the second big blog post. But I bought internet so these should become more frequent.

The events of last week have been eventful. (08.04.10)
As the title gives away rather quickly the last week has been full of eventful events and the true scope of the event-i-ness of these events will likely not be conveyed in these mere words. So where to begin I suppose is the beginning, or rather the place where I last updated, which would be July 26th, Liberian Independence Day! Similar to my home country America, Independence Day was full of festivities that mostly revolve around the two main events of booze consumption, and food consumption. However, rather than shooting off pussy ass bullshit fireworks we received a much greater treat here in Liberia. Now dear reader I know you are asking yourself, what the fuck is more hard ass than fucking up mother nature in awesome loud and colorful explosions, well the answer is obvious, and no it is not sucker punching a unicorn. It is Blood Sport starring the great martial artist Jean Claude Dam. Watching this movie moved me to tears more than once as Jean Claude struggles to be the best martial artist he can be in a totally awesome selective brick exploding fashion. As a result of watching this fantastic movie I have the song Kumate stuck in my head. If you do not know what this song is first punch yourself square in the teeth for never having seen this great piece of film, than go watch the movie and download the song to your iPod.
I also found out my site last week. I will be moving to Kanwekan and went for a short visit this weekend. Kanwekan is tiny village of about 2000 near the Ivory Coast border. Just look for Fish Town. Anywho the taxi ride down was one of the best times ever, and in that I mean I thought I was going to die for 11 hours while I sat packed into an early 90’s Toyota corolla. I think we almost killed 12 babies, 18 goats, and one duck. We were rolling 7 deep in that bitch, which is actually nice because, as we were similar to sardines in our packed in-edness each time we hit a bump it did not jolt the body as bad. That being said the ride still made me feel like my skin was acting as the Yahtzee cup, and my organs were acting as the Yahtzee dice. Roads here are shockingly not paved, and even more shocking are in shitastic shape (insert sarcastic voice over here). When I finally arrived in K-town I was the color of an oompa-loompa do to the amount of red dirt that had been kicked up in my grill from the road. Upon arrival I instantly deuced my pants at how awesome the village I will be living in for the next two years is. After a quick trip to change my draws I came back outside and looked up to see the stars, which resulted in another pants deucing out of sheer awesomness. Down two pairs of underwear I decided to call it a night and head to bed. In the morning I woke up and went to the local coffee shop where I purchased an egg sandwich and coffee for less than 1 American dollar. After breakfast I went off to meet the village elders for the first time, we ate cola nut, which is the way the Grebo people to welcome you into their tribe. After that ceremony we walked around the hilly rain forest that is my village. Many things were discussed like if I was open to eating monkey (I’m not), subjects to be taught, if there were boulders to climb around (there are!), and when will people be carrying me into the bush to see said edible monkeys. After this we took a midafternoon break and I settled in on my porch to do some reading. After a few minutes I looked up from my book to realize approximately 30 children were watching me read. If I am to be honest here I am actually used to all eyes being on me, except in America it’s not children watching me, but insanely beautiful woman and I am not reading but rather lassoing a bull to the ground while stopping 8 different bank robberies and the amount of lasers that are being shot is about 1000 times greater all this is taking place in outer space. O and I almost forgot to mention that while all of that is happening Slash is playing a totally awesome guitar riff somewhere in the backround. Anywho the next morning was my official welcoming ceremony, we ate more cola nut and they named me. My new Grebo name is Gia’a (pronounced Gee-A). It means great Hunter and one who brings much joy to village. In my case they said I would be hunter of great ideas and bring much joy in that way. While that is all well and good I have decided to shock the piss out of them and go kill something huge, maybe one of the endangered pygmy hippos I have heard so much about. After the ceremony there was more walking, more reading, more shitty gin to be drank, and more sleep to be had.
The next day I started on the road back home and took a stop in Zwedru for the night to stay with some other volunteers. They took me to Florida, which might be the greatest place in the history of mankind. They have pizza, French fries, AND fried chicken AND spring rolls! Needless to say I was in a greasy ketchup paradise. I really gotta say that there is not much better than putting huge amounts of ketchup on a greasy pile of potatoes. We also had ice cream, it was an amazing night that was capped off by seeing 6 shooting stars.
The next day I packed back into a tiny car and bounced back across the bush. One of the Liberian passengers with us was named Lillian, and all I can say about Lillian is that she is the mother fucking G shit. When we would stop for various reasons (one of those being so the driver could chicken wire the exhaust back onto the car) she would beat the dust off of us with her lapa (traditional African clothing). This lady was a god damn saint. Anywho I made it back safe and sound and can’t wait to go back out to site.
A few points of interest, the library at my school has some pretty nice books, but very few of them, a lab with no equipment and ostrich that terrorizes the school children. The ostrich is only in my imagination though, but all the same it is ferocious.
My site mate also dropped out of Peace Corps which put a frown on my heart, I will miss him. This means I am the furthest out in the country and the only volunteer in Liberia who is all alone. TIA.
And just to confirm it in case anyone was having doubts: running to the outhouse several times in the night during a torrential downpour and losing half your soul to the toilet (hole in the ground) is as terrible as one would imagine.
Latest mef dream is the most realistic falling dream I have ever had. I was in jeep with my pops driving and my friend Natalie from PC in the back seat. Anyhow we were driving on the edge of a cliff swerving around inconveniently placed cinder blocks; I was voicing how I felt this was a bad idea when the car went off the cliff. The car was falling for so long I actually thought boy this is a long time to be falling I really fucking hope this is a dream, thankfully it was and I awoke just before going splatters.

God I hate that fucking rooster. (08.06.10)
God I hate that fucking rooster that lives right outside of my room. I hate its god damn crow at the break of dawn. Someday I will eat that fucking rooster and all will be right in this world.

Cheese! These mother fuckers have fucking cheese up in this bitch! (08.07.10)
I found cheese today in one the markets, well laughing cow cheese wizzy shit, but as you might have guessed from earlier posts my standards are low at best. I bought some cow meat off one of the street vendors, a thing of bread, an onion and this cheese and made an African philly cheese steak sandwich and let me tell the sheer deliciousness of that fucking sandwich was worth the 3 or 4 parasites I undoubtedly contracted from the street food. I honestly cannot express to you how happy this sandwich made me after weeks of rice and potato greens.
I started the morning quiet differently, in language class we had to do random tasks that are part of African life. Let me just make this clear now if someone would have told me 2 years ago “hey in two years you’re gonna be entirely to hungover and on top of that you will be under a blazing hot African sun drawing water from the well and sweeping the grass.” My response would have been somewhere along the lines of what the hell kinda drugs are you on. Today I would have eaten my words, as I was entirely too hung over drawing water well from a well, sweeping the front lawn all under a blazing hot African sun. Just to clarify you are not misreading I am saying that I sweep the front lawn, and when I say sweep the front yard I mean I stand in the grass with a broom and sweep the grass. To be fair it does make sense to do because there is no trash service here, trash just gets thrown wherevs. As a result people sweep there yards to get the trash out of there yard and into their neighbors yard. Another important note, you really don’t have to drink that much at all here to get hungover, due to the low quality of booze and dehydration thing you don’t even have to get drunk to get a hangover, total bummer.
I also went to a cultural fair today which was amazing. People came and talked about different tribal traditions here in Liberia and showed us traditional dances. There were also these two little kids doing crazy bendy/flippy acrobatics. At the end of the cultural fair we got into a huge circle and had a bitchin sweet African dance party, where I busted moves all over the place. It goes without saying that a large number of Liberians got “served” by me today when “I stepped it up.” BOOM! That’s two shitty dance movies referenced in one sentence!
Finally to conclude my day I bought some bug bomb and bombed the shit out of my latrine. This way when I go to office tomorrow to take my conference call I won’t have 30,000 mosquitos buzzing about my head, instead I’ll have a mere 300. Literally when I was in there before I could not hear people talking outside of the latrine because the buzz of the raging horde of mosquitos was so loud. Now the floor is black with mosquito bodies. Do to my strong victory over the insects I feel just like Doogi Howser M.D. in Starship Troopers.
I also started teaching this week at a model school. Essentially we are teaching at a summer school here and getting observed by people to get advice on how to become totally rocking awesome teachers, though I already am. Anyways it is going well, I am teaching 4 classes the largest being the 7th grade, which has about 67 kids in there. I had them for my last class of the day and all day these little shits had been troubling the teachers, mocking them and what not, well I don’t stand for that bullshit. I essentially spent the next 45 minutes yelling towards them and scaring them out of their minds. At one point a child made a smart ass comment and I responded by yelling at him, than making him stand up apologize to me, and then to his class. Well after I exampled the shit out of this little shit they knew that I, similar to the Wu Tang Clan, aint nothing to be fucked with and class went exceedingly well.
I would like to state here that while I say a lot of sarcastic shit on here I absolutely love Liberia and the Liberian people. This country and her people are amazing beautiful, warm, and welcoming, and this is the happiest I have felt in a very long time. The reason for all the sarcasm on here is because there is no fucking sarcasm in this country because people are too nice and seeing as I know Americans will read this and get sarcasm I release it here. I mean if I couldn’t get my sarcasm out somewhere I think the world would stop spinning because it would miss Tj stolz’s witty remarks entirely too much.
Well time to turn out the lantern and catch some shut eye, I gotta go to three hours of church tomorrow.

Sir Mix A lot still rules, even in Africa. (08.10.10)
Hey in a week it’s my birthday, shits gonna get real in L-country. It will also mean that I only have two more weeks of PST (pre service training), this in combination with the fact that I have been eating delightful fake cheese with cow meat has really put me on cloud number 9. It’s good. It’s good that I have been doing that. PST closing will make me both sad and totes ma gotes glad. Sad because the remaining 14 of us are so close and it feels good to speak Standard English and sarcasm. Glad because PST is starting to really drag on and when I leave here I will no longer be forced to go to three hour party blocks church.
In other news pepper jack is the greatest cheese ever, and I wont get to feel its spicy velvety touch against my tongue till I return to ‘Merica and go to my nearest Subway. Do you ever wonder why Subway has triangles of cheese and they put them tip to tip NOT side to side, I mean they are fucking robbing you of cheese. I cant really tell you how many nights this has kept me up. Somebody should write there Senator about this debacle and get that shit amended. I would but, ya know, I live in Liberia.
Model school is still going well, every student knows they will respect the iron fist of Commandant Stolz. According to my fellow PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) I sound like a German robot. I use this voice because I like the great Bruce Wayne thought about what I fear most and realized it was a German robot. I mean I already fear dying at the cold steel claw grips of a robot, but if it was also yelling in a thick German accent while crushing me, well I can’t begin to imagine the dread it would instill in me. Teaching here provides its difficulties though, like the language barrier, even though we both speak English there accent is crazy hard to understand and vice versa. The war also set a lot of students far back, so you end up with a student in the 10th or 11th grade who does not know what fractions are. They also do not know what a shooting star is! I mean really, what the fuck do you wish upon!?! I spent 10 minutes in my class today trying to tell them what a shooting star is because every fucking person should know what a god damn shooting star is.
Being as it August, it rains almost every day, and by rain I mean it torrentially downpours, and by torrential downpour I mean sheets of rain come down. It will rain so loud that it will actually wake me up in the middle of the night, than the mouse running around my room will keep me up. I hate that mouse almost as much as I hate the rooster; however I have no current plans to eat the mouse, though TIA (this is Africa) so that mouse better watch its murine back.
Well I need to get lesson planning before the sun goes down. To all my teacher friends in America I guarantee the place you are doing your lesson plans at is not nearly as cool. I sitting on my back porch watching the rain pad down on the broad leaves of the banana trees, after planning I think I will go pick some bananas off the said tree and eat them. I fucking love Africa.