Friday, July 22, 2005 Whew, it's been a day or so since the last post. Strangely enough I'm posting them at the same time. Sorry for the weirdness, but like I said it's really hard to get to a Cyber here. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read the gargantuan post below.

Still here? Okay. Well, things are continuing to go well. Language is slowly progressing, and things in general are just going. Tomorrow evening the crew here is planning a party at our training center (which is the upper floors of a 3 story bank) It should be fun. Today was relatively odd though. Our main activity (besides language class) was a Beninese fashion show. A few volunteers (yours truly inclusive) got to dress up in 4 different outfits each exhibiting the styles of the different regions of Benin. Let me say the clothes here kick ass. The fabric, the cuts, just everything is so bizzare but so cool. Even the prints are bizzare. It seems to be a somewhat national Peace Corps. pass-time to look for bizzare tissue (the name for the fabric the clothes are made of). So far I've seen thumbprints, kitchen sets, american money, stars of david, and well.. you get the picture. Bizzare. Interesting though, evidently it's not difficult to have your own custom fabric made so lots of strange things end up appearing. I hope to get some clothes of my own pretty soon. It's not too expensive in American terms to have clohtes made (pretty much the only way you can get them here). For the fabric it seems to be around $7, and for tailoring around $1. Now that's for a full outfit, for only a westernized shirt it's $4 or so out the door!

Now, I'm sure you're all interested in what it is that I want in care packages... so I'll make a brief list. No particular order for these things, and it's only a wish list...
- Crystal Light, Kool-Aid, or any other drink mixes.
- Macaroni and cheese "goo"
- Pringles, Doritos, Lays... or pretty much any American snack.
- A converter from a 3-prong grounded plug to a 2 prong non-grounded plug (3 prongs female to 2 prongs male)
- Pictures! I didn't bring any but digital, and I'm not too keen about showing off my gadgets...

I think that's about it. All in all things are going well. Unfortunately sending mail home is really expensive here (around $2 per letter!). Right now my pay is about $20/week, so you can imagine how quickly it would dissapear with letters... IN any case, hopefully I'll get back to a cyber soon with more news!