My little 1 1/2 year-old brother Enoch is the my main source of entertainment at home. One night, he was just lifting up his shirt and staring at his bellybutton and walking around. He walked up to me on the couch and showed it to me and then turned around and walked away, still looking down at his bellybutton. He kept walking right smack into the wall, turned, and continued all the while just staring at his bellybutton!

As funny as he is, Enoch is a fussy little guy. But he always seems happiest when he's eating or beating up on our brother Alex (6 yrs). Every once in awhile Alex will actually be calm and just sit on the floor watching T.V. instead of climbing all over me and talking my ear off. But Enoch will come up and just push his head or sit on him and look up with a big smile of satisfaction on his face.

For New Year's Eve, I was in Bouaké, back on the École Baptiste campus with the whole team. We had a bonfire at Rod and Angelika's which ended up turning into a dance party. We had so much fun just dancing around and being crazy, especially with the Ivorian kids who were staying with Rod and Angelika. At one point, we played "YMCA" and later found out that the kids (who speak French of course, not English) thought the song was saying "Moi, j'aime chier" which translates to "Me, I like to poop". Needless to say, that was stuck in my head for a couple days!

In my neighborhood there are tons of kids of course and they're all pretty adorable. There's one little girl who has the cutest, high-pitched little girl voice. The first time I met here, she was dressed and had her hair braided all nice. The next time I saw here, she was  wearing just underwear and her hair was unbraided so it was sticking straight up. She looked exactly like a troll doll! I couldn't recognize her at all! Then my sister asked her what my name was, and in her adorable voice she said, "Elle s'appelle la blanche," which means "Her name is the white girl". My sister said, "No that's not her name, what's her name?" She continued to say that my name was the white girl until we just gave up asking.

Random situations happen all the time to me whenever I'm out and about. When I think about it, they're pretty awkward, but I'm so used to it now. Unfortunately, I can't even make the ten minute walk to my church without drawing quite a bit of attention. Just today a random old guy on a bike rode past me and yelled in English "Merry Christmas!" It's mid-January, Christmas was a while ago but at least he's not too far off. And another time a guy on a motocycle just stopped right in front of me and started talking to me in English. Our conversation went as follows:

Him: "Hello"
Me: "Hello"
Him: "Are you French or American?"
Me: "I'm American"
Him: "Are you okay?"
Me: "Yes I am, and you?"
Him: "Yes I'm okay. Goodbye."
And then he just sped off and I continued walking home. Yep, normal stuff.

You just get used to things like that. But there are still things that I don't expect. Like when I told my sister that the time in California is 8 hours behind our time. She couldn't believe that when it's day time here, it's night time there. I didn't get why she was so fascinated by it, I figured it was just how she is because she already loves to ask me the same exact questions about America over and over and over. Then my uncle was visiting and we were talking about the time difference and she did her usual thing of being totally amazed that it was just morning in CA and it was evening here. But my uncle knew she didn't understand because she didn't go to school much, so he explained to her how the Earth is round and orbits around the sun, rotating as it goes. It didn't even occur to me that she didn't now that about the Earth! She's thirteen but stopped going to school when she was six or seven. I just assumed she would know! After five months here, I still take so much for granted, like getting an education and knowing things we consider to be common knowledge.

Yep so that's just a little bit more of what life is like for me now. Lot's of hanging out with my family and  practicing and learning French. At the moment I'm about to go meet with our national coordinator, Bakary, to hopefully get started working soon!