Ceci n'est pas une feuille vide

Or is it?

Just got back from a week in Pagala, near the center of the country, where my stage had IST (in service training). It was, in a very boring, bureaucratic way, one of the most surreal things I've done here. Take, for instance, this blurb from some training material -

Read the following phrases and say if they concern some projects-

2) A young man wants to visit his friend in the neighboring village. Early in the morning, he smokes some manioc tubers, puts them in his bag, takes his machete and leaves. Arriving at the village of his friend, he is informed that his friend went fishing. he takes the road and returns to his house.



...what?

(also, i can't turn off italics now. blast)

We decided to think of a few things more fun than IST - here, in abridged form

- Pinochle
- Orthodox church service
- Drinking urine
- Rolling in an ant hill after a sugar-water bath
- Ethnomusicology exam
- Death of a relative
- Special Olympics Curling Championships
- Dodging javelins


*sigh*
So, I've got fancy places to be coming up right soon, so I'll leave you with a bit of Lebanese-American wisdom-

"Hey man, why'd you have to piss in their oatmeal? Let them smoke their oregano."

No truer words have ever been spoken... well said... well said, indeed.