This evening I watched Singing in the Rain in the refectoire with Emily (a current PCV) and some of my fellow trainees. I used to watch Singing in the Rain my freshman year of college whenever I was feeling homesick. Somehow, seeing Gene Kelly do his rain dance inspires a certain kind of joy in me. Seeing him lose himself to childish leaps and twirls and stomps is a little like losing the part of myself that is so grounded in my worries and fears.

Some of my homesickness has faded in the past week or so. The first few days back at Sinsina were hard again, but sometime in the middle of the week, my bad mood broke and somewhere in there I reached a tentative inner peace about being here, resolving to think about what is at hand instead of how long I've committed to being here or what else I could be doing.

There's a lot going on right now. On Sunday morning I said goodbye to my family in Sinsina. It was the end of a series of goodbyes, first on Wednesday when we had a party with the villagers. The party was attended by a lot of children, and some of the adults who were associated with our families. At the party, we presented some gifts to our families and Bocar, the language coordiator at Tubani So, came by to help with this and to give our families certificates of thanks for hosting us. Afterwards, we had a dance party. My "little girls," as I think of them- my host sisters Nayima, Batama, Ajara, Konimba, and our two neighbor Fatimis- were all very excited about dancing, as was Jeneba. They were especially excited to see me dance, and informed me afterward that I knew how to dance kosebe kosebe (very well).

Friday I took my language test, passing with a score of Intermediate Mid. Saturday, I said goodbye to my host father, Sine Doumbia, since he had to go to Bamako to work for a few days. I gave him a few small gifts- a pack of cards and a drawing book for the kids as well as a snow globe I had bought in the Milwaukee airport before leaving. Satuday evening was pretty low-key, but in a really nice way. After dinner I made tea for the family, which was exciting, since I've watched Malians make tea many times now but haven't gotten a chance to do it myself. Making tea in Mali is something of an art, involving pouring tea from the pot to the cup and back to the pot many times, reheating the tea in-between to mix the tea and the sugar in just the right quantities. The result is a very sweet green tea that is served in small glasses.

Sunday morning goodbyes flew by quickly. I woke up in the morning to my usual routine, going to Kajatu's kitchen hut to get hot water for my bath, eating my bread and peanut butter with tea for breakfast, and cleaning up my room a bit before taking a number of pictures and heading to the school to catch the Peace Corps vehicle back to Tubani So.

At the moment, I'm back at Tubani So, eating copious amounts of chocolate, doing some last-minute training on everything from sex education to chicken raising and waiting for our swear-in ceremony on Friday. We've had a bit more time off lately. Monday afternoon, there was nothing to do so I went off with Jared and Bess, two of the other trainees (soon to be volunteers) on a bike ride to some cliffs that aren't too far from Tubani So. We climbed up to the top to take some pictures and enjoy the view. Speaking of pictures, I put some more up online. You can check them out at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016383&l=be921&id=10301328.