Guess who's back down in Cotonou?

Yeah. This lucky girl thought she broke her thumb, so she had to come down here for the THIRD time in two weeks to get x-rays. Monday night I accidentally slammed the heavy metal lid of my lock box down onto my thumb. It immediately became swollen and hurt too much to move, so I called the doctors the next day and they told me to come down to get the x-rays. The clinic where I went to get the x-rays was pretty archaic; the x-ray machine was enormous and looked like some sort of crazy machine from the 1950s. Turns out that nothing was broken or fractured, I just have some crazy bruising going on and it still hurts pretty bad to move it. So obviously, nothing much happened since the last time I posted. Got back to school on Monday morning only to have the director tell us that all the teachers had a week-long training in a city south of here that started in one hour, so everyone left. (I didn't have to go, thank goodness) So all the kids showed up to class on their first day after break for nothing! I still held class, which I'm sure my students were just thrilled about. Though when I showed up on Tuesday morning to try and teach before I headed down for my x-rays, only about 10% of my students were there, so I cancelled class. The kittens are still doing fine. In fact, Belle has decided that it is time for them to become more mobile, so she drags them all around the house, much to their dismay :) She as started dragging them up into my bed at night, and tucking them right up under my chin to sleep!! It is so precious. I am hoping that when I go back tomorrow, they will have started walking normally and exploring on their own a bit more. So, enjoy the pictures and video of them! And quick explanation of other pictures: the jungle-like ones are the view from my walk through the brush every evening when the sun is setting, and the funny one of Michelle and I is a typical Beninese portrait! We realized that we were wearing the same outfit today (meme tissue shirt and jeans), so we did the typical marriage photo where sunglasses are hip and no one is smiling or looking at the camera. It looks ridiculous, but I'm telling you, this is pretty spot on. Cotonou has been fine, lazed around watching the Tudors all day today, and went out for Indian food. Unfortunately, Catherine has decided to leave Benin, so I will be back down here in just over a week to see her off. It's going to be really hard for me when she leaves. Not only was she one of my best friends here, but we were supposed to do our COS trip to Morocco together on the way home this summer. I totally support her decision, though, and think it was the right thing for her to do. I'll sure miss her, though :(