Lokossa part 2 (or the real post)

So as I said last post I did in fact manage to get off my butt and type a post up on my laptop for your consumption. Because I'm so lazy this is going to be a rather long post or maybe two rather long posts. First lets talk a bit about Lokossa where I'm living. I live with a host family here and they are very nice to me although almost all of our interactions settle around food and greetings since thats where my french is good and their english is good. I have of course, my own room here with a small table, chair, bed, portable stove, and my footlocker. The house also has a flush toilet and a shower, which is naturally cold, but in reality I have yet to actually want a hot shower, although I'm sure the time will come. My family speaks french and Fon, and I even occasionally use the fon greeting which I don't know how to spell accurately using the american alphabet but I'll try ( a fon gangi a) which is generally responded to with (uhh) most of the time when people are using local languages questions can be responded to with some type of (uhh) sound and a repeat of the phrase (uhh a fon gangi). As you've probably already guessed Lokossa is a slightly larger town, and has a cyber (internet cafe) we pay about a dollar and hour, or 4$ for 5 hours (what a deal)! We go to class everymorning at 8 am, where we have french lessons for 2 hours, then usually techinical lessons on teaching, cross-cultural lessons, health, or bike lessons. Morning classes are 8 - 12:30, then we have lunch and repose until 3-6/7 for the rest of our lessons, now I'm sure your all thinking "wow! they get a three hour lunch break!" but think of it this way as well, some of the stagaires live a half-hour bike ride a way, so they get home eat, have a shower and come back, for me its nice because I'm very central so I only have to cross the street to get to school but it still ends up being a very long day. We recently got our new language levels, I've moved from novice low to novice high which is fantastic, because it gives me hope that at some point I will be able to function in french and that when I move to post in september I won't flounder.
We also were here for the Benin Independence day (august 1) which was quite the experience. We all went to see the parade which was more like a disorganized wander, than a parade, but some of the groups were amazing, dancing and singing down the street, while carrying these HUGE drums on their heads and the person dancing and singing behind them beat out the music on the drum. The parade ended in this monumet/park thing, and the groups that walked in the parade all split up and started dancing and singing in place, some of the stagaires, myself inculded got pulled into one of the circles of dancing and were taught what we are now calling 'the chicken dance' but it was incredibly fun, and very beautiful.
So The other post I'm going to be typing up is all about my post visit, to Copargo, go forth read and comment ;)