Of caterpillars and closing ceremonies

The end of my first school year and with it first year hear in burkina is quickly approaching. I must say it doesn't feel like a full year has past. During our in service training at the beginning of our term I recall some elder PCV warning me about boredom in village. I must say that in no way have I found this to be true. Not only do the months go by quickly, but each day always seems to come up a couple hours short.

I must say that I have far from mastered every aspect of burkinabé culture. I continue to make the occasional misstep and the actual rule that I violated remains recondite. For instance when explaining to someone that I went and bought some tigankouro (it's like rice and beans) for myself during lunch, on of my friends burst out "you went and bought it yourself! you didn't send a kid to get it for you?" and I responded "yes... is that bad?" he in turn responded "of course it is" as if I had done the most unnatural thing in the world.

On the other hand, I've definitely come a long way on the road to becoming a veritable burkinabé villager. I dedicate a solid couple of hours each day just to saying high to people, and my recent success in Djula/dafine has allowed me to communicate with more people than ever before. On of the things that has amazed me most about language learning is how variable your day to day performance can be. While it should be noted that I have no proclivity for language acquisition, and as such some of this inconsistency could be explained by that. However it remains quite bazaar that there are days when I can executed phrases which employ the figurative use of complex vocabulary, and other days I can't even seem to manage the pronunciation on the simplest benediction. Even with french there are days I talk like a hybrid of La Fontaine and Zola and other days when I feel like i just started speaking french.
In other news I recently acquired a predilection for Caterpillars. When I was in bobo I picked some up and have taken to preparing them for myself and my friends. Most of my neighbors don't care that much for my american dishes, the have applauded my preparation of caterpillars as some of the best they have tasted. The picture tagged is of one of my good mates, Seydou, chowing down on a recent preparation.

My art club is reaching its final performance as well. On the docket we have about an hour long one act, a couple dance pieces, a piece of poetry, and a couple songs. To be perfectly blunt this whole process my end in disaster, but I still think it should be fun for the kids.

I'm all registered for the GRE and wrapping up the affairs for my trip to Paris as well. While I do love my community, it will be nice to get out for a bit.