Yep...I'm still alive

Ok so since it's been more than six months since I posted. I have no excuse. This last half a year has been some o the most fulfilling and also disheartening months in my service. I'll be sure to go back in time and fill you all in but for the short version since June I have: secured and managed an $8,000 order for beaded bracelets for Lord& Taylor to be made by various artisans in town, participated in Camp GLOW (Girls Leading our World), started an arts resource center/ food nutrition project with kids in my area, planted a garden, practiced baking bagels and pie from scratch and making donuts, kept up with my VSLA groups (one of which graduated and finished a cycle), fundraised for our Books for Africa project (we still need more money!),read a bunch of books, watched way too much TV, washed enough clothes by hand to know that I never want to wash clothes by hand again, applied for a greenhouse, and made a lot more friends. Sounds busy right? Well the main reason I stopped blogging was during the L&T order I was too busy and afterwards my work kind of went from 60 to 0 in 5 seconds. For instance, if I were going to write about what I did today it would go like this: Wake up, eat breakfast, lay on couch and watch TV, go to post office and get amazing Xmas package from my dad and stepmom (thanks guys!), lay back on couch and eat all the candy in the package, sweep my house and haul about 50L of water into my reserve bucket, admire my blooming garden and water it, chat with Brian when he arrives from Kisumu, go to the main house and say hi to the girls and my supervisor, watch a bit of a Nigerian movie, send off a project proposal, try to find graduate school scholarships, sit on the couch with Brian watching TV and eating ramen. Granted, this is a "slow" week because the country kind of shuts down between mid-December until school starts back up in January. But you get the idea. Many of the things that were novel to me in the first year have just become mundane. And the things that used to irritate me now just really really annoy me to high heaven. On the whole, life has been pretty good though. I feel I have at least two projects that will last beyond my service and even just one would make me happy. I've certainly had a lot of time for introspection and I feel really good about the way things are heading. Now starts the real downward slope. 7 months left in country, 4 of them a final push to solidify projects and 3 of them for transitions so that hopefully something I did here will stick after I'm gone. So, as I always say, I'll try to be better about the posting and if you have anything specific you want to know, let me know in the comments!