends.
We've had a positive response from the school teachers and director which mostly makes up for the trouble we've been having with the mayoral office. Hopefully we should be able to get the GMC up for an open house in January when we get back from Early Term Reconnect (ETR) and before we leave for WAIST (West Africa International something or other.... Emily says Invitational Softball Tournament) So I hope everyone had an amazing time with Thanksgiving and lots of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and candied yams... yum... sorry I'm not putting up any pictures, I know I'm a horrible son :P Cortney and Emily are both a lot better at pictures than I am, Cortney posted pictures of my house and Emily will have tons of pictures of Thanksgiving adventures involving baobab trees and way too much pie very soon. You can get ahold of those by going to their blogs which are linked on the right hand side of the page.
So happy holiday season and I'll be back online probably sometime in the next month or so when I'll have another excuse for having no pictures (I'm just being honest..)
Bye!

On a new addition and another month gone by

So it's the end of October, unbelievably. Time flies when you're sitting around staring at a wall. Seriously, my main activity for an afternoon about two weeks ago was killing flies with my flip flop, and I don't like killing things. Now I know I've been keeping some people in suspense here, what with the whole not writing for a month thing even though I may or may not have accessed the internet in the interim period, and for my delay and general truancy I apologize somewhat less than sincerely. The past couple two weeks have been a little rougher than normal for lots of reasons I don't care to get into here and I'm hanging on for the swing back in the good direction. We've lost three volunteers now (that I know of, maybe four if the rumors are true today) in the last two or three weeks and it seems October is a mad month for PC RIM.
Work is going as work has gone and our mayor continues to dally and sidestep questions about actually giving us a building. Right now we're technically sharing the building that is now the mayor's office and Cortney and I plan to apply for materials and center funds first thing next week after the Halloween party. We figure if we just show up one day with a ton of mattelas, computers, and stuff in general, we can give them a big hint that we really do need the space. I'm hoping to have an open house by january and maybe open the center sometime into next semester.
On the upside, we may have found a counterpart. Selma is a badass boutique owner with a very successful business. She's unmarried, chain smokes, and owns her own business. That makes her a very strong woman in a culture where it's usually only men that smoke, people are expected to marry young and start making babies, and most of the time men run boutiques. She's a badass and she seems to understand what we're doing as well as get excited about it which seems almost too good to be true right now after two months of slow going.
Oh, and I've now added a fun little feature at the bottom of my blog, courtesy of Matt's advice, where you can look at a map of M'Bout. I couldn't figure out how to leave bookmarks or I'd have noted where I live, where Cortney lives, and all our major landmarks. In any case if you can find the water tower in the middle of the town on the main north-south road, I'm about three blocks due west of it. Ah, modern technology.
I have the amazing good fortune of not being in the country for this upcoming election day. Sadly, voting passed me and M'Bout by, which I regret given that I come from a swing state, but I am feeling quite glad that I don't have to put up with the last minute desperation calls and pollster mania that is indubitably rocking the good ol' US of A. I look forward to the results though, so even if you weren't planning on it, you should still go vote (that goes for you too Dad)
I got seven packages today. Included in them, as a sampling, was a foam football, a pumpkin light, candy corn, twelve pounds of velveeta, lots of spices, a whole lot of fishing supplies (note the river running next to my town), a huge bag of halloween candy, a solar shower, three jars of peanut butter, and a frisbee. I'm overhelmed, in a good way. We had to take a taxi back from the post office. Who knows how I'll get all that hoard back to M'Bout but that's a problem for when the sugar high wears off.
Okay you lot, I'm off to the region house to lay low on the night before the party. I'm going to be a farmer, I think being from Iowa might be enough of a qualification for a costume for some of my more new england-ish fellow PCVs but I got ahold of a too small pair of overalls (really that's all they had unless you're short like Brian and buy the only overalls that would fit someone taller than you anyway) and a nice flannel print shirt with cut off sleeves. I'm going for the hayseed look. I will post pictures and maybe videos too soon, I have them on my camera at the region house right now, I just don't have the time to do it right now. Maybe in a couple days :) Alright all, good luck with election madness and leave me comments!

P.s. I learned to use italics and bold today, did you notice?

"All we've got is our street cred..."

I know, this is unprecedented. Two posts in under a week, what am I thinking, right? I'm going to raise the bar for my communications and all the sudden people will be expecting this kind of frequency. In all fairness I probably won't post again till Halloween just to make up for this unseemly verbosity.
Okay, so to correct a misstatement in my previous entry... I didn't actually lose my camera. I thought I did! I really did think so, but I discovered it nestled behind my trunk at the region house like a land mine of parental expectations. It stared at me, I stared at it. I blinked first. I will take pictures and post them next time I post a blog entry... probably. Maybe.
Peace Corps Mauritania prides ourselves on being... how do I put this... more badass than Chuck Norris in a knife fight with a ninja. Most of this comes from being that one country where most other Peace Corps countries say "Well this sucks, but at least it's not Mauritania." Or "Mauritania... man I heard it's pretty rough there..." Other PC countries can drink, they don't have to siphon water out of used oil drums, they have veggies and fruits at their sites, they have more than wasteland around them, and they might have more friendly host cultures. In the words of an older, wiser PCV talking about the madness at WAIST "All we've got is our street cred"
Tomorrow early morning Cortney and I are going back to Mbout to empower some girls and maybe sit in on some classes at the Lycee when that gets underway. We're hoping to have a GEE committee formed by the end of the month and we should actually have a GMC space then too, probably in the mayor's old building (assuming the finish the new one and he moves out of the old one)
Oh, and thank you all for the comments, they made my day even though I had to goad them out of you. I was wondering how long it would take for one of Emily's moms to break and write a comment on my blog since my own mother posted on her blog over a month ago. I admire your restraint! Pleasure to meet you Judy. And I don't judge the other stalking PCV parents... much. I'd probably do the same in your shoes.
Alright, I'm off. No, not like that, I mean I'm leaving.

Isn't this a terrible idea? I mean really it's just downright miserable. A blog. What am I supposed to write about here? I could write about my ride into Kaedi yesterday but because there are several different types of audiences reading this thing, how do I know the best way to treat my subject matter? For example:

Dear Mom: Yesterday Cortney and I made it into Kaedi, overall the trip went fine, no major snags. We're going to stay in Kaedi over the fete for the end of Ramadan because that is Cortney's birthday too and she just got a cake mix in a package so we can make that in the makeshift oven at the region house. We hope to be much more productive in the next month, now that Ramadan is finishing up.

Dear Dad: Yesterday Cortney and I hitched a free ride on the back of a pickup truck into Kaedi, the ride was pretty rough but not too bad. We're hanging out in Kaedi for the next couple days because it's Cortney's birthday and we're gonna party with some other Americans to mark the occasion. Chances are pretty good that next month is gonna be equally frustrating to this last one because there's such a changeup of residents when Ramadan ends. Everyone goes back to their own town and we're gonna have to introduce ourselves to a whole lot of people all over again.

Dear Sis: I hate riding on the back of pickup trucks. Cortney had a cushy spot propped on a rice sack or something while I was sitting on the cooking utensils, my ass feels like ground beef after three hours of bouncing up and down on an unidentifiable bag of semi-sharp objects with way too many corners. All in all, for a free ride it wasn't bad and I shouldn't complain, I only came close to flying off once or twice. The mayor snagged us this ride with less than ten minutes warning so I'm pretty sure I left everything resembling clean clothes in Mbout. I guess beggars can't be choosers right? We were going a little nutso in Mbout alone and by yesterday morning we had both been yelling at nothing that we needed a ride to Kaedi or we were gonna lose it. Anyway, we were both in need of a drink and a shower and a little bit of American socializing. We'll get back to Mbout within a week or so probably, and who knows? Maybe we'll even do something this month. Though i guess I did move into my house, so that counts as an accomplishment for last month.

Do you understand my dilemma? I mean it's all the same story, it just changes a little depending on who I'm telling it to. I know the three people I mentioned above are all reading this nonsense every time I post (and I assume you three all kept to your respective little letters, right?) but who else is out there? I have my suspicions about a few of you. There's probably quite a few more family members, the occasional wandering friend who found this on facebook, and maybe some stalking parents of other PCVs, not to mention a Peace Corps nominee who e-mailed me last week. How can I know you're reading this if you don't ever leave comments?!

Alright. So I moved into my new house, I mentioned that, and it felt damn good to wave goodbye to the auberge, my hotel. I bought a bamboo bed and a big sera with some new thin mattelas for lounging about during the day. I wonder what you picture when I say that. (I found out conclusively that I now have the best argument yet for not posting pictures, I seem to have... misplaced... my camera sometime in the final days at the center around swear in. Oops.) Our mayor tried to switch us into a different sector, semi-unintentionally. He just casually mentioned that when the school director came back we could go meet him and set up which english classes we would be teaching at the lycee. No no no, that would be an education volunteer, and frankly we're woefully unqualified to try to teach english to 70 kids in a class room. No no, our sector really is just that GMC thing you keep half-dismissing.
I was sick for about a week, which was basically just Mauritania's way of stuffing my oft spoken hopes for good health and weight gain down my throat. Back to square one.
Yeah I'm afraid the only interesting news I really have is the stuff that happens to other people. Congrats to Emu and Dan on getting engaged! Wish I could be there for the wedding. Wish I could have raise a glass in your honor when the day rolls around. Neither is terribly likely, but I'll still be sending you both good vibes.
So that's about all I have today, nothing but a rather disjointed mess of a post really. To you, anonymous readers, who won't even bother to post a comment, at least do me this small favor. Go out and have a really amazing slice of cheese. Or a glass of good wine or beer. Or some lasagna. Or nachos. Or anything except rice. I'll enjoy it vicariously. :) Eid Mubarak!