Exciting stuff

My life is kind of hard to describe. I can't decide if I'm happy or not. The day-to-day stuff is more boring than I'd prefer. I miss living in a city where I can walk/ride my bike everywhere and know lots of people to chat with. Sometimes I feel like there's nothing happening, no reasons to laugh uncontrollably or jump around with excitement.

But there are a few things that have really excited me lately. Now I will share those things with you.

I've joined the NLSC (National Language Service Corps) as a charter Hausa-speaking member. The NLSC is an organization that provides language assistance to government agencies. They have a database of members who speak languages from all over the world, and contact those members for assignments when needed.

So first it was really exciting that I was asked to join. My Hausa's okay, but not awesome, mostly conversational and not at all technical. But apparently it's good enough because I was surprised to see an invitation for membership into the NLSC. They are looking for other African-language speakers, so all you RPCVs should check them out.

Then I got an email from them saying some agencies are looking to hire African language-speaking people for temporary translation projects. I applied and got an interview, now we'll see what comes next.

Second, I've joined RAIN for the Sahara and Sahel, a NGO that helps the nomadic Wodaabe and Tuareg people of Niger. When I first came back from Niger I contacted RAIN asking if there's a way I could help my nomadic friends in Niger, and mentioned my friend Darey wanting to find help for his village, Teyiss. They told me they'd consider helping Teyiss when they had more money to work with, and I figured that might take a while.

The chief of Teyiss.


Well, I was really surprised when, a few weeks ago, RAIN contacted me and said they'd like to start helping the people of Teyiss. They told me to connect Darey with their local representative, a Nigerien man named Mahmoud, and they would see about starting some work there. Well, today I spoke with Darey, and he told me RAIN has sent money to Mahmoud to buy food for the children and animals of Teyiss! I was so excited!

The kids of Teyiss.


My third exciting piece of news is that I translated my resume into French using Google Translate and sent it to Darey to give to the teachers in Agadez so that I can find a job there teaching English. It's kind of a long shot, considering the Niger government went for months without paying school teachers their salary because they didn't have the money for salaries (or because of corruption?), but we'll see what happens. How cool would it be to live in Agadez, an ancient caravan town on the edge of the Sahara, as an English teacher?

Blueberry Pie

A couple backbreaking hours of blueberry-picking weren't without rewards. Two weeks ago we feasted on two delicious blueberry pies.

The berries...


... assembling the pies...


... the finished product.


Yum!

Happy belated July 4th!

Fourth of July weekend was a pretty eventful one. I didn't go anywhere special, just hung out with the fam, but we had a lot of fun.

Saturday:

Saturday was a hot day. My mom, Chico and I went to Traverse City to the Cherryland Festival to see the Blue Angels. We parked on the other side of town in the mall parking lot so we could take the bus downtown, thus avoiding traffic and parking issues. Once we showed up at the mall I went inside the grocery store to ask about the bus (it was supposed to show up there at :40 after, did we have the wrong place?) and this guy standing in line offered to give us a ride. So we got a ride in his nice Mercedes to the downtown area.

The Blue Angels were neat, but not uber-exciting. I spent most of my time try to avoid sitting in the sun. I actually was so un-enthused about the whole thing that I didn't find any photo-worthy moments. The bus-ride back was long and hot - we were in the very back seat and the air conditioning unit was directly over our heads and blowing cold air out in front of us so that none of it blew on us. And the windows didn't open. Plus this guy was standing in the aisle next to me and he smelled kinda funky, I'm not gonna lie. We were on that bus for like 40 minutes. When we finally got home we were all exhausted from the heat and sun.

After a few hours of rest we attended the Grayling fireworks show and it was great. I am so proud of our town for providing such a nice fireworks show for the community. We sat near the courthouse and it was like having front-row seats. Of course we saw people we knew, including Tom's doctor.

Sunday:

Sunday I had plans. I noticed in the paper that the local state park, Hartwick Pines, was having a
19th-century Independence Day celebration. So my dad, Chico and I attended that. It involved the park historian, Rob, reading the Declaration of Independence, then an old-fashioned baseball game.

Dad and Chico watching the game. I'm not sure who the guy in the orange shirt is.


Picking teams for the baseball game. The guys in the red represent the 1890s-era baseball team. They also played by period rules, including pitching to make the batter hit (rather than strike him out) and no stealing or sliding. The game was really fun to watch.


Some of the players were small. They were so cute! I think in some plays they were "favored" so they could make it all the way around the bases.


We stayed for a few innings, then went blueberry picking. It was really freakin' hot out but with the breeze we felt okay. We picked enough blueberries so that, combined with the ones I picked a few days before with Shawn and Liz, we had enough to make two blueberry pies. The blueberry plants are about 10" high so it was backbreaking work, but it was worth it.

Blueberries


Stay tuned for pictures of the blueberry pies.

My mom and I went kayaking that night down our section of the river. It's a slow, easy river, but has lots of obstacles in it, like logs and sandbars (not that I have photos of any of them.)




This is from an old train bridge that crossed our span of the river. In some spots of the woods you can still see the trail from where the tracks used to be.


So that was our July 4th weekend! It was pretty great to rest and hang out with my family. Tomorrow I will post blueberry pie pics.