"ready, set, stop!"

Well I'm back for a short time before I go celebrate the 4th of July with some volunteers and then go have our mid-service conference.  This summer just keeps getting busier and busier!  Forget about the Black Sea!  I'm not going to have any time to go to the Sea with all the traveling that coming up!  I can't guarantee how often I will get a chance to blog next week with all my thoughts going to the potato salad and ground beef and cookies for the 4th!  This is something you may find interesting and to tell the truth just figured out myself about a month ago.  Say you're driving down the road in the states and see the green light change to yellow.  Depending on where the car is in relation to the yellow light generally you slow down and prepare to stop.  Yellow means "slow down."  Yellow here means "get ready" to put your foot on the gas and go!  In the states we go from red to green to yellow and repeat the process.  Here they go from red to yellow to green.  A little different!  Anyway this last conference I attended was about teaching issues relating to sexual health to young people.  My counterpart and I are hoping to have a (several) day camp about these issues in the next several months but have a lot to do yet!  Sex is more of a taboo topic here and because of that STIs and infertility are common problems.   Only 4% of women use the birth contro pill and condoms and the IUD are the most popular forms of birth control.  So we're going to try to get some healthy messages out to our students!  It is pretty near the 90s in the afternoons here and the bus rides back here yesterday were a little on the stuffy side!!  I just have to share some news.  While in another town yesterday I found and bought an American football!!  That made me happier than I thought!!   Love and hugs!!