Tous mes meilleurs vœux de bonne et heureuse année!

When I first arrived to Togo, I strongly disliked two of the most common phrases spoken in French: "du courage" and "ça va aller", translating directly to "with/of courage" and "it will go".

They are used in any and all situations from a stubbed toe to a death in the family to being used in lieu of "I'm sorry". At first, to me, they seemed to minimize pain and problems and excuse bad behavior.

After many months, I grew to love these phrases and even started using them. I learned how to say them in Ikposo and got asked how to say it in English.

Now, over two years later, I can't seem to find more sincere words when trying to express my wishes to friends in certain situations.And all of that preface was written so that I could say: BONNE ANNEE!!!

The title of this post translates to: "My very best wishes for a good and happy new year" which was a common text message I'd get from my Togolese friends during the upcoming weeks.

I cannot believe that I am going to miss that there won't be children running around for the next two months screaming happy new year over and over and over again. I despised it in 2010, laughed at it in 2011 and now I'm just telling myself "du courage, ça va aller".

J'ai appris beaucoup.

J'ai appris beaucoup = I learned a lot.

I have this list of things in my journal that I learned while in Togo that I'm scared I am going to forget with time in America. I thought I'd share a couple:

1) Be grateful for the rain - every time it rains & especially when people complain about the rainy weather, I am hoping the universe might let some raindrops fall in Togo so that my host family and friends will have a good enough yam harvest to be able to eat at least one (but hopefully two) meals a day. I also know how unbearably hot it gets when it doesn't rain for months on end, so my hair getting wet or having to wear a jacket/gloves isn't that difficult for me.

2) Enjoy Chicago public transportation - yes, sometimes it is frustrating when the train stops unexpectedly or there is nowhere to sit... but at least it is a fixed price (no need to barter or have to pay extra for being white), a goat will definitely not be sitting on my lap, I will not get any marriage proposals from strangers and it will never again take me over two hours to get only 40 kilometers.

In other news, I saw snow this week for the first time I've seen snow since 2009. 
Snow and rollercoasters were probably the top two most difficult things to explain (in French) to my Togolese friends who had never seen/heard of either.

#deardiary #ramble #grateful #culture #amurika

^ Togolese photographers are the best for several reasons: they print their photos on these awesome flowery designs, they capture pictures when nobody knows they're there, and they give them as thank you gifts. #oxfordcomma    *   This is me "dancing" at the celebration of the very generous donation of Rotary Club (Chicago, Fort Wayne + Lomé Lumières) of almost 1,000 school textbooks for three schools in my area.

For those of you I am not friends with on Facebook here are public photos of my second year in Togo: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2120025437311.2111382.1146030016&type=1&l=854ec7911b


Happy holidays & bonne année! (happy new year!)