I spent over a week in Ouaga and didn't update my blog once

Apologies for that, but COS conference is both hectic and
overwhelming. Basically, they sit you down on Tuesday and say, "We
know you've been out of the loop. We know you only have vague notions
of what you might plan to do after Peace Corps. We know that, since
you're miles from internet access most of the time, you have no way of
knowing yet what employers may be interested in you. But you need to
start thinking about it. Because we need to nail down what day you
will no longer be a volunteer. We need to know by Thursday."
The upshot is I more or less arbitrarily chose August 5th. Where I'll
be on August 6th I haven't a clue...

IS IT A BOY OR A GIRL?
This is a question I ask from time to time when I'm not sure about the
gender of a noun in French. On the other hand, it's a question I've
always avoided asking when referring to names, for fear of offending
someone (would YOU know that Pamoussa is a boy but Lamoussa is a
girl?) But I guess it must not be TOO insulting...when my volunteer
neighbors, a married couple, came to visit last, the husband came with
me to pump water; while there, the old ladies asked me if he was a man
or a woman. Really, I'd have thought the full beard a dead giveaway,
but then maybe that's why so few men grow facial hair here...

A TEACHER STRICTER THAN ME?!?
A disciplinary measure I heard a teacher claim to use after having
caught a cheater: first, they get a -5 to their class score because
they cheated. Then I take their paper and throw it away, because I
won't grade a cheater's paper. So then they get a zero, because they
didn't turn in the assignment.
I bow to that teacher's superior vengefulness!