Vacation

So now that training is over, what am I going to do? Go on vacation of course! Mom and Dave had bought plane tickets to come see me before they shut down the Peace Corps Mauritania and the timing worked out perfectly with the end of training so they kept them. They will be here in three days and I am EXTREMELY excited, its been over a year since I have seen any of my family. I can't even really picture what its going to be like to see them again. They'll be here for a month and we are going to do a tour of Senegal and I'll take them out to the Dogon too. They'll get to meet my family from training here, from my village in Mauritania, and they will spend my first week out at Segou with me. I am excited about how refreshing it will be to see West Africa through their eyes and I think it is going to be a lot of fun to play guide. Which reminds me, now that I am in a country that is actually a tourist destination, I want to invite you all to come visit. PCVs make excellent guides because we are sort of like tourists that just never leave and stay to help people instead. Also, cultural exchange are 2/3rds of my job here and the other 3rd is eco tourism so you would actually be helping me do my job by coming. ;) Round trip tickets are about $1,500 and budgeting 100 a day can be plenty.