work and housing

I collaborated with Jeff to put together a training session in French on Microsoft Excel for administrative personnel at the EPC, the Francophone Cameroonian Presbyterian Church. I presented it, in French, this past Tuesday and Wednesday. The first day (coincidentally my birthday) was exhausting, and I came home and ate dinner and went to bed. But it was much easier the second day. Next Monday I go back for a Q&A session, when people from the training can spend some time working with Excel and asking me questions. In French, I repeat, because I can't quite believe it. I was pleased that the training sessions finally happened, since they have been difficult to organize with the EPC. The simple fact that we were able to get a few computers with the same version of Excel on them in a room with power, lights, and six or seven interested EPC administrative personnel all at the same time feels like quite an achievement, after all the time and effort it took to put this together. If you ever get a chance to teach in another language, I'd recommend trying it. It will blow your mind. Plus, with the advent of the internet, you can steal liberally from other peoples' online notes, which makes preparation much easier.

On the housing front, we are sorry to see our friend Karen leave. If you follow this blog you've seen some pictures of her. She's the one who injured her knee playing ultimate frisbee. So far it hasn't healed, and she hasn't been able to keep off of it since she lives in a third-floor walk-up apartment in hilly Yaounde', half a mile from work and without a car. So she's headed back home to Canadia (as Ann pronounces it) to get some medical attention. We're glad she's taking care of herself, but sorry to see her go. She'll be back a few days before we leave Cameroon. She invited us to visit her place on Lake Winnipeg when she gets back.

In the meantime, we offered to sublet her place in her absence, and she agreed and squared it away with the powers that be. So instead of spending our last couple of months in Cameroon living in a 9x17' room off the Kapteyns' garage, we'll have our own one-bedroom apartment a block away from them, in the same building as some of our other single friends. Karen is happy because she can leave all her stuff in place instead of packing it, since we just have clothes and our laptops. We're happy since we get some extra space and privacy for the rest of our trip, and that building has wireless internet as well. And the Cameroonian fellow who lives in the Kapteyns' dependance, as the room is called in French, doesn't have to move out yet. So everyone wins. But we'd still rather have Karen stay here.

The apartment comes with a cat named Bert Douglas that Karen is keeping for someone else. So we'll take care of Bert til she gets back too. Since we don't move in there for another month, we'll be stopping by to share feeding duties with some other friends in the building. Of course, if we can get our wireless internet hooked up right away, we'll by stopping by quite often to work there. Never did get wireless connected where we live now.

Karen has a habit of taking pictures of the sky here, which is spectacularly visible from her balcony. I copied her sky pictures recently, and also grabbed a few she had of us. So here we are on the couch in the apartment where we'll be moving in July. That's Bert Douglas on my lap. He's insistent and picky, like most cats, but affectionate.





We get to use the couch, too.