A short paragraph on what I've been up to:
My work partner’s fiance had a baby. He’s asked me to give him a good American name in addition to the traditional Beninese name he has already given the boy; I started teaching again. This is my second year at the same middle school, but almost all the teachers who were there for my first year are no longer there. But the director and all the students know who I am, so I seem to have some street cred; I’ve been named the homeroom teacher for one of my classes. All this really means is that I have control over their seating assignments and have to help them calculate their overall semester grades, but I had almost all of the kids in the class in my English class year, so I would say it’s the group of students I know best. And vice versa; It’s hot again. Can’t-sleep-at-night hot. I’m backing to contemplating jumping in the well and consuming water at an all-time high rate; I’ve started training for the (half? full?) marathon again. Time will tell on the answer to those questions; I’ve been handing out presents my parents brought me for my students and community since I got back in village. As much as I talk about being sick of people asking me for things, it’s been fun to play Santa Claus; I’m starting to think a lot about what I’ll be doing in 9-10 months. This means I’ve spent a lot of time re-editing blog posts. It’s weird to be back where I was 17 months ago.