SITE ANNOUNCEMENT!!! Today I found out where I will be spending the next two years of my life here in Guinea. It is a decent sized village called Gougoudje. It is in the Basse Cote region of Guinea but right on the border of the Fouta region which is mountainous with waterfalls and caves and possibly cooler than Dubreka where we're living at the moment. I don't know much about the actual village right now but I will be going on a site visit in a few weeks and I will definitely find out more then. I've heard that the biking is really great in the area around my village so I'm definitely looking forward to that. Training is going well. I'm at the back of the pack as far as French is concerned but I'm making a lot of progress and I can have more complex conversations with my host family now. I'm also going to try to start learning a little Pular which is the local language at my site. I fasted each day this week from sunrise to sunset for Ramadan but I decided to stop today because I've been feeling a little sluggish in language class. It was a good experience though and it helped me to better understand what my Guinean family is experiencing. I'm planning to fast during the last week of Ramadan as well. I'm going to wrap this post up now in case the internet shuts off. Here are a few more pictures that I couldn't upload before. The dinner picture is fried plantains, ground manioc, cucumbers, tomatoes, and fried fish. It was delicious! A biento!

Greetings! I am happy to report that I successfully completed my first week of Pre-service training (PST) here in Dubreka. Learning French has been a challenge but it as also been fun talking with my host family in French. Speaking of my host family, they're awesome! They make me excellent dinners and my brothers love to help me with my French. My host father is a judge in the city of Dubreka and my host mother is a teacher at the local school. The internet here is very slow and only comes on every couple days so I'm going to keep this post brief. Here are the highlights from the last week: It rains a lot but not constantly. Buying food at the market is fun. I'm going to have clotes custom made. The countryside is very beautiful. Learning to teach math in French is very challenging. I'll find out where in the country I'll be next Friday (7/27). We biked to a waterfall last weekend and it was awesome! Also, I played the drums with a Guinean band! See you in two weeks! - Ben

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy and bittersweet. I'm about to head to the airport for my flight to Philadelphia for staging. Then I will be off to Guinea at 6:15 on July 2nd. I'll post an update as soon as I can!