Thursday, February 14, 2008

I'm Back!!!!!

Hello everyone, its been a while. The last time I posted was Christmas, I wish I could of gotten on here sooner but we're in our three month challenge so were supposed to stay in our village as much as possible. Village life has been good though, I'm staying busy like i always tell everyone. So far I've built a total of 8 mud stoves and have another on the way.

Oh man Christmas was so great, thanks again to those who sent packages, Grandma Ward, Auntie Mo, Grandma Brooks, Mom and Dad, and Jackie (that book is hilarious). It was a belated Christmas but very merry, I had so many boxes and and letters from everyone. Food was the most common thing sent it was also eaten very very quickly ha ha, yeah i was living high off the hog for about a week and then it all came to a screeching halt.

OK i gotta go get some food but this is a work in progress, so stay tuned.

Well its been a few weeks but I'm finally back. Sorry about the delay for those of you who check my blog every day (I know there's a lot of you.!) it must of been quiet a suspenseful wait. Village life is still good, same old thing though. I'm glad to be into town and leave all that behind for a few days.

The biggest thing/event that went down in the past two weeks was the West African International Softball Tournament (WAIST). It was held in Dakar, Senegal and as you might have guessed I went along and played in the tournament. It was a blast, so much fun, I'm for sure going again next year. There were a few who didn't play in the tournament, they just came along to see Dakar which is a real awesome city. I liked Dakar so much more than Banjul and the Kombo area of The Gambia. The main reason for that is, Dakar is a real city, a booming metropolis with so much to do, i recommend it to anyone traveling West Africa.

So Peace Corps the Gambia put together two teams, one in the social league and another in the competitive league. I played on the competitive team, ha ha, oh man that was an experience. Our team was athletic, we knew how to play but hadn't really practiced much or actually at all for that matter. The first time any of us played together was at our first game in the WAIST tournament. This turned out to be our biggest downfall considering we played against well practiced, well disciplined, very very competitive, non-coed teams (our team was coed). So as you can imagine, we didn't fare to well. An especially tough game was against the high school varsity team who also play club ball year around, at least that's what their coach was telling me. Yes, we lost every one of our games, four all together.

I was happy that the mercy rule didn't apply to the competitive league because all our games would of ended well before the seven inning limit if it had. After the first game we new we were outmatched but all of us still had fun and we actually had some really good plays. One was a double play that I was a part of, that guy shouldn't of been so ambitious. Instead of winning games we won "plays." Speaking of plays, I also pulled a Bill Buckner while playing first base. Not one of my high points but at least that was the extent of my errors during the four games.