End of week 1

Still no pictures cause I can't seem to figure out how to get the office computer to recognize my camera (stuff I'd usually ask my husband to figure out for me!).  I may get internet at home....In any event, I've survived the first week and not gone into any major culture shock yet.  I'm sleeping better.  The food my cook is making for me is wonderful and I don't have to shop!  The fruits here are particularly good - delicious papaya, mango and pineapple.  My back yard, which was all pretty much dirt, is getting planted with grass by 2 men today - I think I'll just have to water it in the future to keep it from dying out.  The dry season is now - it extends from November through at least February which is why the streets are so dusty.  I learned that the rainy season of 2010 was unusually  persistent and led to flooding here in Lome.  Usually it rains from May through July and then from September through October (the latter is the "small" rainy season) but last year it never really stopped in between.  May be global warming.
I've thought about getting a car - I'd like to travel within the country and to Benin at some point and it sounds easier with your own vehicle - but the roads here are challenging to say the least.  The motorcycle drivers are kind of oblivious and the roads themselves here in Lome are very potholed even on main routes that are paved.  So I'm not rushing in to anything. 
I was able to walk to the house of the American ambassador - anyone who works for the embassy or the Peace Corps can just go and use her pool or tennis court whenever.  I used the pool for laps with no one else around - at least I've found a cool (I don't really like to sweat) way to get some exercise.
Work this week was slow - just a few volunteers in each day for their midservice (1 year) exams and a few minor illnesses.  Many are just returning from their leaves.  Aurelia (the Togolese PCMO) and I will be starting to visit them at their sites in early February which I'm very excited about.  Unfortunately, I'll only be seeing the ones who are fairly close by this year since I'm too new and inexperienced to send out alone up north in Togo but that's something I'll get to do at the end of this year.  This coming week we will be visiting local physicians and hospitals in Lome so I'll have some knowledge of the resources available in Lome.  Aurelia is slowly feeding me the information I need so I don't get overwhelmed.
One really neat thing about Lome (at least I think it's neat) - at dusk huge numbers of bats (I'd guess in the hundreds of thousands) fly from south of the city (I guess near the beaches) to somewhere up north to feed.  I can stand in my backyard and watch them going for 1/2 hour.  They're quite a bit bigger than the bats I've seen in the states.  I'm sure they have plenty of bugs and hopefully mosquitos to eat here.