Every volunteer half way through their service must go through a middle of service medical exam. It's not fun. The doctors are wonderful, but when you are use to the efficience of American doctors/nurses it can sometimes get a little rough. Anyway, originally we were asked to make our appointments around the shuttle schedule. The shuttle is car that leave Cotonou and delievers/picks up mail and other goodies and delievers them to one of the three regional peace corps offices set up around the country. I was a good volunteer and did this. Well shortly after doing so, word got out that PC got funding for all of us to go through HIV/AIDS training. The problem was that this was schedule to happen two weeks after my medical exam. Now 2 weeks might not sound like that big of deal, but for me to get home and do so comfortably it takes 2 days and so thus leaving post to get to cotonou takes 2 days as well. The medical exam takes about 3 days. So basically I would have come down, when finished gone home and then like 4 days later turned around and come right back down again. There is no way I wanted to do this. Traveling in this country is too damn slow and uncomfortable. So I tried to reschedule my exam, and I was lucky enough to be able to do so, a bit. I got it pushed back a week to the 6, which exaplains why I am currently here in Cotonou.
So my midservice started on wednesday. It was a pretty routine thing, what health problems are you having yadda yadda yadda. Based on my answers i had to have some blood drawn and put on some medication for ameobas. I also had to have a TB test done, but that is standard for all health volunteers. Don't worry anyone all my tests came back normal, besides having ameobas, i think I'm healthier now than I have been in my life. The problem is now that my medical stuff is done, where am I going to stay because you see I still have like 4-5 days to kill before this HIV/AIDS training. Life is always an adventure here, even when it shouldn't be. I could stay in a hotel but that's a bit expensive especially after several days. Last night I got the doctor to let me spend another night here in the medical unit, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that much longer. I'm hoping so because it allows me tons of time on the internet. I've been able to talk to Patrick for the past three nights which has been fun. I miss being able to talk to people back home. But also the tons of time online is why I wrote this incredibly boring post. It's early, I can't get my stuff out of the room b/c everyone is sleep and since I have time I feel like I should write something. So here you are, one very boring blog. I promise to write something better soon. I will catch you all up on what I've been up to prior to comming down to Cotonou.
So here are some highlights about staying in Cotonou...
1. Hot Showers, I can't tell you how much I miss hot showers and for the first time in months I actually feel clean. We'll see how long that feeling lasts.
2. Internet access, it nice to be able to check email when I want and to do more than just check email, to have the time to surf a bit and look things up is refreshing
3. food, there is so much more food here than at post, i've had delicious pizza while here, as well as hummus and some sort of middle eastern cheesy dish, yummm (this is also a bad thing because you go through money like water whenever you come to visit)
That's it for now, more to come later.
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