What happens in the desert...

Hello,

it's been a while, but I hope you guys are staying busy like I am. Well, let's be real, some of it has been self-induced because I decided to read a 4 book series last week when I was aware that I would be taking some final exams this week. Fortunately, I finished my book and appeared to have done well on my exam, win win, win. On the other hand, my roommate is slightly paranoid that I'm trying to kill her because the series I read was the "Twilight" series (I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that) and it's about vampires. Plus, my roommate claims that I scare her all the time because I hide in the shower and then appear when she comes back to our room. Honestly, I don't do this on purpose, but she started a war last week when she snuck up on me and poked the back of my neck when I was trying to open the door. The night after Ariel and I hid in my room when we noticed my roommate was downstairs filling buckets of water, and we nearly scared Juliette to death. That poor girl, she has to live with me, put up with me scaring her, and is now paranoid that, because of my vampire series, I'm plotting to kill her. So, life is pretty much the same as if she was my roommate in the U.S.

Besides the usual avoidance of homework, I've had some fairly adventurous weekends lately. Two weeks ago, all six of the girls from Wisconsin ventured out into the desert. Admittedly, I thought this trip would be kind of roughing it under the stars, but it turns out that the travel agency's idea of roughing it is a tent with a bed, running water, and a toilet...in the desert! haha, it was really a great time, mostly because of the company of some of my closest friends. One of the slightly embarrassing features of our trip was the vehicle that transported us into the desert. Although the truck was well suited for traversing the dunes, it kind of left the passengers hanging outside on safari style benches. Hence, when we drove through the entire town of Saint-Louis staring out of our safari truck at all the people going about their daily lives, we received our fair share of strange looks. Part of me felt kind of ridiculous, as if we were on a people safari, and the other part of me embraced the fact that we were being tourists anyways so why not pretend like we think this is totally normal behavior.

Another interesting form of transportation, although one that seems to go hand in hand with the desert, that I enjoyed was camel back (do people say that? I think it's the brand name of my water bottle, so why not). Riding camels in the desert was really fun and slightly scary. Or maybe I was just nervous because we were one camel short, so I had the good fortune of riding on the camels butt with a makeshift saddle made out of a plastic bag. After a few minutes of paranoia that the camel behind me wanted to eat me, I relaxed enough to enjoy our trek. Although, the parts where the camel was running down hill and I was clinging to Emily was slightly unnerving. After the camel ride I tried to shake out my bow legs by sliding down some dunes, kind of like if I were sliding into second base, which apparently does not work very well in case anyone is interested in trying. All in all, the desert trip was a blast! We stayed in some awesome tents and had a campfire, no smores though, I think I need to introduce those to Senegal. On the way home our truck took a bit of an alternate route home...we drove down the beach along the coast. The drive was pretty cool, and impressive on the driver's part, but I do wonder from an environmental standpoint... Plus, after about two hours of intense ocean air/water spraying across your body you kind of don't think it's quite as cool, but now I can say I've done it.

Last weekend was quite an interesting weekend on campus because it was my village's weekend long party, and on top of that, my Bible study group hosted a basketball tournament. The weekend du village, as we call the party, started friday night with traditional dancing called sabar dancing. From what I've gathered, sabar refers to the drumming that was traditionally used in villages to alert people about significant events/meetings. Along with the drumming is some of the most intense dancing I've ever seen. At first it looks like the women are just kind of flailing their legs because the movements are so fast and not anything like your casual box step, but after a bit I realized just how perfectly timed and rhythmed their movements are. Plus, the dance is cool to watch because there's kind of a flirtation between the drummer and the dancer, and the drummer takes cues from the dancer about how fast to beat and when to stop. I watched a lot of dancing friday night, but I did not participate, that is definitely not my forte. Unfortunately, people love to remind me that the Americans always dance for the Sabar, but I guess I had to break up the tradition.

Saturday the village ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. I only made it to two of the meals because breakfast was served around 1 pm, lunch at 7pm, and dinner at 4am...the Senegalese keep a bit of a later schedule than i do. Plus, during the afternoon Saturday and Sunday I was running around collecting water and chairs for our basketball tournament. I still am not really sure who won the tournament, which is kind of sad, but I'm used to being out of the loop. The definite highlight of the tournament was the grand prize, a ram! Whenever I asked what the winning team will be doing with said ram, people would just say, having a party of course! Poor sheep... Sunday the village went to the beach, I went to church/basketball, and then started to study. I had one exam this week (my professor came in specially for me because the students are on strike again) and I need to complete two more exams before I leave. Coming home is a scary and exciting concept at the moment, and I'm just trying to live in the moment.

hot hot hot cold

Well, the last few weeks have been kind of a blur, mainly because the weather has been so hot it melted my memories. Luckily, the last four days have done a 180 and now it's coldish. When the the weather is hot I spend most of the day trapped him my room, mainly because my roommate convinces me that it's too hot to leave until 4pm haha.

Lately though I've actually been pretty busy with school work, hence the lack of recent postings. It's really nearing in on my return home, and I have the usual mixed emotions about that. I have a feeling that i will have a different perspective on a lot of things, and I will really miss the people that I've gotten to know really well. More of what I've been up to though: last weekend was really crazy. The Catholic students put on basically a weekend long party full of concerts and food. I'm not really sure why they put on the party, but they apparently do so every two years. Luckily, my roommate was once again the head of the party planning committee, and our room turned into a battle field. Thursday while I was reading in my room, six men carrying giant sacs of I'm not really sure what burst into my room and left all this stuff on the floor. A few minutes later my roommate comes running in saying, "why did you let them bring the charcoal in our room?" I suppose her question is legitimate because I don't really care for charcoal to share my bedroom with me, but that was the kind of the interaction that I had with her all weekend. She would organize something crazy, lots of people would show up/never leave, and I would sit there slightly confused.

Friday was actually pretty fun because there was a relatively small group of girls in my room making the Senegalese version of donuts (quite tasty I might add). Hoping that the girls would accept my shallow act of friendship, I bought a big bottle of fanta to share, and they were all very nice to me afterwards. Juliette's friend Joe also kept turning up to "help" but I soon realized that he was really there to learn how to play the clarinet. It made me kind of sad to see that five minutes into the lesson he was practically as good as I am... Friday night I attended what turned out to be the Catholic variety show. The show featured three different choirs, a dance group, rappers, poets, and probably more acts after I left at 2 am. The dance group was led by my friend Jeff, and honestly, they were excellent dancers, but we all felt a little awkward because the girls in the dance group were dressed a little scandalously, even for American standards. Fortunately, there was a group of 5 nuns sitting front and center trying not to act like the girls were doing or wearing anything bizarre. Saturday the crew was back in my room all day making more donuts and other dishes. I kind of avoided the room as much as possible because there was just too much going on, and the people cutting onions were making my eyes burn. The festivities continued through Sunday evening because they put on some strange version of a carnival, which was mostly just everyone dancing and drinking. I find the Catholic culture strange here sometimes because the majority of the population is Muslim and does not drink alcohol.

The weekend before last was also slightly taken over by my roommate because of her choir concert. This was more of an official concert in town featuring the UGB choir and a choir from Dakar. Friday morning at 5am the choir from Dakar arrived and a really sweet Congolese student showed up in our room for the weekend. I spent that entire day at Ranch de bongo, aka the pool, trying to read a book but just getting sunburnt instead. That evening, Emily and I had dinner in town at this wonderful Moroccan restaurant that we frequent on kind of a sadly regular basis since we discovered it. After dinner we headed off to Juliette's awesome concert. The choir from our University was great, but the choir from Dakar was fantastic. Besides filling my time with my musically inclined friends, I've been working and hanging out. All of the girls from my program are finally back on campus together and it's been fun to be a group again. Tomorrow I have my final Wolof class with our oral final exam. Our teacher told us that if we don't get a 100% we can't go home so... Speaking of our Wolof teacher, I forgot to mention another reason why I've been so busy. Pape Laye the Wolof teacher recently completed an english/Wolof dictionary and I was editing it for him. Unfortunately, the editing process involved me italicizing by hand the 140 pages of his dictionary, two weeks later I am finished with that lovely task and slightly sick of the sight of my laptop.

Hopefully all is well back in the U.S., most of my friends are taking finals ha ha ha, just kidding!