francophone

french is the silliest language that has ever existed. one can prove this simply by observing a francophone keyboard (which is entirely out of order and non sensical in its use of punctuation and vowel placement.) reading the language in no way correlates to speaking it and the only regularity is the abundance of irregularity.

mwah.

anyway, at least it sounds nice most of the time.

i am in a new town now with the delightful name "dschang" (chong for the laymens). the temperature is perfect, the smell is nice and the level of business is low. sadly, dschang is entirely devoid of anglophone keyboards (see above) yet its positive traits more than compensate for this unfortunate lapse.

i have for the moment a new host family. they are a wonderfully sweet evangelical couple with seven young children. since the kids are practically babies, it is rather difficult to understand their words. thus, i ask for clarification all the time. after these awkward discussions, the young ones go to their parents and tell them about how i cant speak french. i take this is an entirely wonderful event because i can clearly uynderstand each word of that particular sentance.

though i am being rather negative about the french, i am happy to say that it is improving quickly now and i can at least understand the main themes of most utterances.

since travel is so very condusive to generalizations, i would like to say a few things now regarding cameroon

-cameroonians are, i think, much kinder to the average stranger than are americans. they are totally willing to deal with a poor sap who doesnt speak their language and go out of their way to help you with a problem. however, by and large they are not as superficially polite as are americans and particularly minnesotans.

-its ok for goats to walk around all over the place. even downtown and the university.

-dogs are for barking and protection...not playing

-coffee is not consumed black

-picking the nose is ok

-francophone keyboards are ok

bye bye everybody...out of time!