While you're here..

 you might as well dance.

For those of you who don't already know this.

I started taking Traditional African Dance classes at the Ouadada Cultural Center in Porto Novo a little over a month ago. Every week I go with a really awesome group of JICA volunteers and we dance our little hearts out. It is easily the number one thing that gets me through the weeks here. Then again (for those of you who don't know) I have been dancing my whole life.. so that really isn't that surprising.

The very first class that I went to was definitely one of those “Who am I and what am I doing here?” moments that we have every so often as Peace Corps Volunteers. Most of the girls don't speak English. So there I was one evening in a dance class (that my friend had invited me to go to) with a group of Japanese volunteers and a very enthusiastic Beninese dance teacher.. in a power outage.. dancing outside.. to live drumming.. with the only common language among the lot of us being very very broken french. It was spectacular to say the least. Of course I had to go back for more.

After only 2 or 3 classes I was informed that we were having a PERFORMANCE in 3 weeks. What?

This week I appeared in my very first West African Spectac.
Costumed up and all.

It was a really great experience.
The performance went great and we had an awesome turnout :)
I have lots of really supportive and just amazing friends here in Benin who came to see me dance.

This was supposed to be a photo post.. but I don't have the internet for that right now..
I will add the pictures to this post as soon as I have the internet capability!
Photos Thanks to Amber P!

Sorry about the half posting thing.
Z