Blackout, Thanksgiving, Extension School Graduation and Christmas Break

The year is winding down over here and thoughts are turning from creating Christmas decorations to packing for a trip to Ghana with some friends. Been putting in some good runs here. I don't even need to include a specific hill workout day - my runs include from 6 to 18 hills. It really stinks because the rainy season has long past. We went from raining torrents multiple times a day to no rain for the past week. Dust, dust everywhere. Feels almost as dry as it did in Namibia. Don't need to use sunscreen when walking to town or running - you naturally have a thin layer of dirt on your skin. White is not a good clothing color at this time.

Speaking of clothing, it is getting downright cold here. The last winter did nothing for making me used to the cold. I'm sleeping with a fleece on and still a little chilled. The lows are in the frost friendly 60's. Apparently they will get much lower come January and February.

There was a bit of a scandal for a few weeks when we ran out of petrol for the generators. When you only get electricity a few hours a day, you do realize how precious those couple hours are. We ended up going without current for three out of four days and scattered outages and rumors of missing petrol, theft or dishonest pumps. The highlight of it for me was that I got to use some of my mad math skills for calculating the volume of fuel in a horizontal cylinder if you know the height of the fuel. No, it isn't as easy as you think (volume does not = pi * radius squared * height in this situation). Then converting it from cubic inches or cubic feet into gallons. Then printing off a spreadsheet for the workers to do the calculations.

Have taken to getting water for myself instead of hiring people to do it for me. Consequently am getting better at balancing things on my head. I can balance my Nalgene bottle for most of the walk up and down the hill to work. I can walk with a filled 5 gallon water container mostly balanced on my head. Talked my roommate into doing that as well. I'm not good enough yet to balance it without using my hands, but have improved enough to where I only need one hand.

On schedule to meet the book a week goal. Put down 18 books in 16 weeks, including the four Ender's Game books. Highly recommend Orson Scott Card to anyone.

For Thanksgiving the US Embassy invited all the PCVs to Monrovia for a dinner. Unfortunately we had to find our own transport, lodging and to claim the vacation days. I'm burning almost all my days for Ghana so I passed on it. Besides, it is a full day of travel on a dusty, pothole filled road. Anyways, the remaining PCVs here got together in the town and went around and did our own gorging on our favorite Liberian foods: fat cakes, sour milk (yogurt), fried plantains and picked up some supplies for the campfires in the evening. The remaining roommate and I made a bonfire, boiled some hot chocolate and cut up the pumpkin and threw it into the coals (wrapped in tinfoil + adding some sugar and cinnamon) and singing Christmas carols.

One of my sitemates needs to get on the computer to do some Skype, so I need to cut this off. Will update this tomorrow morning with the extension school graduation. It is a story in and of itself.

Take care ya'll!