MTV explanations and mouse explosions

Hey everyone, I realized that I haven't blogged once since my site visit posting and decided that I should attempt to send another post out there. Granted, one of the reasons I haven't been blogging is that, for me, everything has slowly slipped into the "same old." Guess that means I'm transitioning well enough though. These past 2 weeks have been filled with Training. Some of the trainees had their presentations this Saturday (a 20 minute presentation in French, always a good time), and we also had our language assessments. I'm not up to the level I need to be at, so I need 20 more hours of French before I can take another test. Lots of French. However, my class is just me and one other person, Hunter, and we have decided to take French lessons into our own hands. So now our classes have been entirely about our interests. We also took it upon ourselves to explain to our French teacher that Parental Control (the MTV show that they apparently watch here) is not real America, that the parents do not typically line up suitors for their child to choose from.She also asked us about Room Raiders and the Jersey Shore, so we spent around 45 minutes explaining what a Guido was. Needless to say, it was actually a pretty hilarious conversation. Thank you Mtv.
So yea, not too much going on, so I'll just throw in a story from a few weeks ago. When I was still in Nyamsung, the village next to Bafia, after Training my fellow Trainees and I went straight to the bar afterwards, our normal routine. Eventually, I trudge back home, dreading having to use whatever little energy I had left to try and speak French for 3 more hours and cook Cous-Cous. Once I arrived, I went straight to my room to drop off my bag and was hit by a horrendous smell. The kind of smell that literally makes you stop and say outloud to no one in particular, "Holy shit." At first, I thought that the garbage in my room had finally started to smell. Considering the heat this seemed reasonable, so I immediately grabbed my makeshift garbage bag and sprinted out the door. There is no place to put garbage in Cameroon, no garbage trucks come by to pick up the trash, so people tend to just throw it in every direction. I feel bad about doing that, ruining the environment and all, so I ran around in circles holding this bag until my host mom finally took it from me. Relieved, I went back into my room and opened my windows for the first time since living there. The smell made it necessary. After an hour or so I went back into my room and the smell was still there, in fact, it had gotten significantly worse. I could basically taste it.
I decided to look around, because this was getting ridiculous. Of course I find what everyone wants to see in their room... a mouse. However, this mouse had suffered considerably more than any other mouse that I've ever heard of. This mouse had exploded. Yup, I know how to make a mouse explode. Though, I'd say it was more natural selection running its course. This intelligent creature had eaten my laundry detergent. Now it left me 3/4 of its body intact, its ass separated from the rest of it and in pieces, the back feet several inches away from the ass, and the tail in two pieces even farther away.
Slowly, I backed away and ran out of the room to go get some assistance. I found my host mom and attempted to explain that a mouse exploded in my room. This consisted of me hysterically laughing, saying the word mouse in French and boom, with hand signals to show an explosion. She looked at me like I had officially snapped from the "culture shock" that she was warned about. Eventually, I convinced her to come to my to my room and see for herself. Yup, no denying it, she agreed while looking at the body parts, BOOM.
We had the lovely job of cleaning this up, which was a great bonding experience. Then it was dinner time. We both stared at our food and decided that maybe dinner wouldn't be our thing tonight. Such a shame, missing cous-cous, fortunately we can count on having it basically every night after that. Afterwards I decided it was bedtime, so I went to try and close my windows. Wouldn't close. Ugh. Went back out to get my host mom to explain the new situation. After around 45 minutes and enlisting my host dad for help, the windows finally closed. As my host mom and I turned towards my bedroom door to leave, the lightbulb falls from the ceiling and shatters on my floor. My one lightbulb- and we actually had electricity that night. I burst out laughing. This whole night had just been ridiculous. My host mom obviously agreed because she turned to me and said go to sleep and pray. This made me laugh even harder as I nodded in agreement.
Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. So that was just one of the many weird experiences I've had in Africa. Its definitely saying something that when my friends ask "How are things?" I respond with "same old."