Our Beninese Debut

Once we had left the airport, Patrice took us to our apartment, OUR APARTMENT! Driving to our apartment, seeing the surroundings, was very eye opening to see the living conditions of the Beninese people. Some lived in little shacks right on the street, some live in these small complex areas that are fenced off (fenced off as in heavy duty metal gates). The complexes though are only comprised of like 1 or 2 long houses, with several rooms for many families. The apartments, like the one we are living in, is also fenced off for security, and has 3 floors. The landlord lives on the first floor, we along with another family live on the second floor, and the third floor is the roof of the apartment which is really, really cool!

Anyway, back to the apartment. When we arrived, we were all shocked. I’m pretty sure we had prepared ourselves mentally for the worst to dampen the blow, but our apartment is amazing, fully furnished and all, kitchen fully supplied, and big beds (yay for not being cramped in a little bed for 5 months :D). My room has a bathroom in it, and the girls have a bathroom that connects their rooms. It was a huge, HUGE blessing to get this place, we actually got it for less than our original apartment, which was not furnished at all, no beds, no couches, no dishes, no nothing, so God definitely blessed us with this amazing apartment.

When we first arrived, it was night time, and we had no electricity at that point, so we spent our first night under the glow of candles (which did not help the heat! Haha) and flashlights. Once we decided to pack it in for the night, I entered my room to be greeted by our very first visitor, a huge cockroach! It ended up scurrying away somewhere, but this war is not over cockroach, IT’S NOT OVER! Those things are sneaky and definitely worthy opponents haha! Anyway, I just let it be wherever it went because I knew there would be more where that came from, so I might as well get used to it!

It was about 3am (12pm in CND) at that point and I tried going to bed (hahah ya right!) I ended up laying there for 3 hours, desperately trying to fall asleep...nope! Didn’t work. So I ended up playing good ol’ solitaire on my ipod till the sun rose. I wasn’t tired though, mainly because of excitement.

OUR FIRST DAY HAD ARRIVED!