Wow, it’s February! We’ve just hit our 6 month mark in country!
What is cooking in our side of the world?...
Charlie is currently in the northern part of Benin (look for Kandi on the map) on a HIV/AIDS education bicycle tour with other volunteers. Miranna could not go because she had to teach. However, if all goes well there, we hope to do a similar tour in our region in the near future.
Miranna just finished her first semester of school this week- calculating semester averages for 160+ students should be fun! This week she has been teaching family vocabulary and the possessive case which was a lot of fun. She used all the fun magazines that friends have sent to make up an imaginary family tree. Did you know that John Travolta and his wife are parents to Renee Zelwiger, the Olsen twins, and Patrick Swazye? Who knew they were all related! Of course my students didn’t know who any of these people were (the just loved looking at the pictures) so only I found the humor in it.
A few weeks ago we started learning Fon- the local language in Lalo. We have lessons for 2 hours on Monday afternoons between Miranna's classes. It isn’t easy! It’s not really a written language- it is very phonetic, which is fine if you’ve studied phonetics (which the Beninese do). But, the locals of Lalo love it when we bust out a greeting in Fon!
Because everybody is dying to know: Our kitty’s name is “KoKo.” This is taken from the local saying “KoKoKo,” which is what you say when you go to visit someone at their house. She is always at the door to welcome us, so we thought it was appropriate.
We’ve now had one week with no power- so no lights and no fan have given us the taste of the “real” Peace Corps experience. Man, do we miss our fan! There is a bit of a dispute with the electricity bill with the 30 or so houses that are on our block (and on the same bill) so we’re not actually sure when we will get power back. I won’t even try to explain how it works here because it is incredibly nonsensical, but, we’re coping!
So, all in all, life is good!
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