For the past couple of days, Ben (dressed up as Santa Clause) and I have been going around to different places around the city to hand out candy to kids.

Compassion runs a program at a youth center near our house for more than 200 kids every Thursday. We came at the end of the program, and the kids just went crazy.










All throughout the city, there are kids who beg on the streets. The ones who are sent to do this by Isl. leaders collect money/food in red tomato paste cans. There are a few that hang out at this one corner in our neighbourhood, so we stopped here as well.










The day after, we went to a primary school where our friend Magdalena teaches. These kids were great. They kept singing thank-you songs the whole time we were there. Something interesting that I noticed was that some of the kids were chewing through the wrappers of the candies (we obviously stopped them when we saw what was happening). I'm still not sure if it's because they don't usually get much candy or if it's just because their parents always unwrapped it for them. but wow, just imagine a childhood without candy!

This past weekend, I went to Nazinga National Park with a few other short-termers - Ben, Magdalena and Hannah (as seen in the picture below) - along with a small mission's team from New Zealand. The Nazinga reserve is one of the best places in Burkina Faso to see wild animals like elephants, antelope, baboons, hyenas, crocodiles, etc...











We hired a chauffer to take us to the reserve... and UNsurprisingly, we had a few car troubles. On our way there, about an hour into our trip, we noticed smoke coming out of the steering column (which is never a really good sign)... so we pulled over and our driver worked his magic and soon we were back on the road. The next morning, the battery of our SUV died... so, reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine, we had to push the car to get it moving, start the car, and then jump in.











When we got there on Saturday, we went on a tour of the park around dusk to try to spot some animals. Ben and I rode on the back of the SUV... which was alright, except for the fact that we got incredibly, incredibly dirty from all the dust that our SUV left behind...



















We took another tour at dawn the next day and we saw a lot of elephants, baboons, antelopes, deer-type of animals, tons of birds, etc... but the most amazing sight was right by our camp. As we were coming back that morning, herds of elephant were making their way through our camp towards the water hole that was nearby. We were literally 10m away from them! It was amazing!

On Thursday, we had a big party for all of these ESL courses to celebrate the end of the winter term. The term went great and I'm probably going to help out again next year. Here, you can see my entire class holding up their certificates.










Today, we had a big Christmas party for all of the SIM missionaries and staff in Ouagadougou. Ben, my roommate, loves Christmas... so a few weeks ago, we planned on surprising everyone at the party by inviting Santa Clause :P As you can see, the costume was modeled after the Grinch (from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas). It was awesome - he handed out candies to the kids and everyone just loved it. What we're planning to do this week is to go all over the community on my motorbike and hand out candies to all the kids on the streets (with him in his Père Noël suit).