new years au benin!

i hope reading this had a good new years eve. i certainly did! i went to the us ambassador's house. i met her a week or so ago. she's actually a black woman which makes me rather proud. the house was enormous. especially by benin standards it was huge! we had dinner out on the lawn and they had a little dance floor set up. after eating the wonderful food, including black-eyed peas for luck of course!, we counted down to midnight, toasted with champagne, and then the party began! we all headed out to the dance floor, including the ambassador! we danced and danced! there was salsa music (which is incredibly popular here), west african music, and of course american music as well. i must say that i was a little surprised to see the ambassador getting down to 'crazy in love' but it was fun! i also met another fulbrighter here. she actually had her grant renewed so this is her 2nd year here in benin. she's a professor who is orginally from haiti. she's so much fun! i asked her for a ride home and she said sure but she had to stop by another party first. her research is on the catholic imagination or something like that and she wanted to visit the party some priests and nuns that she knew. i was like, why not? i'm open to anything! oh my goodness, i am so so glad that i went! i had imagined solemn nuns and priests conversing amongst themselves, drinking cokes and juice. that's not how it was. they were playing secular dance music: the west african music you hear in clubs and bars, salsa, etc. and they were dancing dancing dancing. i was in a congo line with 2 nuns before me, one behind, and priests and other random ppl interspersed! yannick, the other fulbright, filmed as i danced with one of the priests. the nuns formed little circles and one would dance in the middle. they even started getting low, dancing all low to the ground! neither were they drinking coke and sprite and i thought, they were drinking beer. my preconceived notions were entirely wrong and i had a wonderful, wonderful time hanging out on new years eve with a bunch of nuns and priests! i love the fact that we never know where life will take us! :o)