The First Three Months

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Oh my goodness it has been quite a while since I have written a blog post! Sorry to leave you guys hanging. These past three months have flown by, and even more so this past month. I have spent this past week correcting around 200 exams for my 6eme and 5eme students, and I’m relieved to say that on average 2/3rds to 3/4ths of each class passed. This may seem low to American standards, however according to other volunteers and teachers this is a very normal passing rate. The normal passing rate is getting 10/20, leaving a small percentage of my classes really obtaining an average of between 15-20/20, but hey hopefully as that year goes on that percentage will grow.

These past three months have been what Peace Corps considers to be some of the most important months during our service. These are considered our settling in months where we are expected to stay at post as much as possible in order to build the foundations for lasting relationships within village throughout our service. These months are also to allow room for the transition from city life to village life and also for us to gain a comfortable understanding of our primary project, which as you know for me is teaching English.

Overall school has been going very well, with very little frustrating days that I can remember now thinking back. My weekly schedule consists of teaching class Monday – Thursday from 8:00am to Noon. Monday and Wednesdays I have my 6eme classes (8-10 and 10-12) which in the United states would be considered my 6th graders, and on Tuesday and Thursdays I have the same class breakdown but with my 5eme students, which is equivalent to 7th graders. There are some days where I prefer my 6eme kids to my 5eme kids, but then there are some days where that completely changes. For my 6eme kids, my English class is the first exposure in a formal school setting to the English language so they generally show me a little more respect than my 5eme kids. The lessons are also a lot of fun to plan for 6eme because it’s a lot of vocabulary and I get to be a little silly in class when presenting new lessons. As for my 5eme kids its nice that they have a slightly more advanced knowledge of the English language because then we can do more complicated activities such as reading, writing, and listening. Unfortunately, my 5eme kids think they’re all super cool so I need to be on my toes to keep their attention focused on me and learning English. Again, pros and cons to both grade levels but overall things are going well.

After the holidays I will hopefully be starting my secondary projects like my English and Girls clubs. My ideas and planning for these clubs are still in the preliminary stages, but for my English club I am thinking about teaching a verse or chorus to a song each week. I have some how obtained many Disney songs and movies so I think it would be fun to learn a part of a song and then by the end of the club time be able to watch a clip of a movie where the song is sung. The only negative aspect with this idea is that there may be limited subjects that I could sensitize the students on, and also the songs probably won’t be relevant to their daily lives. If you are reading this and have any suggestions of fun, simple, yet meaningful songs that you think my kids here in Africa would be interested in singing please send your ideas my way. Either way, my surveillant was really excited about the English club idea as he says that the kids here love singing and dancing so this would be a great way for them to retain English vocabulary, yet still enjoy themselves while attending the club. As for the Girls club, my ambitious idea for this group would be to bring in successful working women from the surrounding areas to come and talk about their educational and professional achievements to hopefully be tangible inspiring leaders for my girls. However, this calls for quite a bit of logistical preparation and work, not to mention I would probably need a grant to help pay for the transportation of these women. Overall, I would want this group to be a motivational environment for girls who want to finish school and join the work force. I would probably also include small sensitizing lessons about sexual health or gender development. The Peace Corps has provided me with a manual which I have yet to start digging through for ideas, so once the holidays are over I need to start constructing a agenda for the semester. Besides these groups, me and the volunteer in the city right next to me are going to be creating a local camp for our area for the following summer with the hopes that it will eventually become a sustainable, continuing event in our area as the years pass. We have yet to establish the theme (or any details for that matter) of the camp yet, but it will be open to students from the surrounding area of Ketou such as my village like Kpankou. We will likely focus on topics such as Gender and Development and/or Empowering Girls.

So I hope that gives you a pretty good idea of what’s been going on in my work life so far. At the end of November we had our first In Service Training up in Parakou with all of the other TEFL volunteers, so that was a great workshop with our counterparts and a good boost to get us all (or even me personally) motivated to get some projects in the works. A few weeks after that I was back up in Parakou with a different homologue for the Camp training which I mentioned above, for a weekend. Besides that I have only been down to the workstation twice during these first three months, which is why I have been slightly MIA with this blog thing. As a new years resolution I am going to try and type at least on blog post a month on top of video’s and pictures that I will also be posting. Something else that I would like to start doing is writing at the spur of the moment, for example if something crazy or funny happens at post and I have access to my computer I want to write about it. I feel like I leave out so many culturally interesting events when I wait to write these blog posts until I’m out of post or right before coming down to Cotonou, so in order to keep this more personal for my readers, this is also another resolution that I am going to try and stick to.

Here’s something I will do, however: share cultural frustrations that I face on a daily basis (also, although it is out of context for many of you, this youtube video pretty much sums up what I am about to write about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toz4_vPmmIA)

  1. “Il faut me donner ca
” (You should really give me that) or “Qu’est ce que tu vas amenier moi?” (What are you going to bring me back?) – You are always expected to give what you have/share, or bring something back from where you are visiting.
  2. “You’re getting fat!” yay! L (not yay.)
  3. “Je n’ai pas le monai/money” (I don’t have change!) – no one ever has change in this country and they would rather not sell you something than have to go find change for you (and they likely have the change, but are just hording it).
  4. “Tu ne vas pas me saluter!?” (You’re not going to come and say hi to me??) This is generally fat pretentious men who want you to walk over to them while they’re sitting there drinking their beer to say hi to them like they’re all high and mighty. I usually turn and tell them that instead, if they want to talk to me, they should get up and come and salute (say hi) me, and then I keep walking.
  5. Everything we haggle here is augmented by at least 50% because of the color of our skin. Everything.
  6. « Yovo, yovo, bon soire, ca va bein? Merci ! » (This is what white people are called, all the time)

Im sure there’s many more, but I will leave you with this for now.

Merry Christmas everyone! I miss you and (surprise!) will see you in August 😉

Post Visit, Technical Training, etc – Septembeer 30th

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Things have finally slowed down and “the village pace of life” is starting to feel more and more comfortable every day. I moved into my house a little over a week ago, and even though it is a bit challenging moving into a house with virtually no furniture, it still feels amazing to finally have my own space to call my own. I am writing this next blog post sitting on my patio in my concession as the overcast sky sends a cool breeze through the mango and papaya trees in my yard. My neighbors have hung their rainbow colored tissue on the line that runs the length of the concession, and the children have thankfully given me some peace and quiet while they eat lunch. I am happy. A lot more happier than I would have expected myself to be at this point.

Within the past week, the menusier (carpenter) has installed shelves in my kitchen, latrine area and bedroom along with two new screen doors in the front and the back of my house. Instead of describing my house here, I will do a “cribs addition” tour once I have all of my furniture in a video post. Alicia was nice enough to leave her bed for me when she left, so I have enjoyed sleeping in a comfortable bed with a mosquito net since the first night I arrived. I have spent the past week greeting people within my community, taking long walks to familiarize myself with my village, and mostly playing with the children in my concession. The family that I share the concession with are absolutely wonderful. They have been extremely hospitable and helpful since the moment I arrived from helping me sweep and wash every inch of my house to making me meals and taking me to the MarchĂ©. We have already started a habit where I cook dinner for myself and then share some of it with the family, and in return they give me a little of their food. We then sit out under the stars together by their fire as the children play and the baby falls asleep in my lap.

In an older post I had mentioned that there is a Voodoo fetish that happens in my village about three days out of the year in the fall. Yesterday was that fetish, and all women were forbidden to leave their homes starting at 10pm on Friday night until Sunday morning. As I had already arrived at post one week later than other volunteers due to other fetish days, Peace Corps asked that I stay at post and respect the rules of the fetish and stay within my concession with the other family. There’s really not much else to say about the fetish. From what I heard, it sounded like a bunch of men walking through the street talking through something that sounded like a really loud bazooka. There was also consistent drumming off in the distance throughout the entire time of the fetish, but that is pretty much my entire experience. I spent the day playing with my concession family, organizing my things and watching Titanic (as a side note, I have found this Nigerian radio station which has created this hour long playlist that comes on between the hours of 2pm and 3pm every day playing anything from oldies to a saxophone rendition of “Ave Maria” then some random country song, followed by “My Heart Will Go On” in German, hence my craving to watch the movie).

I should probably back track a little bit as I am skipping over some key things that happened since writing the previous post such as post visit, model school and swearing in as a volunteer.

In the middle of our three months of training every volunteer did a two week post visit to familiarize themselves with their community and to start forming relationships with our homologues and the people that we would be working with. I was welcomed into the home of a man in my community who was the director of the local primary school for 30 years until just recently when he retired. I was given a room in his house in the area where all of the young boys slept. His two wives lived in a separate concession across the path in the village with all of the younger children. His house was lovely and very comfortable with a nice circular pavilion in his yard while his living room had cushioned couches and a TV. Like almost all of the families in my village, he also had a small farm at the house and also large fields outside of town. In the back of the house he grows pineapple and corn along side another garden with various vegetables such as tomatoes and onions. In the front of the concession is where a buvette (bar) is located, which most simply put is just a small roofed room with a few tables and chairs were you can order pop or beer. His wives’ house is quite different with all cement floors and walls and very little furniture. The only minor complaints I have about living with this family are the chickens would begin their morning crowing around 4am right outside my window, then following this around 6am my host dad would start yelling through the house to get the boys up to go to the fields. After this point, at 7am, he would stand outside my window and say “Madame? Are you there? Are you sleeping?” This is not weird for them to do as the Beninese are extremely heavy sleepers so I would do my best to ignore him, but he would keep yelling until I was awake. My other complaint would be the latrine, but I wont go into the gory details.

Throughout my two weeks at post I spent a lot of time with my homologue and fellow coworkers getting to know the people within my village and familiarizing myself with the surrounding villages. Peace Corps gave us a lengthy journal to keep during our stay answering questions that forced us to go out and speak to people such as the carpenters and seamstresses, find our sources of water and visit the local market. When I was not accomplishing these tasks I was spending time with the wives and children watching them cook and practicing Fon. It was a really nice visit to the village leaving me anxious to return permanently.

Once returning from post visit, every sector dove right into technical training, meaning TEFL (teachers such as myself) promptly started model school after a week of preparation. Over the course of two weeks I was given the opportunity to teach 6eme, 5eme, and 4eme at least once, and watch my fellow volunteers teach many times over. The mornings were set in four one-hour blocks were each volunteer was required to teach by themselves while other volunteers observed and took notes. This was incredibly useful as at the end of each morning when model school was done we were able to share the strengths and weaknesses of each class with one another and learn from where one volunteer struggled and one was successful. Although I would have liked for model school to be longer, I’m feeling fairly prepared for the start of school and am looking forward to getting into a routine and building relationships with my students.

On September 14, 2012, 64 (ish?) trainees swore in as Peace Corps volunteers at the house of the Ambassador of the United States in Cotonou. Each sector chose tissue to represent their different groups, but unfortunately RCH (rural health) and TEFL somehow ended up choosing the same tissue out of the hundreds of options that there are at the marches. My host mother and brother in Porto-Novo came down to watch, along with many other current volunteers in PST 24 (I am PST 25). Snacks and beverages followed the ceremony, and by noon everything was wrapped up and people were heading home. Me and a friend dashed out and took zems to a popular “yovo” restaurant and each got ourselves a pizza; it was wonderful. After this, many volunteers including myself headed to a HUGE grocery store called Aervan located right on the ocean. This would be a store similar to a Target or Walmart, but probably twice as big. Basically anything “western” can be found here, however the prices are extremely expensive. I grabbed a few necessary things like a frying pan, cutting board, etc, but then found myself wanting to get out of there just as quickly as I wanted to go in. It was incredibly overwhelming to be in a store like Arevan. They sell everything from make up, to home decorating, to ice cream, and they even have a full deli, large wine section, and a book store attached. It was like someone had transported me back to the United States in the blink of an eye. There are some current volunteers in PST 24 who says they have never been back since their first trip after swear in because of how overwhelming it is, and I can completely relate. Its nice to have something like that available for emergencies, but I don’t see myself wanting to make a trip there every time I’m down visiting the work station.

A place I do see myself visiting during workstation visits is the beach directly behind Arevan! This is where people headed after shopping to meet up with other volunteers who were already there to get a peek at the ocean for a few minutes before we had to head back to Porto-Novo. It was absolutely beautiful with a few thatched roof shelters available with tables and chairs. People were eating, drinking, taking pictures and just enjoying the warm weather and last time being together as a stage for a very long time. By 7:30pm we had all been shipped back to Porto-Novo to finish up any last minute packing before heading to site the next day.

As mentioned earlier, however, I did not head directly to post due to the Fetish going on in my village. Instead I stayed with a TEFL volunteer in stage 24 for about 5 nights. As disappointed as I was that I didn’t get two weeks to settle in before the start of school, this volunteer was extremely helpful with any last minute shopping I had to do. She knew all the correct prices for things like plates and fans so I was very grateful to not be stressing the week prior to swear-in to get all of my shopping done on such a tight schedule.

Here’s a short funny story from one of our shopping excursions: I had made up my mind that it was obligatory that I buy a large plastic basin prior to arriving at post so I can start storing water right away (as I do not have running water). The volunteer I was staying with had one along with many other volunteers, and for those of who do not have running water it makes life a lot easier. We headed into Porto-Novo together (she is posted about 20 minutes outside of the city) to go to the big marche to look for a water basin. After about an hour of collecting prices between various different vendors I finally settled on buying a 200 liter blue plastic basin. For those of you who are like me and can’t really picture what 200 liters is, you can picture me comfortably being ably to fit inside this thing and still have plenty of room above my head to the top. The easy part of buying the basin was now done, but now I needed to get it back to the volunteers house. If I haven’t mentioned this earlier, the only way of getting around Benin is by motorcycle (zem) unless you are traveling long distances, which you can take a taxi car or bus. So my only option was to zem this thing back to the house. I way underestimated how difficult this would be. I ended up balancing the thing on my right thigh holding on to it with both hands at the top as we spend down the road at speeds of 40-50 mph. If that wasn’t difficult enough, it happened to be a windy day, and there were more than a few times where I had no doubt in my mind that the basin was going to be whipped off my lap and go crashing through the busy street. Although my arm and back muscles were in full-on cramps by the time we got home, I successfully got it back to the house without falling off the zem or dropping the basin. This was definitely one of the more difficult and scary things I have done in country thus far.

I have no more to update right now, but check back in a few weeks for an update about post!

Halfway Through Training – July 30th

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A lot has happened over the past 5 days
 post announcements, boombahs, malaria scare, etc.

Post Announcements:

So Friday was the big day, the day that we all feared and looked forward to since the day we arrived in Benin. Post Announcements is the day where we really have a look into whether we are going to enjoy, or dread the next two years. These feeling all generate from the important combination of, “What part of the country will I be in? Will I be in a big town or a little village? How far away will the next volunteer be from me? Will I be near any of the friends I have made during stage? Will I have electricity or running water? Will I have access to fruits and vegetables? Etc” These are the questions that our family and friends have been asking us for the past 1-2 years that we have failed to been able to answer. These are also the same questions which we have dreadfully wanted answered ourselves, and have been thinking about in the back of our minds since the moment we received our country assignment.

I will be living in, *drum roll please,* the Plateau region of Benin in a “village” called Kpankou outside of a city called Ketou near the Nigerian border. I will be replacing a volunteer who is currently there who has decided to extend her service a third year to work down in Cotonou. She was the first volunteer in her village, but from the phone conversation we have had, and from various other pieces of information from her, she seems to really love her “village” and the school she worked in. I am using parenthesis with the word village as her house has electricity, there is a bouvette (bar) across the street, and I also believe there are one or two boutiques in the village as well. Her house is also not made out of sticks and mud as assumptions are made that all Peace Corps volunteers live in homes such as that. There is also another volunteer in the stage ahead of me who is only a 15 minute bike ride away living in the city of Ketou. She is very excited that there will be another volunteer continuing to live at the same post, and she has a lot of projects that she is excited to dive into with me. I feel very lucky to have such an established post, and look forward to my site visit this weekend.

One interesting thing about my region is that every year in the month of August there is some sort of voodoo related event that occurs for two weeks where, for some of the time, women are not allowed outside, and other times women are not allow out during the night. This event will be occurring during my site visit, therefore for a part of the drive up I will need to cover my head with something in the car as I am not allowed to see outside. I know this seems really silly, but Peace Corps takes this event very seriously, because if woman disobey the rules the consequences are as severe as death. It is also sometimes required that PCV’s leave their post as to avoid all possibility of breaking the rules. As far as Peace Corps has informed me, my site visit is still planned, so I am looking forward to learning more about this annual event (and be able to tell you more about it!).

As I had not gotten any traditional Beninese outfits made yet, I made a run to the market with a friend last week on a lunch break and bought some tissue. One that is aqua, lime and yellow with crazy umbrellas all over it, and one that is pink, purple, and light blue with some what of a flowery paisley design on it. I asked for the more feminine pink and purple one to be a very traditional Beninese outfit of a fitted skirt to the ground with a conservative blouse on top. As for the umbrella print, I asked for pencil cropped pants with a matching short sleeved tunic. The tailor came over today to do a last minute fitting of them, and so far they look wonderful! The independence day of Benin is on Thursday, August 1, so I look forward to wearing one of the outfits that day (see videos below for a preview!).

As for my malaria scare: Saturday we had one last language class meeting at my house, and as usual the class ended early around 10am. My host mom mentioned that her and the children would be heading south to Cotonou for the day to visit her parents’ house and that I am invited to come. As I have had fewer opportunities to do family activities than I had hopped so far, and I was feeling perfectly fine, I agreed to join them, and we left around 11:30am to make the hour drive down. The car ride went fine, however I was experiencing a bit of car sickness due to the traffic, which I assumed would pass once we had stopped moving and were out of the car. We arrived in Cotonou, I met most of the family, and after sitting down for a while I started to feel better. I eventually learned that this was not just a small family gathering, but a celebration for the baptism of my host mothers oldest brothers youngest daughter. Therefore as the day moved along, the music got louder, the food seemed to be endless, and more and more people started flowing in. I also started to notice that my energy dropped and my temperature started to gradually rise, however I just assumed it was due to the people in the room and the hot food I was eating. As soon as digestive issues started kicking in, I knew I had a problem. Thankfully my host mom caught on and we were able to make a fairly quick escape. After an hour of my 3 year old host sister screaming the whole way home, we arrived back to Porto Novo and I find that my temperature has risen to 40.1C which is around 104F. I am feeling absolutely miserable at this point with full blown body aches, weakness and chills. I call Peace Corps and my situation seems serious enough where they agreed to send a van out to get me. An hour later, Im back in Cotonou giving stool and blood samples as the doctor informs me that she is convinced I have Malaria. By 8:30pm I’m crawling into bed in a wonderfully air conditioned room still feeling like I’m going to die. Two hours later the doctor wakes me up to inform me it’s not malaria, but instead a bad intestinal infection from something I had ingested. I take a strong antibiotic and attempt to sleep through the night. By morning I am significantly better, but am kept in Cotonou another night, just to make sure that whatever bug I had is on its way out of my system before I head back north. Phew! The End! Lets hope nothing more sever happens for the next two years!

The Beginning of Training – July 25

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The days have started to pick up their pace as we all become used to our surroundings and new lives here in Benin. As slow as the hours seem to go here, looking back on what days have passed is the reassurance to keep going through training.

I currently call Porto Novo my home. If I were to guess, I would say we are about an hour fifteen to an hour and a half north of the ocean on the eastern side of the country near the Nigerian border. Porto-Novo is lively, dirty and colorful, and surprisingly friendly and as the days pass my comfort level grows. Initially I couldn’t help myself from comparing Porto-Novo to Dakar, as that was my only impression of what West Africa is like. There are quite a few similarities, but Benin has started to take on its own definition as I start to better recognize the city and its people.

I live with a catholic family in a neighborhood called Devon. I have one host mother and host dad, and siblings ages 12, 8 and 3, the youngest two being girls. I get along wonderfully with my family, and enjoy being home to spend time with them either playing soccer in the street, practicing Fon or tag with the youngest. I feel that I am living the “Posh Corps” life right now as I have my own private bathroom in my own separate building within our cement walls. I have running water, a shower head and a toilette WITH a toilette seat. It’s quite wonderful. My host mother is also a wonderful cook and promptly feeds me at 7pm every evening as they were instructed that “yovo’s” eat early in the United States.

I love my neighborhood as it is very quiet, with very few neighbors. I live across from “Hotel Juliana House,” a fairly well known, yet secluded hotel, making it easy for my zem driver to find my house, yet still attracting very limited activity from guests. There is a woman who lives at the end of my street who sells all sorts of yummy fried street food such as fried bananas, yams, and other obscure fruits. I am now expected to come and say hi to her everyday, try some of her delicious food, and practice my Fon with her, which I am more than happy to do. There is also another woman one block over who sells benigets with sugar, which is basically fried dough with sugar. They are amazing, however I need to do my best to resist getting those every day as I will get extremely fat if I do. Therefore, they are now my “bad day” food.

I had tried to make a video earlier today talking about training and what I have been doing these past three weeks, but then I had a friend walk by interrupting the video asking me if I was really sitting there talking to myself, which of course, I was. I will try to make another video when I get home tonight to talk briefly about what I have been doing, and also to show you the tissue that I bought at the market today.

In the mean time, I have been spending the majority of my days here at Songhai. Songhai is a very large agricultural center here in Porto-Novo, where a vast variety of fruits and vegetables are grown and then made into natural products such as jam or yogurt. I also know that there are some large pens of turkey’s and perhaps other animals, however we have not been fully informed as to where these animals are located.

Go Go Go

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I believe that I should start this blog post with a disclaimer: I am jet lag, over stimulated, yet still buzzing with excitement. My thoughts for this post are random and unorganized, but I am eager to update you on what has happened here in Benin for the past 48 hours.

Allow me to write in short statements, as explanations would make this post hours long.

Arrived in Cotonou, Benin around 7:30pm on Tuesday, June 26. After collecting our bags, we finally arrived at our temporary housing around 11pm, called St. Johns Eudes – a religious retreat center filled with dormitories. I was lucky enough to have been given my own room with a private bathroom, shower and double bed on the first floor. We were given dinner, some malaria medicine and then headed to bed as we had been traveling for over 20 hours since Philadelphia.

The first night I had the wonderful company of a huge cockroach right near my bed. We were not roommates for long.

The next morning we were at breakfast by 7:15am and in our first class at 8:00am. The rest of the day was spent meeting the Country Director and other trainers, along with other PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers). We covered things such as health, safety and security (received our medical kits), got our Yellow Fever shots, talked about diversity and gender roles/difficulties, and then finally rapped up the day around 6:30pm.

I also found out that I passed my French assessment; therefore I will have the option of learning a local language from the beginning!!

Today I woke up around 5:30am due to the “monsoon” outside my room. Only a few times before had I seen it rain as hard as it was raining. Thankfully, the electricity did not cut out until I was close to being done getting ready. My ipod lead the way to my flashlight and I made it up to the second level to make sure that everyone was OK in the dark. After walking through the downpour, we were on the bus on our way to Peace Corps headquarters for our long day.

Today I had a group meeting with the other volunteers who are qualified to learn a local language. We have the option of continuing on with French (which I could probably use), but I believe it would be more to my benefit to start learning a local language. Our teachers/bosses determine which language we learn, so once we are informed I will let you know.

We also chose our mountain bikes (and helmets) and learned to call a Zemidjan, determine location, negotiate a price, and ride on the back. Zemidjans are motorcycles that are the main form of transportation around all of Benin, therefore we are one of the few Peace Corps volunteers who are allowed to ride one. We are, of course, required to wear a helmet at all times.

Everyone also had an interview with their future sector bosses/trainers. We discussed my experience with teaching, strengths and weaknesses, extracurricular activities, and worries for the job.

Tomorrow we all meet our host families. I am really excited to do so and am also looking forward to moving to the capital city, Porto-Novo, for the next 3 months.

These next 3 months are going to be extremely stressful and overwhelming. They are apparently the busiest months of every PCV’s service, therefore detailed and consistent posts are not likely. I would still like to do video blogs, but I have now come to the realization that I have put my valuables (aka credit card) in a safe already and was told that I will not have access to them until staging is done (3 months), so it may be a while until that happens.

Talk to you soon!

Two Weeks and Change Left!

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As I start to close in on the big day the nerves still have yet to set in. I’m slowly plugging away at my shopping/packing list, while trying not to spend too much time stressing out about what is to come, but instead enjoying spending time with friends and family in good ‘ol GR, MI.

If you were one of the few who tried to follow my blog for Senegal when I studied abroad there, you likely noticed that I started slacking off quickly on the updates and finally just called it quits. In order to avoid having that happen once again, I will be upgrading this blog eventually to have the ability to upload videos, making this what some would call a “vlog.” I have personally found “vlogs” to be more entertaining and engaging. I enjoy being able to really see what emotions people are going through that day, what they’re wearing and how they look, and to also see what environment they’re in. Its also a lot easier and time effective to talk to a camera for a few minutes than to sit down and formulate formal thoughts, therefore I plan on this blog being a hybrid of the two: blog and vlog. Basically, if I’m too lazy to write, but still want to keep you guys updated, I’ll upload a video. I will also be bringing with me a very low quality hand-held video recorder with the hopes of having a few minutes of footage taken every few days or weeks to give you an even better image of where I am and what I’m doing.

I very much appreciate everyone’s support on this huge journey I am about to take, and look forward to bringing you along with me. I look forward to your comments and emails. I also encourage you to “join the mailing list” on the right side bar of this page which will automatically email you when I have uploaded a new post. That way you do not have to check back every few days to see what I am up to.

A quick Peace Corps update: I had my French phone interview to assess my level of French a few days ago. Even though there were a few road bumps, I think overall I did fine. What was this for? If the Peace Corps decides that I am at an intermediate or proficient level of French, I will skip all French training once I am in country and will go directly to learning the local southern language called Fon. I’m hoping to learn this language as it is in the southern part of the country which is closer to the major cities, in a more tropical region, the religion is Catholic and in general, the southern part of the country is more liberal. Having lived in the Islamic country, Senegal, I have absolutely no problem with that religion or the conservatism that comes with it, however I am simply wanting to experience something different. Once I have the results from the conversation I will keep you informed.

Also, once I have a semi-permanent mailing address I will put that information on this blog as well.

Talk to you all soon!