Sunday, September 18, 2005 Language test complete! And with that, stage is pretty much over. 7 days from now at this time, I will be at my house in Parakou... alone. That's bizzare. In any case, I tested in at Advanced-Low, which I'm pretty happy with. I'm feeling much more confident with my communication skills now... although I can't write worth a damn. The one thing about language immersion, is you concentrate so much on learning to communicate, you neglect completely the written aspects. Or at least I did.

Things have been very busy indeed in the last week as one might imagine with the impending language test. Surprisingly to me we didn't go over any verb forms, or redo almost any of the old material. All week during language class we had discussions. We told stories, talked about poverty, and all manner of things that weren't related at all to grammar. It was a nice change of pace, but had me frightened for a little bit.

Yesterday, when we'd all finished we had a very American party. We made hamburgers... sort of. So ground beef doesn't really exist here, and come to think of it I have no idea how a steak turns into ground beef... so I'll have to think about that. Theresa and others went out to the market though and found a guy with a big knife who hacked apart the meat they bought until is sort of resembled ground beef. It worked well... the burgers were the most delicious thing in the world. Okay, I say that about everything I eat that isn't the ordinary, but they were good! Well, with the exception of the fact that bones weren't removed prior to chopping, so every so often one got a little sliver of bone in their burger. The taste more than made up for that small convenience. We also made french fries. Also awesome.

As I wrote before, we did make our trip to Cotonou... and I was not prepared at all for how much perceptions of it have changed. Cotonou rocks! We were there and I kept looking around going "man, everything is so nice here". I was saying this mostly because the roads are mostly paved, there were occasionally sidewalks, and I even saw a traffic light. It was surreal. Oh, and we had shwarma. Not any shwarma though.... GOD'S SHWARMA. Okay, I have no idea how to spell "shwarma", but I trust most of you know I'm talking about meat and veggies wrapped in pita with sauce. Oh man, it was so good. Almost better than the pork in Kandi. Oh man. We're going back to Cotonou on Weds. I think it's clear that I'll be going back there.

What's more, I found Dr. Pepper. Oh yes, real live Dr. Pepper. And what's more, it seems the UK has got it going on... their Dr. Pepper is made with real live sugar. Oh man, I still have a can in my room waiting. I also bought salami and cheddar and made the best sandwich known to man (Theresa can attest to this, as she also partook). And, what's even more exciting to me... Cotonou has parmesean cheese! Real life, off the block type. I was a fool to give Tim my amazing grater.

So, all in all life is good. Scary, but good.

When I get to Parakou I'll be posting the official "wish I had list". Look forward to it! Oh, and call me! I love talking to people from the States!