The things I will do for ice cream...

So it is still technically the "cold" season here and guess what the temperature is? 100 degrees. Awesome. Not very cold, right? That's what I said.

With that in mind, some friends and I are biking to The Gambia today for soft serve ice cream. It's about a 40 kilometer bike ride from my village to The Gambia, but if all goes well, it will be worth it. However, nothing is really going as planned. I was supposed to meet 3 other volunteers in Velingara, a town 20 kilometers from my village, this morning at 11. From there we were planning on biking the remaining 20 kilometers to Basse, The Gambia. However each of the 4 of us have had some difficulties getting here.

As for me, as I was biking out of my village to the school this morning to meet my French tutor, I got a flat tire. Great. So, I walked my bike about 3 kilometers to the school and was very late for my French lesson. After the lesson I was planning on bikng here (Velingara) to meet my friends, but instead I had wait on the side of the road for a car to take me and my broken bike here. When I finally arrived, I paid someone to put air into my tire and happily went to meet my friends. About 15 minutes later, though, I realized that in my absentminded rush to meet my friends, I left my backpack at the bike place. So, I turn around, walk all the way back to the pike place, get my backpack, and go back to meet my friends. Unfortunately, however, as I was walking away, my tire immediately went flat again. I was very annoyed and very hot at this point. I met one of my friends, who told me that she had forgotten her passport in her village and was contemplating biking back to get it. The two other people we were waiting on were having transport difficulties and said they wouldn't be here until this afternoon. So, to make a long story short, we had time to kill. At the present moment my bike is being repaired and will hopefully be fixed by the time we all are ready to leave here.

As for the ice cream, aside from transportation issues, we also have to hope that the electricity came on today in Basse for the guy to prepare it. Apparently the electricity only comes on from 6am-10am and 6pm-10pm there. So, yesterday we had to call the guy and tell him that we were coming and make sure that he knows to prepare the ice cream. Additionally, we called him this morning to remind him again, because apparently he has to prepare the ice cream in the morning when the electircity is on and then wait for the electiricty to come back on in the evening to serve it. The elctiricty often doesn't come on at all here for no good reason, so we are placing a pretty big bet on the fact that the electircity comes on both times today and stays on long enough for this guy to make and serve the glorious ice cream.

Since we have to wait until the evening to have the ice cream, we are going to have to spend the night there. Luckily there is a Peace Corps house there that we can stay at for free. Tomorrow, after biking back here, Im going to go to my friend Holly's village to help her with a mosquito net project we are doing here. Unfortunately my internet time is running out, but I will write more about the mosquito net distribution project we are doing next time I come to the internet.

Hope everyone is having a great week!