Tuesday, December 27, 2005 I'm alive. Sorry for the lack of updates, but as with you all: holidays are crazy.

All starting last Thursday where Ly and I went down to Azové to visit the ol' host family. It was good to see them all again, and certainly odd to be able to understand what they were saying. Most of stage was dictated by me having no idea what was going on. Okay, so my entire Peace Corps experience has been that... still the language has certainly ceased to be a large contributing factor.

Friday morning we picked a few up and headed out to Grand Popo. It's funny, I never realized how much I liked the beach until I didn't have the ability to go any time I wanted. Most of my life I've been within miles of the ocean, and now here I'm no less than 7 hours from it. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be Kansas or something.

Grand Popo was all in all awesome. Good food, good times, but not enough time. Saturday morning began the hope of a quick trek back to Parakou. Thankfully we were travelling as 5, so it wasn't a problem to get an entire taxi. Only a little bit of discussion, and we had a cab to ourselves. Problem is that Victory Way changed their celebrations around a bit, so we got into Parakou just as the celebration was ending. Big time bummer. Even so though, all the gifts that arrived in time (up to the last minute possible) were packed off and distributed. Everyone got a gift, and no one was left out. Katherine, our GAD coordinator will be writing a description of the event and a gallery will be coming up later this week. Hope you all rememeber what wrapping paper you used!

Sunday was a day of rest and relaxation. Except I broke a guitar string. That sucked, because so far as I know the nearest replacement set is 7 hours to the south in Cotonou. Suckage. I did get a hint from the guard today that there might be a place in town. We'll see. I did see a guy the other day playing guitar, if I find him again I'll ask him.

In any case, there was the standard tchuke marché run, only this time with the gift of sodabi. I brought a litre and a half of it down south to give away up here. Adja sodabi is regarded as the best in country, so a gift of it is highly regarded. On the way to the marché where it was to be given my zemi ran out of gas, I offered to fill his tank with one of the bottles... but he declined for reasons of safety. You see fueled by sodabi one of the small mopeds on which we are all accostomed to riding would quickly become a crotch rocket.

After all that, pizza and cheese and wine soirée. Delicious.

Monday we went swimming and had a rehash of the most delicious dish yet discovered in country. Pork, Pirron and BLOOD SAUCE. Oh man, it's so good. Pork is barbecued and super good, pirron is pate with ghari mixed in (and ghari is dried mantioc aka. yucca) and blood sauce. Well, I didn't know it was blood sauce until the second time I ate it. It's thick, brown and gravy like. Really tasty. The entire affair for a huge amount of meat, sauce and pate will set you back about $0.80.

Now I'm back to work, and not wanting to be. Good thing New Years is around the corner, Tabaski just after that! More on the great goat feast of Tabaski as I learn more.