~~~quick update~~~

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Porto-Novo is a trip, at least for us villageois who get excited to see a flush toilet. I like to call this training site "Porto-Novo 90210". While I am jealous to witness the luxurious accomodations (tiled houses, second floors, gardens with shrubs and guard dogs, large televisions, spacious living quarters, delicious food, large private bathrooms with showers and toilets and even, gasp, bedets !?! etc) of the stageaires, I definitely don't envy the difficult transition they will face as they go off to live in their muddy, dusty, hot, non-french-speaking, no-vegetable-having villages. I just hope it won't be too much of a shock to their system as they realize first hand what we volunteers have been trying to stress to them--this is not the real "Benin".

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Here we go! Tomorrow I leave Benin for the first time in a year...Interesting that today is our one year mark......I'm going with a friend to Ghana for ten days...WOO HOO... in which we plan to walk high up in the canopy somewhere, play drums for a few days at a music school in a village, and check out the Accra music scene, among other unplanned adventures. Expect a full debriefing in August. Mom and Dad, don't worry, I won't "do anything stupid". At least nothing stupider than anything I've done and lived through in Europe, Central America or Benin. Kisses to all.
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