One day left as stagiaires

Well, tomorrow we become volunteers. Since it's been so long since I last wrote, it's hard to decide what to talk about. I've spent the last few weeks working on French (I did very well on the test, Eric did even better of course!) and Adja which for me is so hard. I even had to give a speech in Adja at our host-family party on Wednesday, and Eric and I have to give the same speech tomorrow at the swear-in ceremony. But I think it will go alright, as I managed to get the tones right in my speech to the families!
Eric and I (and everyone else) had a nice trip to Grand Popo last weekend. It's a tourist-resort type place with a beautiful beach and hammocks and a swimming pool. I foolishly forgot to put sunscreen on my legs and am still suffering the consequences. And strangely enough, there is a FINNISH cultural center on the beach in GPP. We found a sign in French, English, and Finnish, a combination unlikely to be found many other places. Eric got to talk to someone in Finnish! Here are some pictures (finally! pictures!) to give you an idea of our nice trip.





Otherwise, things have just been winding down slowly. We had a lot of tests (bike, technical, cross-cultural, etc) and I succeeded in all of them, thankfully. Not that they were hard. So we've had a lot less class than usual and the schedule has been more lenient. I've been relaxing a lot, doing yoga which I found I really like (a nice present someday would be a really good yoga book!) and spending some time with my family and my friends here. My family (about 1/20 of them actually, my papa apparently has 30 kids and many brothers and sisters with many kids...) : The environment group has become really close and it will be hard to leave them. But on the other hand I am so excited to get to post and start cooking for myself and having my own schedule. Here's my group in our swear-in fabric:


Today Eric and I are on a shopping mission. Unfortunately we only get one day to shop in Cotonou so it will be a hurried trip to buy things like knives and cutting boards and brown sugar that we can't buy in Klouekanme. And we are going to get a cell phone! As soon as we get it, we will send out the number. The repos which is usually from 1-4 is really cutting into our shopping time, but that's just something we have to get used to in Benin. And honestly I like repos because I get to take a break myself! Anyway, we had a good lunch today- pizza and pain au chocolat! That was a nice change from the rice/pasta/couscous/pate rotation I get at home.
I think Eric and I are going shopping now. Tonight we are staying in Cotonou with the whole group and then tomorrow we swear-in at the ambassador's house! It's a big deal I guess. After that we have a little party and I'll go back to Eric's house until Saturday, when I'll go home and pack. On Sunday a pre-rented bush taxi (= 20+ year old Peugeot with no roll-down window handles, speedometer doesn't work, doors have to be opened from the outside, etc.) will pick Eric up with all his stuff and then pick me up on the way up to Klouekanme. And then we will be on our own in our house with our mattress, mosquito net, and gas stove (among other things)!
Last thing- Eric and I would LOVE to get letters. We have really, really appreciated all of your packages (I think we have received them all) and we want to tell you that letters are great too, even the most banal silly things you have to write will be entertaining to us. You can write to the same address. And you will get a letter back!
So, until next time, when we are real PCVs finally!

Hi all. Sheena and I are in Cotonou at the Peace Corps office. I got a tiny dog bite on my hand, so I had to get my rabies shots. It barely broke the skin and didn't hurt, but better safe than sorry. I got the bite talking to my friend's host mom when I tried to pet the dog without thinking. Usually if a hand is going near a dog here its to beat it, so I understand why it bit me. One of his host-sisters was surprised when I told her dogs in the US don't usually bite because we don't beat them. I wonder why they even have dogs here - most of them don't bark, so they aren't good for guarding anything. They eat food, they spread disease, and you can't play with them.
On a more fun note, I got my 2nd custom-made suit yesterday. The first has razor blades and stars of David on it, the new one has shrimp. I'll hopefully be able to post pictures soon. The fabric costs about $2 a meter, and at 4m a suit, it's $8 + $4 labor, so $12 for custom made clothing. It's much better wearing this stuff than Western clothes here because this fabric is so much more breathable and easier to wash.
I will be teaching English to 5th graders (the equivalent of US 7th grade I think) at the model school we are running in Lokossa (ie free English classes). I think this will be more fun thant the class I have been teaching the past two weeks which is a year younger.
The biggest difficulties in teaching thus far is that the students can't generalize information and that they answer collectively. An example of this was when I presented them with a simple text. They knew all but maybe 2 words in the text. They couldn't figure out these words from context at all, and when I asked if they understood, they said yes. They didn't have a clue what was going on.
One sad/funny event in class occured when we had them conjugate the French and English verbs for 'to be'. They made a mistake with the French one. They did not in English. Later, an educator was telling us how the distinction between his/her/its is hard for Francophones to learn. That may be true, but if these kids are having trouble conjugating 'to be' in French, I don't think we can call them Francophones nor should we be treating them as such.
Thats about it for now. Thanks to everyone who's sent emails. I really like reading them even though I don't reply. It just takes too long on a dial-up connection shared by 5 computers from 1997.