- Church Fete Sunday! Ate too many pig organs and almost puked. But I am a champion, and I carried on.
- 1st Devoirs. This week was CEG Daagbé’s first round of devoirs – kind of like school-wide midterms. I didn’t have to teach at all (yesss!), but I did have to oversee several of the tests, which meant glaring at the potential cheaters and threatening zeroes for anyone who talked. Not fun, but a good was to practice my evil teacher death look, and at least I didn’t have to lesson plan.
- Review Session. Before the devoirs, I decided to have a Saturday morning review session for my 6eme kids. I’d heard from other volunteers that no one comes to review sessions, so I invited both classes to the same time slot and bribed them with a point on the next quiz. Saturday morning, 81 out of about 92 kids showed up… I was both completely overwhelmed (the classroom was made for 36) and really excited. They all woke up and walked to school just to study English (or see what the crazy American lady was going to do next). How cool is that?
- Removed Tresses, Lost Hair. I took out my braids and lost a big blob of hair, so I talked to the doc. Apparently it’s a combination of the malaria meds I just changed from, and low levels of protein and vitamins. Random dark leafy greens from the marché: check.
- Cracked My First Coconut. It was fun, delicious, and apparently calcium-rich!
- Started a Gún Dictionary. Another professor, Gabriel, is teaching me Gún (he’s incredibly patient), so I’m putting all of the lessons together to hand down to the next volunteer.
- The Gift of Company. Last week, my friend Jenny’s village offered her an albino baby as a gift “so that she wouldn’t feel so alone being white.” I did not make that up.
- I Am Going to Hell. Don’t want to explain too much here in case more people from village read this than I know about, but basically the story here involves my having to tell many many details about my wedding/marriage to the Father of the Catholic church I go to. I’ll be sending my loving husband a “happy anniversary” card on the 4th of July.
- Sorry, Kitty. Discovered on Monday that I may have accidentally been filling my cat’s litterbox with cement powder for the last month… oops.
- Purposeless Trip to Cotonou. I got all the way to the Niger embassy in Cotonou, then filled out the paperwork for a visa only to discover that I’d forgotten my passport in Daagbé. Again. So I spent the rest of the day doing nothing particularly useful – spent time on Facebook, hung out with Elyse, and went to a surprise Christmas party at the Ambassador’s house. Among the highlights were Christmas-y smells, the possibility of speaking English at a normal speed, and mini pumpkin pies.
- Plans. One more full week of classes, then a half week that’s either classes or a teachers’ formation (no one seems to know), then break! Just found out that one of my other favorite people in our stage is coming, so now I’m even more excited! Yay “winter” break!
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