At the beginning of IST a couple of our awesome stagemates baked cakes to celebrate all of the birthdays we missed between Pre Service Training and In Service Training. Peace Corps volunteers can be pretty resourceful when we put our minds to it. They even managed to come up with some rocket candles, although none of us birthday kids were brave enough to blow them out. Thanks Super Stage!
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I honestly didn't have very high hopes for my actual birthday since it we had training all day and after two weeks in Thies most people are too broke to go out to eat, but it just so happened we had a trip to the Michal Adanson Botanical Conservatory in Mbour scheduled for the afternoon. So instead of another technical session I got to ride in an air conditioned bus for an hour and wander around a beautiful forest and learn about medicinal plants and trees. I got a lot of great seeds to bring back to my site, hopefully I can work on adding some color to the landscape. The icing on the cake? A short walk on the beach and a stop at the toubab store to buy BIRTHDAY BACON! I fried it up at the center and brought it with me to the restaurant to put on my sandwich. Nothing like a little bring your own bacon.
Glad you had a great birthday Jennie!
ReplyDeleteHere's wishing you many more!
Karyn