Back from Homestay!

(sorry for any grammatical errors, this was written in wordpad without any spell check)
So I'm gonna start this off by saying that Homestay has been a rollercoaster. There have been all kinds of ups and downs! Sometimes I was super angry and other times I was soooo happy. So anyway let me describe my situation. Right now I'm living in a concession with my host father (who I only see at night and in the morning because he works in the capital) and his 2nd wife (his 1st wife is living in the capital with one of their daughters, I assume for work reasons). My host dad and his 2 wives collectively have 4 daughters. 3 of these daughters are married with kids, and one of them is just 15 and not married yet. Only 2 of the daughters live in the concession right now (the eldest and the youngest), and the other 2 live in the capital. The eldest daughter has 3 kids and she is living with us right now until her wedding day (I know that must sound strange, so let me explain. In Mali, a lot of people have 2 wedding ceremonies, a religious one and a civil celebration. These 2 events can either be the same day, weeks apart, or even years apart. In my host sister's case, her religious ceremony was years ago because her oldest child is 6. Her wedding is going to be this Sunday, so after that she and 2 of her kids will be moving back in with her husband in some other village) Also living with us is one of the other daughter's sons and a friend of my host dad as well as a nephew of my host dad who is only living here for summer vacation. I have my own room with a living room attached, while the rest of the family shares 2 rooms. We have a big courtyard and an outdoor kitchen and two Negens (bathrooms), and that's about it. There is no running water (we have to go to the communal pump for water) and no electricity. The village that I live in is also super small, we only have 2 or 3 teeny vender stands called butigis and a single water pump, and there are only 3 other PCTs (3 other Americans) with me in village. Anyway... I'm just gonna go ahead and describe Homestay to the best of my ability as it has been 2 weeks, and a lot has happened!
I hate to start off with a negative, but the first night was miserable. We were dropped off in village, and all the Bambara I knew was how to greet and how to say goodbye. So that killed about 2 minutes... I was then handed a live chicken and was told that it was a gift, and that we would be eating it for dinner. The rest of the night was spent in silence, and if not silence than it was me saying "N M'a Faamu" which means "I don't understand." I was all alone because each PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) was assigned to their own family and when we were dropped off we said goodbye to eachother for the night (this was at about 4pm), and we weren't gonna be able to see eachother (i.e. speak english) until 8am the next morning. The whole night I was fighting back tears, and I desperately wanted to go home. I just kept telling myself that it was only gonna get better. To top all of that off, that night there was an INSANE storm. Seriously, I thought I was going to die. The little room I stay in is crudely built with these crappy bricks and a tin room that is just attached by hooks with a few heavy stones on top for extra security. I was convinced the roof was gonna blow off and I was gonna go with it. I literally spent the whole 2 hours of the storm praying "pleassssseeee God I don't wanna die. Please keep me safe! pleeaaaassseeee!!!!!"
So that was the first night. Every night/day since then has gotten progressively better. The first week was pretty silent, with everyday me being able to say a little more in Bambara. My host family treats me like a baby, in the sense that they literally do everything for me. They cook all my food, wash my clothes, get my water and talk to me in super simple sentences, also if I ever do something like make a mess, they won't let me clean it up, instead they make my 15 year old sister do it. For example, near the end of the first week my water filter fell off the cardboard box it was sitting on and spilled gallons of water all over my living room. I tried to clean it up as best as I could, but my host mom shooed me out and called my sister in. It took her about 20 minutes to clean it up... oops.
One thing that I've noticed during homestay is that I am constantly doing stupid things, and the bad thing about that is that I can't play it off because I constantly have eyes on me. Another example of this was when I lost the only key to my room. The entire family had this look on their face like "wooooowww, could you be anymore stupid?" (luckily I found the key, but the whole situation was super embarassing). Also in the stupid things category are all of the cultural taboos I keep breaking. There is this one rule that in the morning you can't talk to anyone until you have washed your face, so this means a super awkward walk to the negen past everyone while trying not to aknowledge them. A few times I have had to ask a question and have received weird looks because of it. There is also the no talking in the negen rule. I broke that one when I was in there and a fellow PCT shouted out a question to me and I answered, and my family burst out into laughter. Oh and then there was the time that I tried to pay the lady who braided my hair with my left hand. My host sister yelled out NOOOOOOOO! and I was so confused and then my PCT friend was like "right hand! right hand!" I immediately switched the money to my other hand and said sorry like 4 times.
My days in the homestay village are spent mainly doing intensive language study, which I'm not the biggest fan of. Bambara sounds like nothing I've ever heard before, and the structure isn't anything like Spanish, French or English, so I can't even use what I already know to help me figure things out. The craziest thing about Bambara is that there is no real way to say a quick hi or bye, instead you have to go into this whole elaborate good morning, how are you, how is your family, how is your dad, how is your mom, and so on, and then to say good bye you say that you are leaving and the response is 'tell them that I say hi' and then you say 'they will hear it.' God I miss the word bye, but more than that I miss hi because greetings are soooooooooo long, and you have to say them to EVERYONE. Our language lessons are 4 hours at a time and we have 2 of them a day. Our lessons are held at the village school which is empty now because of summer vacation, and at every single lesson we have had an audience of children (I've posted pictures of this on facebook). I have no idea why they would ever want to sit there for hours just staring at us, but for some reason they do.
So as you all know, my Birthday occured while I was away at homestay. I could easily describe it as my worst birthday yet, however it was only my worst birthday because I was without family and friends and in a place where I don't really understand anything and can't say much. The day wasn't terrible, but it was definitely a typical day in Mali. I started the day off by going to the butigi and buying hair extensions because I planned on getting my hair braided later on in the morning. The walk to the butigi with my host sister was just like every other walk that I've had through my village, filled with children screaming out Sali! Sali! Sali! (my Malian name btw. it's short for Salimatu and it was picked out by my host mom) and Tubaboo!Tubaboo! (this means white person/foreigner/french person). All 4 of us PCTs are basically village celebrities. Everyone knows our names and they always know where we are and what we are doing. Privacy and alone time doesn't exist here. Anyway after I bought the hair, we went back to the concession, and a little while later a friend of the family started working on my braids. They took about nine hours, and after those 9 hours I could no longer feel my butt. Also for my birthday a chicken was killed, and this time it was killed right in front of me. My family made me invite the other PCTs to eat with me, and we were served the whole chicken cut up into pieces in one bowl, head, feet, organs and all. I basically lost my appetite with one look into the bowl. One of my PCT friends took the feet and made them crawl up the side of the bowl while screeching 'help me help me.' So yea... that was how I turned 22.