I've spent the last 3 days in Yaounde... I was pretty bummed at first to be here instead of down south with the sea turtles. But, its actually pretty nice here so we've started referring to it as "vacation Yaounde".... there's hot showers, washing machines and good food, so really things aren't too bad. And I've gotten most of my stuff sorted out as well. We also went to happy hour at the Hilton... it was like walking into a different planet. The bar is on the 11th floor, definitely the highest building I've been in since coming here. Everything was decorated for Christmas and realllllllly nice.

I also randomly ran into my host dad from training right after getting my new cell phone. All of a sudden, i hear Claire, and its Francois! Their village is a couple hours outside of Yaounde, but he's a teacher, so he probably came in to get his paycheck. Still, it was a pretty weird coincidence to see him on the side of the road like that.

I'm leaving this morning for Buea, from there we'll start climbing Mt. Cameroon tomorrow morning! So we'll be on the mountain the 24th-26th. I'm hoping our trip to Buea today is rather uneventful. We had a terrible time traveling back from Kribi last Sunday. We had decided to spend the morning at the beach and come back to Yaounde in the afternoon since its supposed to be about a 3-4hr bus ride. But it took us 12 hours.... noon to midnight to get back, it was such a disaster... "A three hour tour," Gilligan's Island Style. The bus broke down on the side of the road. The company sent another bus after about 2 hours there, but it was only about half the size and everybody swarmed it when it arrived. So then it was a while longer before the next one came. Fortunately there were about 7 of us traveling together and we had a deck of cards and lots of American candy so it really wasn't too bad. We then convinced the bus driver that he needed to take us directly back to the Peace Corps house in Yaounde, which he did, so that was good. However, we're getting a much earlier start this morning hoping to avoid that situation.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!
<3