Au revoir Cotonou

well I'm leaving the capital tomorrow to move in with my host family. I'm super excited, but nervous as hell. My french is non exsistent and so is their english so communicating will prove to be interesting. I have been in the country for about a week now, but honestly I still don't have a whole lot to say. I don't know if this stems from still processing all I'm seeing/doing or from the lack of things we've been doing. Honestly, we've been busy everyday, but nothing really special. Today I've been in the Peace Corps HQ waiting to have meetings with doctors and with the lady who is in charge of the Health sector. The past couple days have been filled with much of the same, language lessons, meetings with doctors and various other trainings. One point of interest was that yesterday I underwent zimmijean training, which is basically the motorbikes that they use to get around the city. Benin volunteers are the only PC volunteers to be allowed to ride these machines. I must say it was a blast. I can understand why Eric loves his bike so much. The only things that takes a little getting use to is that women are not allowed to touch the driver. We may be able to touch their shoulder to get on, but while riding we either keep our hands on our lap or hold on to the rack behind us. I'm not sure when I'm going to get to post again because as I said earlier I'm leaving tomorrow for my host family's home and I have no idea what kind of conditions that is going to be. I know my entries have been pretty boring so far, hopefully things will start to pick up.
until then...

I have arrived!

This is just going to be a very short note to let everyone know that I arrived in Benin last night. Everything went well, luggage and me both made it one piece. It's humid as hell, but not as hot thankfully. I just had my language placement test and am off to get some shots. A longer post to some soon I hope.

Leaving For Africa

I'm leaving today! I can't believe it. We are meeting in the lobby soon and from there heading to the airport. I'm a lot more calm than I was in my last post and I think I'm finally starting to get rid of some the nerves enough to finally become excited. I'm still trying to get to know people, which can be kinda hard, but heck, we have 27 more months to do so. I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to get online again, so be patient with me getting back to you.

i love and will miss you all!

Staging Day 1

Today marks the end of the first day of our staging in Philidelphia. And thankfully everything went of without a hitch. I arrived at the Indy airport (after being greeting in the early morning hours by heavy rain and lightening) early in hopes that they wouldn't complain too much about my huge bags, and i mean huge! I'm carrying a huge big enough to hide a body inside kind of bag, as well as a huge duffle bag and a carry on that weights as much as my big back pack. I know you are all probably thing, gee Jenn pack too much. But I really didn't. I even had my friends weed out some stuff. Sure I brought stuff that i could live without, but i worked hard not to overpack. Suprise suprise though, I was only over the 80lbs weightlimit by like 8 lbs, which totally rocks. I will probably be crippled by the end of these two years after carrying these bags around.

Staging has been pretty much what one would expect. We've done a lot of talking about fears and hopes and just the basic getting to know each other stuff. All the people I've met are supper nice. But I'm still on the search for that one person I click with. There is so much more to say, but I am beat, so I am going to head to bed. More to come!

Is it really worth it?

lets try this again. how sad is it that my first three blogs on this thing are just me trying to figure it out.

I hate technology

i really hope this works!

Testing One...Two...Three

So I sent everyone an invite to this group but I've been hearing that when you click on the link the page does not exists. I have no idea as I am not familiar with google groups, I am typing this now in hopes that you will all receive it, which was the purpose of the group after all. More stuff to come later.