Christmas time!

Hi Everyone!

December has been a crazy month hasn’t it? I hope you have had a very wonderful Holiday Season, and that you have a wonderful New Year. Things have been good here, and I am happy to say I am looking forward to some calmer weeks in January and February. Life has been busy, but it has been pretty great.

The week leading up to my birthday I had a little trouble getting traction to get work done, since I had just gotten back from In Service Training. By the end of the week I was getting to have some exciting meetings. On Saturday I got to go to a training Session on small animal raising, which Foussena (who wants to raise rabbits) also attended. I felt good about that, even though there was a lot of pretending to understand Bariba for me. Better that Foussena understood it than me!

For my birthday some of the other volunteers (Camille my post mate, Josh, and Suzanne) all came and visited Founougo. That was so exciting. For Josh and Suzanne, it was their first time seeing Founougo, so it was fun to hear their reactions. Founougo is a pretty big town. Camille and I are pretty decided that it’s great. We all ate some good local food, and chatted a lot , and thanks to charged laptops got to watch a little Star Wars. It was a pretty great day.

For Christmas I met a lot of the other volunteers down in the beach town of Grand Popo. I tried to make the whole trip I one day, and man was it a marathon. The trip was full of uncertainty and lots and lots of stops. At one point we blew a tire, and that was actually one of our shortest stops. They had that tire changed out in 10-15 minutes. I kid you not. I felt like that was telling. I really can’t cross the whole country in a day, and that is sad, but I guess that it’s good to learn.

Grand Popo was really nice. Because there were so many of us, I actually rented a camping tent with my friend Megan. I wound up paying $8 staying there for 3 days. We do need to remember I only get paid $6 a day, but that is still impressively cheap. We all swam a little bit, relaxed a lot, and enjoyed the visit.

Now I’m on my way back up North, passing through Parakou for the night. It’s good to get to literally recharge the batteries. There are probably more deep thoughts to share, but it is late here. We will hopefully have some weeks ahead at post for deep contemplation.

Love you guys. Blessings of the season!

With love,

Lauren