Weekly Update: 3.10.11

• Lou, Sam & I had our first closemate date this Saturday.  We each cooked something (eggplant burgers, peanut butter cookies, salad), and then we hung out and laughed at each other for a whole evening.  We will be doing that more often in the future. : )
• Site Visit #2.  My Peace Corps boss Cyprien came to watch me teach, and I was terrified that the class (5eme, the one with the most discipline problems) would do something terrible.  Fears were unneccessary -- for some reason (maybe because there was a man in the room), they were absolute angels!  We did a really fun lesson (directions -- I pretended to be a zemidjan driver and they had to tell me where to go... while riding on the back of my invisible motorcycle), and Cyprien took me out to lunch afterward.
• Sunday I didn't go to church, citing sickness that was maybe a little exaggerated (my village must think I have the immune system of a newborn bubble boy).  Later that day, Juliette gave me 6 gigantic avocados, and another new neighbor fixed me a big plate of spicy spaghetti with 2 eggs and chicken.  I'd feel guilty, but... free food!
• Spelling bee!  Finally had the long-awaited competition with the help of two other English professors, and I'm thrilled with the outcome.  Both of the winners, Soulemane and Estelle, worked their butts off to win, studying at home and after classes some days.  Estelle was so nervous that she couldn't talk after she won, and Soulemane, even though he's usually pretty cocky, was likewise shaken.  I'm going to prep another post on this soon, but in June I'm taking the two to the national spelling bee in Natitingou (waaay up north), and I have to ask yall for money again.  Sorry!  But know that the two who won absolutely, totally deserved to win.
• We finally had elections!  There were only minor issues on the actual day, such as no one knew where they were supposed to be voting.  If you lived next to a voting center, you were definitely not voting there, though... Beninese logic confuses me.  Anyway, so you voted by putting your thumbprint on a piece of paper, there was no privacy whatsoever, and it was close.  We'll probably have another round of voting within two weeks so that one candidate wins 50% of the vote.
• The largest spider I have ever seen in my life was on my ceiling when I got home from school one day. I didn't notice it til I'd walked under it 2 or 3 times (ughhhh), but when I did notice it I responded in a typical way: I called an 11-year-old to kill it for me.  It took her a bit and she had to chase it around, but once it was dead I checked it out.  Giant, hairy, and with a kind of chestnut-looking circle on its back.  I wanted to know more:
• Me: "What kind of spider is that?  What's it eat?"
• Gerardine: "A person spider." (apparently sees this as a full response, starts walking away)
• Me: "Umm... explain that.  How is it a person?"
• Gerardine: "Oh, it's a person.  When you want to kill someone with gri-gri but aren't strong enough, you turn them into a spider.  Or that's a sorcerer who turned himself into a spider to get revenge on someone -- he'll find them and bite them and then turn back into himself.  Then the bitten person will get very sick and maybe die."
• Me: "But does it eat like mangoes or flies or blood...?"
• Gerardine: "Don't worry, you're a yovo, he won't try to kill you, just someone else who made him angry.  Also, he's dead now."
• Me: "Oh. Thanks."