After a loooong pause, I'm back! Douala was great. Shana ended up coming for a long weekend, which was really fun to have her. We did all kinds of touristy stuff and saw the city. The biggest probem was the heat there--I forgot how stifling and unbearable it was. It was so good to see Ben's family again though, and I got some cooking lessons and played with the kids a lot. Things got really interesting after Shana left. First, a family friend laughed so hard when I was able to tell her "bon appetit" in her dialect (Bassa) that she fell over backwards and broke her chair. Later that afternoon, it started pouring cats and dogs, so Ben, his brother Coco, and I went and played and danced in the rain. Everyone was laughing at me for being so muddy. The next day, Coco got up on the roof to fix a hole and ended up crashing through the kitchen, hurting his arm, breaking the handles off of a few pots, and making a HUGE mess. Luckily he was OK and had already started feeling better the next day. When we left, we brought Ben's youngest brother, Bo'o, back for a weekend in Yaounde. He was SO excited. We had a lot of fun showing him around and he really enjoyed himself.

Since then, life has mostly been the same old same old. I've been working at CAPEC, but it's been really frustrating because of their incompetence and the fact that I feel like a secretarial slave. I went to the orphanage yesterday though and played with the kids. I had a blast and they were hilarious. I'm going to start going a few times a week, teaching some English and games. I went out with three of the Dickinson students the other night to see Assiko dancing. Pete wins the award for making me laugh so hard with his dancing that I almost peed my pants.

Cameroonian TV is very special. I turned on the state owned station to see an American music video...but it was taken by a video camera off of another TV. And when the news is on, if the clip they want to show isn't ready, the anchor continues to repeat the exact same sentence over and over until it scomes up.

Today is international women's day. A woman being interviewed on TV this morning said that if a woman isn't married, she can still play an important role in the family and in decision making. To do so, she should cook the best meals she can. WHAT??!! Another clip had the title "Woman, Be Courageous" and showed a woman with a baby strapped to her back, carrying a huge sack on her head and another in each hand. That's really wonderful, but I just wonder...where is the man?? My guess is sitting on his butt at home or out drinking a beer. It's sad really.

The most exciting news recently is the huge storm we just had. I woke up from a nap because there was a ton of rain. I went out to the hallway, and when I looked over in the neighbor's yard there was an entire tin roof that had been blown off and carried over their high wall, barely missing their car and blocking the road too. Next thing I know, there is a deafening sound--it's HAILING. While rain is really pleasant on tin roofs, hail is definitely not. Not only did it fall to the ground, but it stayed for a while--it looked like snow. In front of my landlord's house was flooded (karma?) and had tons of ice. I was actually COLD. When it finally subsided, a Dutch friend of ours called and wanted to drive around the city to see what other damage had been done. Though we took the tour, it seemed like it only really touched our neighborhood. Hans said he had even seen a small whirlwind. Roofs had been torn off, power and telephone lines were down, and billboards had also been caried far away or torn. Huge metal posts and streetlights were BENT OVER--it was so bizarre. I'm happy to report though, that the very next day crews were out fixing things--I was expecting to wait a year before they did anything.

OK, that's all the time for today. Hope everyone is doing well!!!