Halloween and Ramadan encore plus a bit more

Hey there! In Kongoussi for the weekend. It's been quite a month since I last wrote with plenty of news and stories. First off, school is in full swing and I've been fairly busy. I had the most amazing moment last week during a math help session. I hold sessions kinda like how professors in college have office hours. At one point, I had about 15-20 girls in one room all doing math and really understanding it, which is a miracle in and of itself. But at one point we all looked at one another and couldn't help our huge smiles and suppressed giggles because we were all so excited about DOING MATH. Now there's a Peace Corps moment for you.

I'll be adding an English class to my schedule next week too, which should be pretty fun and interesting. One of our teachers never showed up, which isn't all that unusual here, so I volunteered to help pick up the slack from that. I just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew.

In older news, I had a great week of festivals around Halloween time. For Halloween, in typical Kara style, I went all out. This included dressing up as a millet stalk, teaching my family "trick or treat" and in turn giving them the all important treat and of course, a watermelon jack-o-latern in front of our courtyard for all to see!! It was great.

I also had a good Ramadan festival. I actually did the fasting one day, which was a challenge. You try not eating or drinking all day when it's 104 degrees out! So I felt I could really celebrate when the time came, and I did. I must've eaten 5 or 6 meals worth of food that day! And I also cooked up a ton of rice and thai peanut sauce to give to my family and school director. Good times....