Okay my friends, I did promise I would tell you all about the rest of my holiday season, starting at Christmas and moving on to my birthday. I kind of don’t feel like it, so in the spirit of compromise I’m going to tell you really fast and with little detail, so we can move on to (what I think are) more interesting things. Like how excited I am that a friend of a friend brought a digital version of Catching Fire back from America and I can’t waaaaait to see what good old Katniss has been up to. Killing people and being awesome, I presume.
So Christmas. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I made my way over to the western city of Nattitingou and met up with some friends for a lovely, low-key Christmas. Mostly everyone else went down to Grand Popo, which is a little beach town where people go to get rowdy and ridiculous. While that is something I generally like, it is not how I wanted to spend my Christmas. (Of course, I really wanted to spend my Christmas somewhere that felt cold, or with my family, or in a place were cookies and hot chocolate were widely available. Alas.) So we planed an Alterna-Christmas, and kept it low key, hanging out mostly at the Natti work station, spending most of our time in our pajamas (in the true spirit of Christmas!), and eating everything. Oh my goodness, how well we ate! We ate schwarma! We made a quiche! (QUICHE!) We made delicious potato things! We made vegetarian lasagna! We tried to make mimosas but like a bunch of un-bougie fools we bought red wine instead of white (forget about champagne, not in this country!) so we made sangria instead. It was a glorious, all you can fest. We had multiple kinds of cheese! We had cookies, and muffins, and chocolate! It was fantastic. (Have you noticed yet that all the things I celebrate in this country revolve around food? I celebrated the birth of Jesus by eating all the cheese in Nattitingou.) But, maybe even better than all the food we ate, was the dvd selection available in Natti. First we raided the stores and found Elf, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Then Raili, angel of perfection that she is, brought the party by supplying Christmas Vacation (a Harper family tradition, mind you!) as well A Christmas Story. And then, maybe the best ever, was a dvd that was simply a recording of a fire burning. No seriously, stop rolling your eyes, it was amazing. It crackled, it popped, the logs slowly burned away... it was an incredibly strange kind of glorious. All that on top of trying antelope for the first time. (Which by the way, super tasty. It tasted like roast beef.) There was more Christmas spirit in spirit than in attendance, though we did bring a tiny Christmas tree to the party. And I held up the quiche-baking by insisting that we use the left over crust dough to make a little crust-tree and crust-star (the crust-present fell into the egg-goo and was lost forever). It was lovely, and strange, and surprisingly Christmas-sy, considering that it was like 90 degrees outside.
(I tried to put a picture right here of Raili and I posing with out tiny Christmas tree and all the other Christmassy things we could find but the internet id too slow. I'm afraid you'll have to use your imaginations.)
And then of course there was New Years. For those of you that know me, you know that I don’t love New Years. It is an empty holiday, an excuse for people who don’t drink to go out and get sloppy drunk and ruin everything for everyone. The expectations are always crazy high and the reality is always crazy low. It’s dumb. So I went into this New Years with the same low expectations as usual, surrounded by my lovely closemates. (Have I told you guys about my closemates yet? I have some lovely lovely volunteers posted near me, in the haven of Kalale. There’s Devon, a health volunteer who has a crazy crush on bill Clinton and is applying to grad school after this; Geof, who knows all the words to Moulin Rouge and just ran a marathon yesterday, woot!; Ashley, a TEFL volunteer with a dog named Moonpie and who is one of the funniest people I know; Melissa, who narrates the life of any animal I meet and is half Kiwi; Bethany, who I’ve mentioned before, and with whom I share matching tissue, a secret handshake, and a million of the most ridiculous inside jokes ever; and Sandy, who is not technically Peace Corps but is totally one of the gang, sharing her house and bounty of electricity and generally just being an all around badass.) Anyhoo, so mostly all of the gang gathered, where we played beer pong until the New Year, had a little bit of gin, and let our hair down. (Literally: Sandy and I were Team Hair, the team to beat in the Beer Pong Championship of 2013/4. And by team to beat I mean we got beat every time.) It was good times to be had by all. My favorite moment at the tail end of 2013:
Sandy: (after completing some kind of transaction at a boutique) Thanks, I’ll see you NEXT YEAR, haha.
Beninese Man: No, I will see you tomorrow.
Sandy: But, NEXT YEAR! I will see you in a YEAR! Haha.
Beninese Man: No, I will see you tomorrow.
Sandy: No you get it? Never mind.
Silliness.
And that brings us to the best holiday of all time! Yep, you guessed it, my big, fat, twenty-fifth birthday! Ahh quarter of a century! For those of you that read my last blog post (or will after this because it’s right below this, haha) you will know that January was not the brightest moment of my service. I’m not exactly sure why it wasn’t awesome, maybe it was an end-of-holidays drag, or I felt pressure to get things moving and I was stuck because things move at a glacial pace here, or any of a million other little things. Anyhoo, I was just sitting on the floor a lot, with my feet up on the wall, feeling sorry for myself. They were not my best moments. But because my birthday was approaching, and I love my birthday, I rallied and met my aforementioned amazing postmates in Kalale and we did what we normally did: beer pong and gin and tonics. (I probably sound like an alcoholic but I promise I don’t drink that much, and when I do it’s a nice restorative drink or two!) Also, I think the presents I received are Camille all over: cheese puffs (a Nigerian knock-off of cheetos), an inner-tube for my bike, a stack of books, a bottle of gin, and a personalized romance novel from the ever-amazing Bethany. Yes, a PERSONALIZED ROMANCE NOVEL. Starring Camille and Alfonso. (Alfonso is a fictional inside joke, not a sexy Italian volunteer posted in a neighboring village. Sad face.) It was wonderful. And then a week later I came to the work station, where I was greeted by not one but FOUR absolutely amazing care packages from the glorious folks back in America. (A million thanks to Lexie, and my amazing aunts Nancy and Lisa, and my wonderful Mema, and of course my dad, sender of the most amazing and tuna-filled care package of all time.) And then, another week later, I get another care package from Raili (she of the blog-post switcheroo) which contained a recent US Weekly, so I can catch up on all my Kim and Kanye news. I have the loveliest people. You guys are amazeballs and I love you to the moon and back.
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