Weekly Update: 5.20.11

• THANK YOU!!!!!!!  K, I know I just wrote another post on this, but... the gratitude keeps coming.  Thanks for your donations to the spelling bee!  You just made two kids' summers, and I promise to document as much of the fun as I can. :)  And yes, I realize that the all caps/bold/underlined/multi-exclamation-pointed headline is excessive.
• Operation Christmas Child.  You know how every December a bajillion churches across America (I have been to many of them) roll out a huge box for Operation Christmas Child?  You take a shoebox, fill it with coloring books, little trucks, dolls, and other toys, paste a label declaring Boy or Girl and an age range, and send it off to Africa?  I'm here to tell you that they actually make it to Africa... in May, but whatever.  Last weekend I went to my couteriere's house as usual, and her two kids had gotten boxes.  They loved the little trucks and were confused by most of the other stuff, so I had an amazing time showing them how to use the other stuff.  Coloring books were SO exciting, the yoyo was hilarious to the parents, and even my 20-year-old friend Pierrette was thrilled with the Etch-a-Sketch.  Good times, and a cause that really does deliver what it says it will.
• DONE!  As of Thursday at 5pm, I officially finished with my official, officialicious school duties.  No more classes to teach or devoirs to oversee.  Still have to finish grading and writing grades in the books (in blue and red ink, or I get in trouble), but I made it -- finished one year!
• Learned This Week:
• My school is built on the site of the old sacred voodoo forest.  When it came time to be built, the elders of the village officially designated another area of town the new voodoo forest... kinda cool.  There's still a fetish or two near to the CEG that the kids are not supposed to go near... actually, one of my girls went near it an ended up with a hugely swollen foot earlier this year.
• Oro, the fetish that comes out in August for three full days, is actually caused by a woman.  During oro season, those of us with voodoo communities (mostly in Oueme/Plateau regions) will leave for a couple of days, because while oro's out, women have to stay in their houses with the lights off and windows and doors closed.  If they go outside, oro will... umm... kill them (more on that later).  No worries, I'll be safe in Cotonou.
• I haaaaaate overseeing 3eme students in devoirs.  They're the oldest kids at our CEG, between 17 and 28ish years old, and they are absolute jerks to me.  I won't be helping them on their national-level devoirs, I guess... Can't help someone who won't listen to me.
• On the 6eme devoir, the students had to write ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd...) in full letters.  Apparently many of my students really believe that 3rd is spelled T-U-R-D.  Also, that the plural of man is women. :)
• Living in the Dark.  My power has been out fairly consistantly for three weeks -- it comes on for 2 hours every day or two... usually... and then is off the rest of the time.  Problem is that when the power's out, the pump for my water doesn't work.  It went off for 4 days last week, and despite the H2O I keep in trash cans in the back of my house, I was bathing in a soup bowl by day 3.
• Exciting New Addition to My Wardrobe!  Email coming about this soon... and pictures to Facebook... but probably shouldn't blog it.  Ask me if you want to know -- we did a southern girls bonding party for Victoria's birthday, and now we're decorated!