This is just a little blog of amusing events from yesterday. I suppose I'll go in order...

Emily and Rachel and I went to lunch at Cafe Delices, a quaint little cafe where the lady who takes the orders and makes the food also has her little baby tied to her back. As a side not, I had an incredible plate of carrots and avacados!! During the meal, one of the construction workers working on the drainage system for the street outside popped into the cafe to talk to us in English. He proceeded to give us a history lesson of our own country with included colombus colonizing the country and all of the "red indians". yikes! Conceptions of America and of Americans here are, well, interesting and varried....conceptions of political correctness do not really exist. Anyhow, after lunch we watched a Cameroonian film at the SIT office, but a huge thunder storm came through about half way throught the film and the power was cut. We napped until it came back on (about half and hour), finished the somewhat boring film, and then...guess what we found in the SIT office??? SEASON SEVEN OF FRIENDS!!! (including the Holiday Armadillo episode!!) We treated ourselves to one episode, and it was honestly like having real friends come visit us. Every joke was funny and it just seemed so comfortable, so normal...I almost expected to walk out the door of the office into Holland and not Dschang. It was a great break for us all to have Ross and Phoebe and Chandler come to the SIT office :) After watching Friends, I went to the tailor's to give him all of my fabric and my designs. Everyone has gone overboard buying fabric here. It is absolutely gorgeous and inexpensive (until you buy tons of it!). But the best thing is that you can get anything you want made. I sat down with my sketch book and designed dress and skirts and some presents and all I had to do was show my designs and explain my ideas to the tailor. His little shop is on the same street as the SIT office. It is basically the size of two ajoined walk in closets with a sewing machine from about the 1940's. He takes your measurments as you try to find the french vocabulary for "gathered" and "pleated" and "strapless". I pretty much explained my ideas with hand motions joined by french conecting words. "You know, like -twirling motion to imitate a full skirt- yes like this but only so far down -point just below the knees- yes like this. It is very beautiful the idea, yes? Oh, and please can the red thing -motion to tie bow behing back like sash- be just above -point to hips- but below the smallest part here -point to waist-" Such fun!
I left the tailors for home and the power got cut again, this time for the whole night. So, Eugene (my darling 14 year old sister) and I sat on the front porch doing our homework. Well, actually it turned into me writing out the lyrics to Shakira's "hips don't lie" so she can learn how to sing it. In the midst of our laughter, my aunt came out with Junior (my three year old brother who is the constant amusement of the family). She was laughing so hard that she couldn't even speak as she pulled down Junior's pants. Junior had proudly gotten himself dressed that morning, complete with 5 pairs of underwear! And to complete the wonderful evening, we had mashed potatoes with beans in them (a dish that is common for this region and really good!) for dinner and, as there was no power, we went to bed at about 9. Oh, to note, everyone is blown away by the tiny lithium light that I brought. My family came up with the idea that you could buy 4, put them in the corners of the room and put big rocks on them (to keep them on) when the power goes out. In this way you could light the room more effectively than with the lantern. My mini light is affectionaly called the "bebe torche" or baby flashlight by all.

Hope this post makes you smile!