L'amour-propre. Self-esteem.

When you literally translate the words l'amour-propre, it's 'love for yourself.' But the best translation is self-esteem.

For the past few weeks in my CM1 Girls' Club, my Life Skills lesson has focused on self-esteem and my final activity was where each girl writes her name on the top of each page, tapes it to her back and each person writes something positive about her.

To help them out, in past meetings, I told stories that I created that asked the girls to describe the girl with with certain, positive adjectives (ex: courageous, strong, intelligent, etc.) and it culminated with making a list of these on the board.

Good thing I brought my camera -- my girls are absolutely hilarious!

By the way, I finally went to the hair salon in Ouaga and she ended up annihilating my faux-hawk. It's back to my haircut circa high school days...Ali randomly took this picture. I feel like because of this hot season, I've been losing weight because all I do is drink water and sweat. Hah!

New haircut: the faux-hawk has just arrived in Burkina Faso

Ahhh yes! After months of growing out my hair, I've decided to cut it once again. Partially because all my friends back home are telling me to cut it, partially because it's getting hot and having long hair is becoming harder to maintain, and partially because I'm all for change.

One of my friends here, Gwen, has graciously offered to cut my hair. For those of you that know me, hair is very important to me. It sounds superficial but we all have our things. Mine just happens to be hair. So we blasted music (Lady Gaga's 'Telephone,' anyone?) and had a good time. I'll let the pictures tell the story. Enjoy!

The BEFORE picture. With old photos of me to give Gwen an idea.

Mid-cut. I love it!

Sweeping up the mess. I have so much hair, it's insane.

With the wonderful stylist herself. Mind you, she did this with a pair of scissors. No electric shaver or anything. She's genius!