another trip

This weekend was great! Not only was I feeling better after being sick for a while, but I could definitely feel the prayers coming my way as my mom had mentioned.  By Thursday night I was very joyful and so happy I was still in Mali.  Bad circumstances seem to make everything look bad.  I'm so glad I don't make important decisions when I'm feeling so bad. Thank you to all of you.  I am feeling much better and have most of my energy and appetite back, now I just need to continually eat more to gain weight back.  We visited a couple of villages about 4-5 hours away and it was very good to go somewhere else and meet new people.  We stayed with Pastor Marka and his family the first night.  He graduated from IBR just last year, so our intern, Sharon, knew him very well.  The second night we stayed in Bamako at the EEBM guest house (as we have before).  We went out to eat that night and then found ourselves studying for our oral final exam with our professor for the next morning.  Once that was finished on Saturday, we went to the Artisan in Bamako which is where all the African jewelry, boxes, canvases, paintings, etc. is made.  I'm terrible at bargaining because first of all you can hardly look around without them bothering you, and then you have to literally leave the place for them to stop talking to you, even after that we had a drunk man following us and continually saying "What do you want? I am sorry. I will give you the best prices...you are my friend...blah blah."  At the end of the trip, me and Christian had to ride in the hot trunk in the back of the truck to get home because it only holds so many people in the front.  It was quite amusing and we had alot of people smiling and waving at us.  This is something a Malian would do, not an American, typically.