6 months in country

As of December 6th, it is fully 6 months that I have been in Burkina Faso. I still remember clearly the experience of arriving here, the heat, how horrified I was when I went to the market for the first time (it was probably not a good introduction to Burkinabe markets, in retrospect), and how excited I was when I first saw the stars from a village. But also I have come so far in that time. 6 months later, a lot of things make so much more sense. No wonder my host family didn't understand why I ate lunch at restaurants instead of coming back home every day at noon. No wonder my host sisters used to come into my room and hang out with me even though I wanted to be by myself. No wonder they kept calling me from different phone numbers, which made me really confused when I thought I had already saved their phone number into my contacts. It all falls into place. It's a lifetime of difference.

As of today:

Intestinal parasite incidents - 1

Scorpion stings - 0

Scorpions killed - 3

Shooting stars seen - a lot

Total text messages sent and received - 1513

Total time spent talking on the phone - 52.5 hours

Meals that intentionally involved bugs - 2

Meals that unintentionally involved bugs - don't want to think about it

Rice with sauce chenilles--caterpillar sauce (click to zoom in!)

Remaining questions:
- Are Peace Corps volunteers everywhere this weird, or does Burkina specifically do that to people? (serious question)
- Why are crickets fascinated with my house?
- Do they sell canned pumpkin anywhere in Ouaga?
- How is it possible that I have mosquitoes inside my mosquito net every single night?

I ate it, too.

Useful phrase in Moore: Yaa wooto. That's how it is.