a few natural bumps in the road never hurt anybody

After about a week of travel and banking, I finally moved in to my house at my post. My completely empty house except for my luggage and me. But on the upside, I live right next to a couple of mountains! I’ve climbed up them a bit to see the whole view and it is wondrous to see so far. Especially now since the landscape is still green, but in a month everything will be a dusty brown. My counterpart that I met with during training was affected to another school district but he was nice enough to come back for a day to introduce me to other school officials. So far everyone has been very friendly to me (maybe even too friendly sometimes). But I am slowly making friends and getting to know the community. As the only white girl in the village, people already know who I am and that I am teaching English at the lycee. It’s a little awkward when they come up to me like we’ve have known each other forever and I have no idea who they are. I spoke with a Catholic Mission here about getting some furniture built and I finally received that a week ago! I have had trouble finding a gas tank for a stovetop so I lived off street food for two weeks. Since my village is pretty small there is only benins (fried dough) and cooked beans. It was like the Fourth of July fireworks in my intestines for a good week. And my bathroom is an outside pit latrine (basically just a hole in the ground) so that has been interesting. I made friends with these two sisters who cooked for me and showed me how to cook meals over a fire. So I can eat real food finally! I’ve already seen some of the difficulties I will face as a female and how my experience will be different from a male volunteer. There are two other volunteers about 10 kilometers away in a bigger town where I can escape to if I need support. Petit a petit.