3 months...

Wow, where does the time go? It's pretty incredible that I left home 3 months ago today, because I feel like I just said goodbye at the airport. Time's a funny thing here though -- the days are never-ending, but the weeks fly by. On the Air France flight to Benin we received a Toblerone bar, and I just ate mine last night. I never ate it because everyday I just thought it could wait until tomorrow, but then I realized that all those tomorrows have added up to three months! Not sure if it was out of a sense of accomplishment or stress, but I felt like I'd saved it long enough (and I'm hoping for packages with a replacement of chocolate supplies soon :-) ).

Looking back it's amazing how far I've come since those first five days in Cotonou when they wouldn't let us out of the building. Haggling the price for everything, riding taxi-motos, and even boiling our water seemed so overwhelming. Even though that all comes so easily now, moving to post really reinforces what the real challenges are and will continue to be. Among these are trying to find people genuinely interested in being your friend rather than just marrying you, trying to learn the local language, and just trying to get half an idea about how everything really functions around here. Existing here is not altogether that difficult, but really living here is going to take much longer than I thought. I don't know if that's because Dogbo is a bigger town, or because of the Aja culture that exists here, or maybe a lot of volunteers have the same sort of feelings. Not that I'm discouraged at all, but navigating the culture and society is just such a challenge that really can only be overcome with a lot of time, observation, and patience I think.

I was talking to the veterinarian the other day and found it strangely refreshing. I couldn't pinpoint why but later realized that for the first time I felt like I was talking to an equal. On a daily basis I feel like everyone is either looking up to me or down on me because of the color of my skin -- never is it a person addressing a fellow human being. They all think I'm rich, and atleast 5 men a day ask me if I'm "Madame" or "Mademoiselle" in the hopes that I'll marry them and take them home with me. "Madame," I say, "he's still 'la-bas' (there in my country), but he's coming soon." 1 in 10 people asks for either my money, something out of my purse, my jewelry, or just says "what did you bring me today?" There are people I say hi to who don't respond and many who mock my voice by speaking in an excessively high pitch. On the other hand, I can't wait anywhere more than 5 minutes before someone gives up a chair for me, I'm always given a fork and napkin even if everyone else is eating with their right hand, and I've already been on national television 3 times. So I don't know what it was about the veterinarian that day, something in the way he spoke to me, I guess. I just hope that with time and a better understanding of the local language I can hope to have these regular conversations with more and more people here and not have to constantly be reminded that they think of me as an altogether different type of human being.

The first three months being over, the next three will be filled with one of the biggest challenges of all -- school! Classes start on Monday and I'll be teaching 4 classes of roughly 7th and 8th graders (although ages will vary). Each class will have about 70 students dressed head to toe in khaki, which means I'm going to have lots of fun learning all 280 names and faces in the first few weeks. The upside is that I only teach Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, giving me weekends to relax, prep, and take short trips to big cities and to see friends. Currently I'm extremely nervous, but anxious to get started because I know it'll go just fine once we get rolling. It'll also be nice to have something to do! Of course I haven't started preparing my classes yet, but in traditional Beninese fashion, there's really no rush ;-).

Love you and miss you all...don't forget those letters and packages!!