New Year!

The days are long but the years are short. I can’t believe that its another new year already. It seems funny the way that time is just flying by. Sometimes the days seem like they are never ending, but then I realize that the week is over, and that another month has gone by.  This year had so many great memories for me, if I was to sit here and list them all this blog post would be like 98 pages long.

I spent this New Year’s Eve in Leo with William, Lindsay, Sam and Hugo. We all spent pretty much the entire day together, having lunch and shopping for things that we would need for that night. Bill and I went into the marche and tried to buy firecrackers but they were all sold out of them. We were planning to have a party at Bill’s house that night. We went out to dinner at Cosmo’s and had a great time. There was live music there so everyone was dancing and Lindsay, Sam and I could definitely not pass up the opportunity to dance haha. The meal was great, we had a few beers, we all talked about our best and worst moments of 2011. I talked about how my worst moment was my first week at site when I was like really sad and homesick that I wanted to come home. My best moment however could not come down to just one. There were so many amazing moments that I had before and after arriving in Africa, it was impossible to pick just one. After dinner we went back to Bill’s for our party. We had a lot of alcohol and Lindsay made some great champagne punch. We played drinking games and listened to music, it was awesome. Here in Burkina there is no New Year’s special on TV. so we just had to use our phones to figure out was time it was. When midnight hit we listened to Auld Lang Syne and hugged and drank some more.  My family called me at midnight my time (6 p.m. in Texas). It was really great to hear from them but also I was really sad not to be with them, so I couldn’t help but to cry. I miss my mom all the time but at the holidays it was particularly painful. I talked to them for a while and went back in to the party. It was hard to be cheerful after that, but some more champagne did the trick haha. I ended up falling asleep on Bill’s couch somewhere are 2 a.m.

Yesterday I woke up feeling like absolute crap. I was tired and had the worst headache. Sam came over to Bill’s and we watched “Zach and Miri make a Porno” until Yago called me to come over. We celebrated the 1^st at Yago’s house with his family. I love his family so much. We ate delicious food and watched “The Simpsons” in French. We took a lot of pictures and had bissap and it was a great time. We ended up staying at Yago’s for like 6 hours. He was happy, we were happy; it started the New Year off on a great foot. After we came back to Bill’s house and Sam and I finished watching the movie. It had been a really long couple of days so Lindsay and I just sat around and watched movies on my laptop.

Grant that I may bring no tear to any eye, when this New Year in time shall end, let it be said I've played the friend, have lived and loved and labored here, and made of it a happy year. Goodbye 2011 it's been great. Looking forward to what the New Year will bring. Hopefully as many (if not more!) amazing memories as 2011 did.