Tidbit Hour

Random occurrences during the week:

ICE CREAM! Our contact showed us this restaurant type place that has gelato ice cream. Oh man, so delicious, I’ve never had more satisfying ice cream in my life! Nothing like some chocolate and vanilla ice cream (I know I’m plain and boring haha) to cure the heat!

Janna was making some tea, and she was waiting for the water to boil when we ended up getting really into the movie we were watching...2 hours later...”OH NO THE WATER!” We ran into the kitchen to find the pot, but no water...all the water had evaporated haha! We also had one very sanitary pot that was sizzling with no water in it, oops!

5-5-5-5-5 YAHTZEE! So we have generated a rather intense liking to the game Yahtzee! We get so intense playing it, I’m pretty sure our neighbourhood hears us when we play...there’s a lot of screaming, haha! We definitely have our own Yahtzee names too. Jamie = Havier, Carleigh = Hobble and Janna = Janihnip...don’t ask me where I came up with those, cause I don’t even know.

K, so I really don’t know if there is such thing as nicky nicky nine doors here in Benin, but I really truly believe there’s a huge sign over our doorbell saying “RING ME CONSTANTLY”. Someone is ringing the doorbell for our apartment all the time, people we don’t even know and they just keep going, and going. First of all, it’s kind of annoying to answer the door because our ‘door’ is like our apartment gate. So we have to get out of our apartment and walk downstairs to open this like huge metal door. Secondly, no one really just comes to visit us, they would phone us first, so we never really ever answer the door. When we finally give in after someone ringing it for 10 minutes, it’s always someone for our neighbours, so either they really don’t know whose doorbell is whose, or they like seeing us answer the door or something. I woke up the other day with someone ringing our doorbell constantly at 6am...fun.

We totally forgot about these starbursts we had brought with us and we left them on our shelf since being here in Benin...that was a mistake. We found them melted on the shelf. It was kind of a different experience though, it was like eating sour and sweet pudding...weird.

You know in movies where you see people waking up to the sun rise, with birds melodiously singing away, enjoying a nice cup of coffee...they definitely did not shoot that scene here in Benin haha. Every couple of days I wake up to the very loud and crazy sound of pigs and roosters being slaughtered. I’m also pretty sure it’s always like outside our apartment because it is so incredibly loud that I always wake up thinking they are being killed right in my room! Kind of getting used to it now though, turning into my sound of ‘birds melodiously singing’.

A motorcycle and motorcyclists definitely came sliding and skidding down the road right beside us while we were walking home from practice Wednesday night. The funny thing is that the people right behind them were all honking at them and getting angry at them for crashing and holding up traffic...?

We’ve been warming up to the team here in Benin and have been becoming really good friends with them all. Now instead of being in that awkward foreigner stage, we have been having actual conversations with them, getting to know them, hanging out with them, laughing, and just having a blast, definitely becoming Beninese! My name is Jimmy here though, haha. They spell it like that and call me that. I’ve given up trying to get my real name across haha. So Jimmy it is!