• Ignore the cravings and they’ll go away faster
• Do my best to create a dish that resembles what I’m craving
• Lay down, close my eyes, and pretend I’m at the drive-through in Mechanicsville

In Burkina Faso if you go with your friends to eat lunch at a half-sheltered hut restaurant, you may find that the waiter seats you at a table next door in a motorcycle mechanic's shop. Relax and take in the delicate ambience of the dining experience as the mechanic loudly revs a motorcycle engine. You'll find that the engine exhaust complements the tanginess of the meat sauce on your couscous.

If you decide to turn in early and catch some Z's, you may find yourself clutching your bedsheets, eyes wide open, listening to the weirdest sound you've ever heard. It's coming from your neighbor's yard just over the wall. You'll wonder whether the animal making the sound is giving birth, being waterboarded, or slowly dying in a pool of its own blood. The piercing sound will penetrate your earplugs and continue non-stop for an hour. You'll find out the next day in class that this sound is actually a donkey crying. Who knows why a donkey would cry. Maybe somebody forgot his birthday. Also, you'll hear roosters crowing randomly at 3AM.

When you sit down to eat dinner in the courtyard with your host family, you'll find a meal called "to," (pronounced "toe") which is a white, starchy tofu-like substance. You're supposed to tear off pieces and make holes with your fingers to scoop up the meat sauce, but your host family holds back laughter as you fumble with your food. Kind of like using chopsticks for the first time. Don't be surprised if the power goes out and you can't eat. Then you may have the bright idea to bring out your fancy AA-powered lantern. When you do, a swarm of stinkbugs and beetles will invade your food as they fly towards the light.

Then when the power comes back on, you will join your family in watching a Burkinabe soap opera called "Celibatorium," which roughly translates to "People who are single - orium." Now it's your turn to hold back laughter at a production that could easily be featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000 for its shoddy production and acting. The plot centers around a sketchy white aid-worker running away during his dinner date with a Burkinabe woman. When you find yourself watching "Woody the Woodpecker," you'll find that the most important things in life transcend culture. Everytime you hear Woody the Woodpecker's signature laugh, you'll feel like you're home.

Sure, I could have entered the workforce full-time and tried to be an adult. But why do that when I could go to Africa and be a kid again? I'm not a kid in every sense of the word, since I don't need training wheels or potty training. But besides my biking and bathrooming skills, I'm pretty helpless. Not only do I have to re-learn to speak (French and probably a local dialect), I have to re-learn how to do laundry, eat, bathe, and the list keeps growing.

In my last life as an American named Chad, I never bothered at high school dances to learn how to dance. That has come back to bite me in the butt in my new life as a nassara (foreigner) whose name is usually pronounced Chah.

I'm just glad I'm not the only goofy dancer in the lot. On our first night in Koudougou a local band played beautiful rhythmic music while all of us nerdy Peace Corps trainees flailed around awkwardly. We also went to an urban dance club one night and flooded the floor when the DJ queued up that Shakira Olympics song and that Romanian "Numa Numa" song. We were kind of like circus clowns, but the locals danced beside us like we were family. The club was in an open courtyard and a stinkbug flew into my eye.

There are other things I failed to learn in the States that have come back to haunt me. Once upon a time on a schoolbus in Virginia, I remember some cool kids trying to teach me a multi-step handshake involving fingersnaps. They repeatedly demonstrated, but after my failed attempts they always shook their heads in disappointment. This was a technique I was too uncool to master. Well, as it turns out, in Burkina Faso, grown men do this elaborate handshake thing too. All the time. And on this continent as well, I'm a pitiful disappointment. It's not really something I can practice on my own, though, so I don't anticipate any improvement in the handshake department.