Ceace Porps.

This post will come in 2 parts. The first to my friends and family and the second to the idiots out there.

My dear friends and family, this will be my last post from the US, probably. I leave for DC tomorrow. I’ll be there for a few days and then off to my adventure in The Gambia Africa. It has been really tough to say good-bye to my friends this week. I cried a lot at church today as I said good-bye to my friends and my small group bible study. It was quite possibly good-bye forever to some of them. Many are in Grad. School or Med. school. They will finish before I get to return. They pain of saying good-bye to them was excruciating. But I’m really glad that I had the last 7 months to get to know them. I will miss you guys so much.

Tomorrow I say good-bye to my family and I know that won’t be too much easier. Thankfully my brother and sister-in-law came in from Ohio. It is so good to have them here to help me pack and get ready and then say good-bye. I will miss my family a lot as well.

Now for the Idiots out there. You see I was reading the volunteer handbook. They say in there that if I keep a website that I have to make it clear that my posts are my thoughts. Then don’t reflect the views held by the agency that I’m working for. So I don’t know if I’m going to spell out the complete name of the agency. So for now I’ll just have to call it the Ceace Porps. Thanks to all the idiots out there that would mistake my thoughts for someone elses.

The muscle of the party:
Good-bye, Jean-something

My African Connection:


Bye girls, remember that I'm not that far from Kenshasa!

Happy Next Two Birthdays to Me!

What a beautiful cake,


Baked and decorated by the beauty on the right.


I love you guys and will miss you SOOOO much!

All That and A Bag of Tortilla Chips

I recently had the opportunity to go salsa dancing, twice. Of course, by recently I mean during the last 2 months. It reminds me of the last time I went swing dancing (read about it here on June 14th). That was one of my favorite posts.

The first time was with Renee from my bible study. There was a 1-hour lesson before the dance started. I got there about halfway through the lesson. So I missed how the basic step was supposed to go and also why the guy was counting 1-2-3-5-6-7. What about 4, if there’s a 4, where’s 8?!! I learned how a couple of turns go but without the basic step (or count) down, the turns made little sense. Renee is rather experienced, at salsa, so she was in the advanced group. After the lessons, she was able to teach me how the basic step goes and how the turns all work into it. Though, I never did ask about the counting. We were the only ones from bible study that were there so I only knew her. She was well known by a number of people there. So luckily she had other people to dance with. Lucky because she didn’t have to dance all night with me and also because it gets really boring when all you know how to do is the basic step and one turn. She tried to teach me other stuff, with mixed results.

The next time there were a few more of us in our group. Doug came. Doug’s your typical masters in engineering student. Not as geeky as your typical computer science nerd but not as cool as us bio-geeks. He hadn’t been salsa dancing before but had done some swing and other stuff during the summer. We were able to teach him a little. Chansonette was there too. She’s more free spirited in her dancing that Renee. She doesn’t take leading so well but she also doesn’t wait for you to lead and then say things like “why don’t you throw a girl a turn sometime?” She also didn’t yell at me to keep my hand in the shoulder plain. Probably the most interesting way to be told to get your hand off someone’s butt. Actually it’s the only way I’ve been told that. Too bad for me I guess. I bet Tiffany has lots of good stories about grabbing people’s butts. Our friend Dan was also there. He grew up in South America so he was somewhat better than Doug and I. The band was fun too. They played some Christmas music. It was fun to hear them sing about The Grinch to a salsa beat. I think we all had a good time. Doug and I did and the girls as least pretended that they did. So it was a successful night. I wonder how much I’ll get to practice while I’m in Africa. Maybe I’ll start a salsa club in The Gambia. I bet it would go over really well.

NOG!!!

I told Dave I would drink a glass of eggnog for him. I had other glasses this year. This one was for Dave. Its not a “fun” glass though. Its just eggnog. You can tell its not a fun glass because I’m not smiling in the picture. I used all my brandy at my super cool friend Joy’s super fun Christmas party and sadly I have no rum either. (Too bad Tiffany isn’t around. Then it would be a fun glass!!) Anyway I used all of my brandy making mulled wine for Joy’s party. I made a whole crock-pot full of it. That’s from 2 bottles of wine, 2 cups of brandy, 2 cups of water plus sugar and mulling spices. Though the party was super fun they weren’t a drinking crowd. After the party was over, there was 1.5 wine bottles worth left. I left the half bottle for Joy. I hope she and Kristin enjoyed it. You can tell it was a super fun party because of the antlered creature featured here:

Of course, Kristin looked beautiful with the antlers on, not like me. Unfortunately nobody got a picture of her wearing the antlers. Why were there so many pictures of me with them on?

Anyhow. Cheers, Dave! It was a good glass of eggnog!