English is slipping away

Roxanne points to things now and instead of asking me what it is in French, she asks me what it is in English. She wants to know everything about English. Except when she asks me what something is, sometimes I literally can't think of the word for it in English. And then she will say "En anglais tanti! Anglais!" but I can't think of it. Then later I'll all the sudden remember it. I am also reaching the point where I don't have to talk around what I want to say because I can't think of direct words. I can say mostly anything I want to without a problem. Though I also have a routine now, and so I use the same verbs/words a lot. But I had a meeting today and I understood what was going on, so I am going to take that as a good sign.

I am starting to get ravenous all the time. I used to be able to eat one meal a day and be fine here, but now I am hungry all the time. I guess I am going to come back really fat.

I went to Church on Sunday. I absolutely hated it. Not kidding. It lasted 5 hours, and although I did get to dance, the preacher kept talking about saving others from the devil and how we should go around and spread the word of Jesus. They even have special field trips for it. This Friday they are going to the Army base to spread the word of the Lord. They asked me if I would come and I said I had to go to Mosque, haha. They also made me stand up and say a few words during the service and told me before I leave I have to preach a verse from the Bible to everyone. Hell no. No way. They also have a part of the service where the preacher tells people to come up to the front uf they have accepted the Lord in their heart and have put him first before anything else, and of course like 30 people go up and start praying. Then the preacher dude walks around to each of them, puts his hand on their forehead and starts saying random verses of the Bible. Each time he does this, the person who he is touching starts trembling and screaming and crying because they are so overwhelmed by God's love I guess. Some of them literally go crazy though. One of the men started screaming so loud the church bouncers had to take him out of the church. No, I'm not kidding, there are church bouncers. They wear all yellow and if people are too overcome by the Lord they bouncers have to calm them down or escort them out of the building. I have never witnessed such a scene in all my life nor do I want to ever again, but my host family is insanely religious and they all go to church every Sunday, so I might be roped into being a Christian this summer. But if anyone tries to make me go up and say some verses, I am going to kill them.

I thought my Chocolate phone I use in the US got stolen because it was nowhere to be found. Later I found out Junior had taken it from my bag with no intention of giving it back. I only found out because I caught him with it and asked him where he got it from. I was so mad. Sabine then explained to me that kids here learn at an early age that Africans will pay a lot of money for American devices, so Junior’s friends probably told him to steal it and sell it. I always get caught off guard by things like this, because everyone here is so nice and I forget there is a lot of crime. Sabine told me Cote d’Ivoire has loads of dishonest people and I need to be careful. She also said they will probably target me because I am white. So far I have been pretty good about it though, I just need to remember not to trust people unless I know them really well….and they are not children.

I haven't shaved my armpits for 2.5 weeks now. It's somewhat of a trophy to me aha. Everything is so natural here I feel weird shaving even my legs. It doesn't feel right.


I can also take the Baca and have no problems now. It's actually kind of fun to jump in and jump out now that I know what I am doing.