Weekly Update: 8.30.11

This being my last week at post before I leave for most of September, I spent most of the last couple of days working on my world map project.  Good lord, is it a lot of work: you have to draw the countries/islands/territories, then prime them in white because the yellow isn’t strong enough otherwise, then finally paint them the right color.  And frequently, even that’s not strong enough, so you have to do a second coat.  Sigh.

Observations:

·      There are WAY too many islands in the south Pacific – roughly 84,012 billion islands and atolls.  I counted.  Micronesia and I are not friends.

·      I’ve made mental lists of countries I like (mostly large ones with not-too-hard-to-follow-borders) and countries I will never be friends with.  On the positive end, we have China, Australia, Mongolia, Russia except for the fjord-y part, India, Brazil, the –guays, And most of the countries at the top of Africa.  On my hate list: Indonesia, Micronesia, the entirety of the south Pacific except for Australia, Thailand, Central America, Finland and Canada.  Have you seen Canada recently?  Ridiculous.

·      Many countries appear to have faces.  Did we plan this?  Croatia is Pac-Man. Kazakhstan is eating the Caspian Sea.  And Pakistan has a dog’s head.

·      Spending 7 hours a day with your iPod means lots of time for new music. Thanks to fellow volunteers Matt and Erin S., I now have years worth of mash-ups (Best of Bootie 2005-2010) and Jay-Z/Kanye to keep me entertained. :)

·      I have 65 countries completely done as of Tuesday night!  Hoping to knock another 20 or 40 out by the end of the week. (Update: as of Saturday, 117 countries done!)

Enough of that.  Other updates:

·      Jenny’s visiting this week!  She lives in Sori, waaaay up in the north (I visited her when I went to Niger at Christmas), and I’m excited to finally show her around.  Unfortunately, though, we’re going to have to leave a day later because of oro... I guess that’s a mild taste of southern culture, right?

·      Gabriel, Elise and I watched “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” dubbed in French on his computer.  Fun to explain American culture and quirks from it.  Gabriel wanted me to see this one part where “the people all jump up and start moving together in this really cool dance, they all move together!”  It was the Electric Slide.  I started doing it with the people, and he now can’t wait to learn.  Cultural exchange!

·      Killed another truly giant spider, and decided I desperately want to identify the species, just to know.  Here are pictures, any ideas?  Also found a moth that looks exactly like a peeling twig – cool!

Moth that looks exactly like a twig.  Crazy.

Big, scary spider.

Big, scary spider, now dead.  Can you see the hair on it?

My homologue, Epiphane, working with me on our CEG World Map a few days ago.  SO. MUCH. WORK.