Ihop? Nope, dinner at the King's house...close enough

After a Saturday evening of hanging out and having a couple drinks, I say evening because remember my curfew is at 7 which I always respect…, and a couple drinks includes soda because of a limitation on alcohol while in training… right anyway, after an night of that, I still always crave Ihop on Sunday mornings. A bad but delicious habit that was formed this past year. Nothing beats talking about the night before, over a brunch of coffee and chocolate chip pancakes. (I’m kicking myself just for thinking about this again).

Instead, this past Sunday we went to the king of Bagangte’s house in the secret/sacred forest. Once someone visit’s the chiefs house, they can officially say that they visited the village. The chief said it would be like visiting the United States without going to the White House. He also said he had about 20 wives or so, and around 60 children. We were saying how we'd hate to be the "20th or so" wife. We got a history lesson on the kings before him and then ate tons of great food, drank palm wine, beer and wine. (people like to drink here). It's always a strange mix of tradition and modern here. For example, at the palace (not the same in english), we were looking at the old weapons on the walls, the pictures of how they tatoo someone doing initiation, while listening to one of the older King's advisers/right hand guy was telling us about the history of the tribe... there were pink embroidered doilies on the couches and the guy speaking was wearing the sickest pair of Ray Bans I've ever seen. It's a little hard sometimes to make sense of it all.

For a more indepth version of what I've been doing.. I suggest reading Jim's post "How do you spend your sunday morning" about the king's place, he's hilarious and it's true. Also Wendy's "expectations" post describes the past few days and an amazing meal we had perfectly.

Not that I'm counting.. but I am, and I've been here for over 2 months! Holy crap is right. Summer is almost over for you guys in the states, and there is only hot weather to come here because right now is the "cold" season. It's 70 and my host dad says I probably should put on a sweater.

I helped choose the matching pange for the group which was really fun. Four of us were actually able to pick out an african print that everyone would like. So if you liked the last picture of us from the east all matching, in almost a week there will be 36 of us matching for the swearing in ceremony. Which we're all really excited for, at the same time, it's going to be so hard to leave people I've been spending all my time with. It really has been great. I've uploaded lots of movies, 30gb of music, and shared lots of pictures with the other trainees. I've also traded syrup for amazing deodorant from the states, a cushy bike seat and much needed rat poison.

But now we're in Yaounde, the capital staying at the peace corps headquarters finishing up some medical and administrative stuff before they send us out to our middle of nowhere posts, well, some of us. I've posted alot of new pictures seeing how I have free higher speed internet, and I'll definitely post another blog soon about our last week as trainees, just because that should be documented. Lots of love and thank you for all your wonderful comments and support.