A Day in our Life as Peace Corps Trainees

We thought you might be interested to know what have we have been up to since we have arrived in Porto Novo. We are called trainees because we are not officialy Peace Corps volunteers until we complete training and swear-in at the end of September. There is a group of current volunteers that are with us each week to help in our technical sessions which has been very helpful. So, this is pretty much what our weeks are like (there is a little variety from day to day):

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
6:30-7:30 Get ready, have breakfast (Charlie typically has an omlette, bread, coffee and Miranna has pineapple, bread, tea)
7:30 leave for school (Miranna goes via zemi because she lives far from her school, but Charlie can go via bike- pour schools are about 30 minutes apart so we dont see each other during the day)
8-10 Language class
10:30-12:30 Technical class (For Charlie this includes classes on child and maternal health, AIDS, maleria, etc; for Miranna this includes lesson planning, grading, grammer review, etc)
12:30-1:30 Lunch at school- we buy lunch from women that bring something theyve made to our school- typically rice and beans, or avocado sandwhich- also easy to find pineapple and bananas
1:30-3:30 Language class
3:30-4:30 culture or technical class

After school things vary: some days their is a soccer game, some days I come to the internet cafe, or some days well go with some friends to a buvette for a drink. We rarely go right home after school because our family dosent get home until about 7 so their isnt much to do- but we are home by 7:30 when it starts to get dark.

From 7ish-9ish we chat with our host brothers, do homework, boil and bottle water.
9ish- 10ish we eat dinner (no, im not kidding) and chat with our host maman and papa- the kids dont eat with us. We typically have fish or chicken, some sort of starch like potatoes, rice, or couscous, and some kind of vegetable- the food is very good but everything is cooked in palm oil!!!
10ish- to bed (yes, right after we eat) so we can get up at 6:30!

On Tuesdays the whole group is together and it is when we do all of our medical sessions, cross cultural sessions, and any admin work that needs to be done.

We also have class on Saturday until about noon- typically language. Last Saturday my group got together after school and had a cooking session where we learned how to cook Mexican food here in Benin! It was yummy! The next cooking session: American breakfast foods.

And there you have it- our typical days- its pretty exhausting even though we are sitting all day!