It's all downhill from here

Last week, I reached the "official" half-way point of my service. Of course, I won't know my actual COS (close of service) date until around May or so of next year. Add in my month long vacation coming up soon, and the last half of my service should be fairly smooth. I hope.

The house is once again full. I have a 3rd year volunteer from Mauritania living here and one of the new trainees will live here after swearing in. In fact, Jeremy the Trainee has been here this week for site visit. He seems like good people, and he wants me to teach him martial arts--which will be good for me. I haven't been able to teach martial arts since being here.

So far, my experiences with the new stage (which has been admittedly limited at best) has gone well. They seem like good people, but they're also young. Jeremy's a bit older in his stage (still young though), while most of them are probably 22. I'll get to actually become at least somewhat familiar with the those of the Koulikoro region this weekend as we have an end of site week party in Koulikoro--which, will actually finally be my first time truly out of Bamako.

This weekend, I set my 4th hash (out of the last 5, no less). More than that, we'll be hosting the on-after at my house this time. That part has me a little nervous--as my house, while spacious, is quite spartan and lacking simple things like... chairs for everyone to sit in. We'll see how it goes.

The semester at FLASH has *technically* ended. Classes are done. I had hoped that I'd be able to be grading exams this week, but there's the rub in all of this. Exams haven't happened yet. Teachers went on strike just before the exams. I've turned in my test papers, so I've done all I can do to this point. I'd really like this setback taken care of before too long. Maybe.. with luck..

So many of my friends are leaving Mali now. I may have said this at some point before, but being in Bamako means that I've probably more made friends with the previous stages of volunteers than with my own. As a consequence, they're all COSing now. One friend leaves on Monday, two more leave in a week and a half.