Bonne Année/Happy New Year

We are still here, still alive, and still healthy. The past month has been a whirlwind of meeting villagers, trying out our French, ants, monkeys, birds, and bucket baths. Luckily, the first two weeks were quiet and allowed Matt and I to settle in to village life. We had plenty of time to read, write, bake (see statics below), bird watch, and play cribbage (note to my dad - "the hands even out"). Our neighbor, Lilliann, had a baby on January 4th whom she named Sarah after me, I was extremely honored and touched. Matt is called "patron" by the villagers, to his chagrin and my amusement. In contrast, the past week and a half has been packed full of introductions, meetings, travel, and well. . . work.

We have had numerous visitors come by our house, some are the quite type and just sit there looking at us, others bring their babies and are not shy about whipping out a breast and nursing on the spot (this never fails to embarrass Matt). New Year's day brought neighbors and friends bearing beautiful bouquets of leaves and flowers for us, a tradition we love already. In general the learning curve for etiquette and village life has been steep. We now eat shrimp with the shells on, don't hesitate to drink palm wine even when ants are found floating in it, and pop tums pre-emptively.

Thursday night Matt and I both woke up to noises coming from the kitchen. "Is someone in the house?" I asked sleepily. Matt answered that he didn't think so and we went back to sleep, end of story almost. The next morning Matt discovered a rooster, alive, in the cupboard below our kitchen sink. Our house guest had been spared the fate of the other two birds, whom we had eaten for dinner, it was a special occasion as the director of the project and other staff were visiting (note - Matt and I had no part in the purchasing, killing, of preparing the roosters). While eating breakfast the next morning the director commanded us to "free the cock." So, the "cock" was freed and spent the rest of the day wondering around our open yard in complete bliss.


note - for the non-French speakers le cock is rooster in French, the quote was however, spoken exactly as I have written it above.


Items we have baked thus far:

3+ times

banana bread (5 to be precise)


2 times

upsidedown cake, tortillas, pancakes

1 time

brownies, gingerbread, cinnamon rolls,
biscuits, buttercake, bagels



We have been missing snow, food, friends, and family, but we are happy to be here and look forward to hearing from all of you!


-S