first impressions

Well, I'm here! And I don't really know where to begin. It has only been two days but I feel as if I could write a small novel on the whole experience. Everything is just so different and I am constantly overwhelmed with culture shock. The heat, the language, the people, the culture -- everything, it is just unbelievable.

I left on Sunday morning going from Boston to DC and then had four hours in DC before I took the plane to Paris with the other students on my program. I could probably dedicate this whole post just to Air France and how great the airplane food was or talk about my seatmate who was so cool. This guy worked for special ops force and later BRINKS security and just had all these fantastic stories to tell -- like how to transport diamonds "a man would carry $40,000 worth of diamonds and just be sitting next to you on the plane." Um, cool, seriously remind me to add this to my future spy novel. Anyways, from Paris we went to Cameroon landing at 5 pm local time. We were all exhausted by this point (it was 11 am at home and I had been traveling/awake for over 24 hrs) but landing at the airport certainly gave everyone much needed adderline. The airport was pretty normal, we weren't the only white people around and everything was similar to any other airport. From there, we got on a bus and drive an hour to Yaounde where our student apartment is. The ride over was unforgettable, I think we were all in shock like "woah, I'm in Africa" and then looking out the window only reaffirmed that.

The roads here are incredibly crowded and there isn't quite lanes of traffic, just two opposing directions, so anything goes. Unlike in other cities, in Yaounde there were people everywhere not rushing to go somewhere but standing and talking to one other or working the countless street stands that sell anything and everything --cell phones, pineapple, fish, phone minutes, clothing, hair products, candy, cigarettes etc. - you name it. At one point, our bus was side by side with a school bus of middle school students who couldn't stop staring at us - a bus of white kids, one boy even leaned out a window and mimicked "call me!" and waved his phone in the air. Meanwhile, on the other side of the bus, a man in a car took a picture of my friend while shouting out "la blanche!" (the white woman!). Anyways, I could write countless examples of the attention we get, but it is constant and usually well-intentioned and leads to very funny stories, it is ironic though considering we are by far the least attractive people here since the heat gets to us so terribly.
By 6:30 we were at the Dickinson Center where at the moment all ten of us live until we are paired up with our host families. Mr. Teku is our program director so he gave us a quick tour of the building and then we had dinner of rice, fish (which is cooked whole and then served as such), a salad of some kind (not sure of what), chicken wings, and tomato sauce. Afterwards, we had a sat through a short talk with the program director and a couple of other people who will be helping us transition. Mr. Teku though is the best, this man just truly can't stop smiling, I mean it, every word he says he mouth just ends up in a smile. I'm not really doing him justice, but let me say he is amazing and I loved it when he said, "There will be many problems and that is okay, just come to me and we will work on it. But remember, everything ends in a smile." Maybe it sounds cliche written here, but believe me, Mr. Teku is anything but.

The next day, we woke up late and by twelve had lunch at a cafe in a busy shopping area, then toured two popular grocery stores to get a feel for prices since after this week, we are dependent on ourselves for meals. Next,we took a bus tour of the city (do not imagine a tourist bus, it's a glorified van probably on par w the station wagon..). Then home at five where we fixed dinner for ourselves (spaghetti and fruit salad). At 7, we had orientation which was really just listening to the professors who will be teaching us and meeting a couple young women who went through the opposite experience of us -- Cameroonians who studied in the US. There is a lot more to say, but as far as activites go it was very low-key day since at this point walking down the block is an adventure for us

Finally, today we went to University with students who showed us around which is a whole another story, but first the heat. Oh man. I really haven't been bothered by the heat before, but here I am melting. As we walked around campus, we must have looked so out of place -- white students whose skin is literally reflecting sunlight we look so pale in comparison and dying of heat. We're all in shorts, tanks and still sweating buckets while everyone else is wearing what I would wear in a New England spring -- jeans, long sleeve shirts. Seriously, here I am one step away from heat exhaustion and everyone around me is apparently perfectly comfortable in like 80 degree weather (though I'm tempted to say it was hotter). I'm looking forward to the day when my body learns to handle the heat. Supposedly we do get somewhat use to it.

It's dinner now, but I'll write more about the students we meet, university, the apartment, language barriers etc. etc. so much to tell! whew.

Edit: there are countless errors here and I am embarrassed by how poor the writing is, but we only have one computer for the ten of us and the Internet works less than half the time, so apologies in advance!!