Mosquites!

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I ni sogoma!

I can't really remember where I left off with my last entry, but I'll just recap the last week.
(It seems really funny to be writing this in English, I feel like I'm almost translating everything from French!)

Luckily, after the attack of moquites I experienced while working in the woods for the first half of last week, we stayed indoors on Thursday and Friday and worked in the 'Gite' (B&B). Ginette explained to me that normally they are completely booked all summer, but the last two years have slowed down quite a bit because of the recession. So, there are days when the gite is completely vacant or there is just one or two rooms filled (There are 5 rooms, max capacity 16 ppl). Normally on the days when we work in the Gite we get up at 6:45, eat a small breakfast, and then prepare the breakfast for the guests. We do fruit and flower arrangements with the food, and normally begin with a yogurt parfait (homemade yogurt) or a flan, followed by crepes, a hard boiled egg, croissants, and homemade bread or blueberry pancakes. After clearing the breakfast we have our second breakfast, which is the same as was served to the guests! At about 9 am we start cleaning the rooms, and this takes all day.......Who knew it was so much work to wash sheets and towels, mop floors and clean toilettes?

This is fine to do for 2 days a week, but anymore than that is a little monotonous. Luckily, there are lots of other tasks that take up ours days. For instance, we made bread twice in the last week-from scratch! Today we made 11 loaves, using Sadio's Malian method of working the dough. Sometimes we weed the garden, and somedays I work with my host dad Gérald in the woods and Sadio works with Ginette in the kitchen. This works quite well because I enjoy being outside and getting a little exercise, and Sadio enjoys being in the kitchen. She worked in the woods with us once and explained to me that in Mali, women don't do that kind of physical work.

By the time the weekend comes around, I'm pretty ready to go out and do something different but this isn't always possible because of transportation. Matane is 20 mins away and I can't ask my host parents to drive me in when I want to see other people in the group. Luckily on Friday we carpooled in with another group of counterparts and saw a movie and afterwards went to a baseball game.

Yesterday was our group educational activity day(EAD), and it was so great to go into Matane and see other people! Each week a pair of counterparts present a certain subject for the EAD, and yesterday it was personal values, morality and beliefs. The two girls who presented did a really good job and we had a great group discussion about religion and values between the Canadians and the Malians.

I have to go because this is my 10 minute warning and I want to attch some pictures but I'll try to sneak on again soon. errrrrrr.

Thanks for the comments!

xoxoxCelina

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Photos

At the Beach!
We went to the beach with Gerald one afternoon after finishing work early....unfortunately the St.Lawrence was a little cold for swimming!

Windmills
not a great photo, but the whole area is surrounded by windmills!

Waterfall behind the house
This is a little river, 20 min walk from the house

work work work
Today we jacked up a little cabin in the woods

I miss you guys soosososos much!
This is my tribute to bluskies...