Mardi Gras!

First of all, I'm sitting here in my lovely echoey hallways sharing my life story of the last week, and I've just noticed that the sun has set but there are no lights. Hence, I have a very cozy setting that makes for an interesting blogging mood. The last week has been kind of the same old same old (In an it was totally bizarre but the same as each week really) with regard to classes. Most of my classes were met and there were apparently strikes because students wanted a "study week" lol, but it didn't affect me because poli sci is a little behind the times and our exams aren't until later. I recently acquired a library card and have now checked out two books, one of them being a collection of tragic plays by a famous French author, haha, I panicked in the moment and grabbed it. We'll see if I read it but I have high hopes of reading more books in French.

Besides classes I have not yet returned to volleyball practice. I'm not sure if I will but I've been running quite a bit lately. While running I've had some lovely experiences involving security guards inviting themselves to my room and a semi-truck blowing out it's tire just as it came alongside me, i fell off the road because of that one. Friday night my roommate Juliette's mother came into town for a conference for the Catholic women of Senegal. She enlisted me to help retrieve her mother from the bus, and when we arrived at the school where many of the women were staying, I found probably 1000 Senegalese wandering around in the dark. It's hard to explain but it was a pretty hilarious sight, especially because Juliette's mom managed to be as far away from us as possible. When we got back to campus Juliette had choir rehearsal so I awkwardly helped her mom settle in/brought her food/ and then tried not to seem too awkward while I got ready for bed. She is a very nice woman and hopefully doesn't think I'm overly crazy.

Saturday I had a "youth group" meeting with the pastor of our church who came from Dakar to visit with us. Considering that the youth of our church is 4 people including two Americans, I wasn't sure that the visit was entirely necessary, but I enjoyed meeting the pastor. After the meeting I got to have hang out with my friend and choir director Noah. At one point he informed me that he likes me because I'm a little crazy...in a good way i hope. Sunday was as usual a nice Church service where I forgot most of the songs. After church Noah forced me to eat lunch with his family because he has realized that i'm not the busiest person in Senegal, and I enjoyed a nice fish sandwich, with the bones still in the fish. Eating here never really gets boring because you never know what you'll find in each bight.

The highlight of this week was Tuesday night, otherwise known as Mardi Gras. I'm not sure if I've talked too much about Catholics here in Senegal, but to me they seem a little more on the religious side than they do in the U.S. For example, for lent my roommate is fasting everyday until the evening. So far it seems to be taking a bit of a toll on her because she sleeps most of the day. But back to Mardi Gras, as the last hoorah before the fasting begins, the Catholic students on campus have a big costume party, and by costume I mean you dress as a member of the opposite sex. It was hilarious seeing how detailed people were in their costumes. Most of the men were wearing dresses, heals, make-up, and wigs, and the girls often times wore seats and stuffed their bellies with blankets. I didn't really dress up because I wasn't sure what was going on, but it was still great just to watch them all dancing and trying to impersonate the opposite gender.

Besides that not too much else is new, I went to my Bible study on Wednesday and had tea with our friend Ousmane. At the moment I'm thinking I might have a parasite. Don't worry though, i'm just experiencing a little bodily discomfort. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Beaten and bruised

I thought that was a nice overly dramatic title of my post continuing from yesterdays post. To clarify, beaten and bruised refers to my arms, which took a bit of a hit the other day at volleyball practice. Last week I decided to check out the volleyball team, which we were told included both guys and girls. Unfortunately, the girls on the team seem to be invisible, so it was a few Americans and several very tall Senegalese men trying to hurt me with volleyballs for two hours. I went to torture, sorry I mean practice, two days in a row last week and decided I would take a few days off and give my bruises time to turn fun colors. Although it sounds like I didn't enjoy the practice, it was actually pretty fun and nice to be active and meeting some new people. I was originally hoping for some kind of team where I could meet some nice girls and keep active, but the teams with girls don't seem to really exist so I think I'll stick with volleyball. Practice itself is held either on an outdoor court next to my village, or in the gym, which is a fairly nice building with lots of space for karate/basketball/volleyball and free weights. The outdoor venue turned out to be a little trickier because of a nearby sewage leak that seemed to be a magnet for runaway volleyballs. Yeah, it's about as gross as it sounds...

Besides volleyball i've been having fun with my choir of two people, although last sunday was a little rough when I forgot how most of the songs went. Plus, I went to Bible study again this week where the boys decided we would follow a pre-planned study about relationships and sexuality, as if my life didn't already encompass enough awkward, but I'm sure it will be very interesting. One of the guys there decided that I'm going to be his new guitar teacher, not really sure how that will work out since I have no idea how to play guitar, but I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to make a friend so I volunteered Elise to teach him (she doesn't know yet, but when the Malaria's gone...) Life with my roommate Juliette is always interesting, she usually has lots to say about really random things. Last night she informed me that she has watched the movies, "I know what you did last summer (1 and 2), "scream" (1-3), and about 50 other horror films i've never heard of. She's definitely a unique character. Recently, she joined the Catholic students choir, which I think she loves because she sings even more than before, which was all the time.

That's a little bit of what I've been up to. Alot of the time I don't discuss is filled with stuff like reading, sitting on benches and people/donkey watching, going to town and mulling around, and just having random experiences. Talk to ya'll soon!

Keepin busy

Salut mes amis!

Sorry it's been a while, i've been trying to keep busy, although that is sometimes more of a psychological state of busy than a physical busy. Classes have been rolling along the last few weeks, with a minor hiccup on monday and tuesday of this week when students went on strike over scholarships. Fortunately, the scholarship problems were quickly resolved and I didn't really miss any classes besides Wolof because my professor planned to be absent on Tuesday anyways. Most of my classes are pretty laid back, where I can write a paper for most of my grade, but one of my classes is turning out to be a real thorn in my side. The class is socio-anthropology of the economy, which is a long title for a class that is basically about the fact that people aren't total selfish participants in the economy but a product of society. I know that doesn't sound too complicated but we turned in paper friday morning that alerted me to the fact that I had no clue as to what is going on in the class. Ok, I might be exaggerating a little because the paper itself was a bit of a fiasco. This is the same class in which I recently gave a presentation on the economic crisis, and we thought the paper wouldn't be too bad since our presentation went well. Unfortunately, one of the Americans with me got malaria about a week ago and on top of that, as we recently realized, some parasitic infection. Consequently, she was really down for the count and couldn't help too much with the paper. Plus, thursday night when were supposed to putting together the various sections of our paper, one of the other Americans a horrible nose bleed and had to go back to her room because she felt faint. Obviously, health wise were kinda in rough shape, but that left one other girl and I to put the entire 10 page paper together, and I enjoyed my first late night/early morning study party in Africa. To top it off, the printer decided to not work and place a strip of white in the middle of our paper on each side. Hence, I'm a little nervous about this class in which I have the exam next week...Oh, and the girl with malaria is doing much better now, practically good as new.

One more point of interest about my classes, in our Wolof class the teacher told us Friday that we were the farthest behind than any of his previous classes = we're the worst at Wolof. I have had several responses to that statement because from an academic standpoint, my grade in the class is fine so it's hard to judge by that. But I do understand what he means because my speaking ability is pretty weak. It's just kind of frustrating because he was voicing one of the thoughts constantly going through my head, "why am I so bad at Wolof/why don't i practice speaking it more often." He is also hitting on deeper issues like how we're finding it challenging to make friends, and my friendships are really coming slowly but surely but comments like that make it hard to keep morale up sometimes.

Enough about that kind of stuff because I've been up to alot of positive things lately. First of all, last weekend we visited a nature reserve about an hour and a half from campus which is home to hundreds of birds. If you know me well, you know that I was lacking enthusiasm for this specific trip because of my irrational fear of birds, but the trip turned out to be great. To be honest, the highlight of the trip for me was the vehicle we took out to the bird park, which was a car rapide that Ousmane hired for us. On the back of the car (more like van) there was a ladder and a ledge where someone usually stands calling out the route of the car and helping passengers on and off the car. Furthermore, because the road to the park was not paved and full of potholes the driver moved at a pace of about 5 miles an hour most of the time, which left me free to climb out on the back and enjoy the ride from a different perspective. I had a bunch of fun hanging off the back of the car, especially when I noticed Ousmane, his wife Aminata, and the driver pointing at me and shaking their heads like I was crazy. The only downside of the outdoor seating was that my entire body was coated with a thick layer of dust, including my contacts. I'll move onto the bird park itself because that's probably more interesting to you guys. The park is a small little river/marsh area with nicely constructed motor boats that take you out on about at 2 hour long tour of the body of water smack dab in the middle of nowhere. As far as the birds are concerned, I only saw about four different species, the majority of them being massive pelicans. I think there were probably a few thousand pelicans in all, which were pretty cool to watch scooping fish out of the water.

The trip to the bird park was pretty fun, and on the way home I was on the lookout for groups of monkeys because of a ridiculous story I heard about when Ariel and Elise previously visited the park. More specifically, during their journey to the park, their taxi driver made a wrong turn and started heading through the desert to Mauritania. Apparently, at one point they saw a group of monkeys running alongside their taxi, which I think is one of the most hilarious images I can think of and I was hoping to see some monkeys myself. As a side note, it's probably good that I didn't see any monkeys because that would have indicated that we were traveling the wrong direction, and because Ariel and Elise's previous trip included them screaming for the driver to stop because they were heading towards men with large guns guarding the border to Mauritania.

Sorry, I'm gonna run off to dinner now but I'll finish tomorrow.

Lekk nga sa xaalis? = are you eating your money

That's another one of those fun little greeting phrases that I don't know how to respond to. First of all, am I eating my money??? Second of all, I think it means are you doing well enough that you can eat well and be happy. Thirdly, I always feel weird when people ask me that, because when I say, "Yep, it's going good," I feel like people are thinking oh we know you rich American. But on the other hand, if I say, "I have no money," which is fairly truthful considering I have no job and am supported by my parents, people are thinking that I'm a liar. I guess it's a lose lose situation, but a good example of my social interaction here on campus where I spend a lot of my time just smiling and pretending I didn't understand the question.

Wow, ok, so that last paragraph just sounded a little emo/like I don't have any friends so let me fill you in on what i've been up to the last few days. At the moment, I'm trying to write a new blog entry, but there's a horde of what appears to be 5-10 year old children running around the room playing drums. They're pretty cute, but a little distracting. Last week I attended a few classes, which is always interesting here because you have to sometimes hover in the vicinity of the professor's office and follow him to the classroom because they often change the location of the class. This really isn't a problem for most of my classes, except for my French class, which really consists of me and two other American girls attending, mostly at random, as many of the classes taught by one professor as possible. A few weeks ago, he gave us a general test to see our level, and now we're attending almost all of his classes to get our credit hours, and then at the end he'll make another test for us. All in all, it's one of the more unorthodox classes I've ever had, and is sometimes more difficult than just taking a specific class. More specifically, last week this professor was gone, and he had another prof filling in for him. Unfortunately, we don't know what this new professor looks like, and he changed the classroom so we spent several hours wandering around campus trying to find our class and later his office.

In my socio-anthropology of the economy class, we gave a presentation on the economic crisis on Thursday during class. I thought the presentation went well, and our professor seemed to think we did well enough, but one of the students asked to borrow our paper and said we should have him edit it next time... I honestly don't think the professor expects us to be perfect, but we'll see. Besides the presentation, my other classes were fairly uneventful. I thought I made an appointment to see one of my professors in his office, but when I went there on Tuesday neither he nor his secretary were there. Fortunately, when I returned on Thursday, the man I made an appointment with was there, and I realized that he was not my professor, which was slightly awkward.

Outside of classes I've been rehearsing with the Church choir = my friend Noah and I. We have rehearsal every Saturday at 4pm. It's really fun rehearsing and getting to know Noah. He's a pretty good singer, and I...am not. At one point he told me he wished he could brush my throat with oil; I'm not really sure what that meant, but he told me it had something to do with the fact that I can't hold a pitch. Sunday during church our choir debuted, but Noah's dad didn't realize that the point of the choir was to lead the hymns and such so he did it himself. That wasn't really a problem last week though because I forgot most of the songs anyways. Besides choir I found a small little Bible study group on campus that meets once a week. We've had two meetings so far, in which we covered the same material because most people didn't show up last week. They seem like a nice group, but a little light on the number of girls. When they asked me if I had any questions the only thing I could think of was, "are there other girls?" and they all laughed and then were kinda like, sometimes.

Saturday morning my roommate Juliette and I watched the movie fight club. For those of you who've seen it, it's kind of an intense/strange movie, but Juliette told me she likes complex and horror films, so I figured she's like it. I'm not really sure what she thought of the movie, but she's been a little strange since...not sure there's a correlation but if I see her beating up people more often than before I'll look into it.

Friday I went to a tailor to get some fun Senegalese clothes made, and a pair of linen pants, so when I go back this week we'll see how I look. Depending on the result I'll post pictures. I was inspired to get the clothes made because some of Juliette's friends kept asking me why I wasn't wearing a booboo on Friday, apparently everyone does. Not sure how I missed that memo. This week has just been kinda rollin by with classes and filling out forms about our classes for Madison. So far the hardest part about being here in Senegal besides missing family and friends has been trying to fit the University in Saint-Louis into an American credit system. I know it'll work out, but it's always a little crazy! Ba benen leen (next time guys)!