American Culture in Cameroon

Hey everyone. There were two occasions in Cameroon I wanted to tell you about they were really cool. The first one was a cultural festival in Batibo in the northwest province. A few volunteers there put together a joint American/Cameroonian cultural festival. There were tables with themes like HIV/Aids, studying in the US, games for kids (I helped with that one), agricultural info, and Cameroonians set up tables for the different tribes, and various other things (I didn’t get around to a lot of them because I was working with the kids). Then they had a stage set up where Americans performed American songs and dance (hip hop dance was especially entertaining) and Cameroonian tribes did their traditional dances. After we ate a mix of Cameroonian and American food. There was supposed to be a concert that night but most people were too tired, me and about 7 other ppl made it to the place which was good because no one told the people there it was cancelled. We danced, one volunteer sang "no woman no cry" while we swayed and clapped in the background, it turned out alright. That was a long day.
The next weekend was Thanksgiving, and I decided to stay at post and invite some of my students to have a dinner at my house. We had 2 chickens (I killed my first chicken!), mashed potatoes, stove top, green beans and corn bread (corn bread was just ok but it all got eaten). We all said what we were thankful for, it was really nice. One student said he was happy that I wanted to share all this with "small people" because being a teacher I'm sort of a big man and big men usually hang with big men. One thing I'm trying to show them is that everyone is the same, so I was happy they noticed. Overall I've had some good cultural mixing lately.
I just had a friend visit who is leaving this week, it was really strange to talk to her. Whether its because 2 year sounded like such a long time or it was a defense mechanism, I never really imagined how it would be coming home. I thought about how nice it would be to see everyone and get a pizza delivered to my house, but not about actually living there all the time. It sounds pretty awesome. I've decided to come back to the US for at least a year, live in NYC hopefully and get a job or internship, then either go to grad school or something else in 2010. Ill be home in June or July of next year, and the time is flying. Ill see you all soon!
brad

Also I'm sorry I haven’t been returning emails lately…I haven’t forgotten about anyone its just been hard to keep up with it lately. I can't lie I don’t expect it to change but Ill be home soon!