One picture: where I study

Here's the courtyard that we sit in (there is a patio with chairs and tables and a covered top behind the photographer). All of our classes are in this building, which extends a litle bit beyond what you see, but not by much.

A little update: it's the first week of classes here an so far, so good. Tuesday, my environment class was cancelled, which was a bummer, but it meant that we got to go see a museum in the downtown area. A few of us took a taxi from the university area and we were dropped off at the U.S. Embassy, where I asked directions from a guard. Then we had to bargain for a while about which one of us would be his toubab (white) girlfriend. We finally put an end to it, and got to the museum. In the museum there was almost no one. Everything was dusty and a little cracked, with missing paint. Even though the building was grand, the top floor with the “expo” was very, very sparsely covered. The labels didn't give dates, just where the thing was from (in this case, mostly fertility masks and statues), and so we were left to guess. Downstairs, was somewhat more interesting art. However, it still felt very colonial, and the collection was small. In the center of each of the two sides of the downstairs were life-sized dioramas of area tribes. The people seemed to be made out of papier mache painted over. All in all it was pretty sobering.

Then yesterday we had seven hours of class, which was totallly exhausting. All told, each week we'll have about 24 hours of class, usually in 2-3 hour chunks. However, there's still plenty of break time, and since the only thing we have to do is school, I don't think it will be too challenging.

As for a little about home life: we're getting better integrated into our family (finally figured out the whole dishwashing situation, which they wouldn't let us do originally), and they're harassing us less and less about not eating enough (trust me, we eat plenty). Also, unless you think that I'm enjoying a lot of heat and working on my tan, don't. I'm wearing a long sleeved shirt and jeans right now, because it's windy and probably under 70 degrees. It hasn't been very hot at any point since we arrived and all the Senegalese are complaining that it's so cold. However, I have gotten used to never having hot water for showers, and it's nice not having too many mosquitos.
Well if you got to the end of this post, then congratulations. I swear I'll get pictures to post at some point, but these days it just takes me too long. For now, just imagine one to two story houses surrounded by walls, sandy, though usually paved streets, and lots of street vendors selling fruit, nescafe and peanuts.

Okay, this picture took about 15 minutes to upload, so please enjoy. As you can see, it's my bd with my grand mosquito net. I still haven't put the cool pictures of the outdoors and Dakar on my computer, so one or two of those (i.e. what I have patience for), will have to wait.

Quiet Sunday

Nangeen Def! We finally found an internet cafe that was open on a sunday! Even though its a majority muslim country, Sunday is still definitely the day of rest. The past few days have been nice though Im looking forward to starting class tomorrow. We have been at the study center getting more lessons and orientation to our specific program, and starting our Wolof courses. We have also had a fair amount of downtime, which is nice. Yesterday we were taken on a tour of the city, we got to see some of the highlights, even taking a picture at the president's house, à la buckingham palace with the guard. They also took us down to the closest point to the US and to a big lighthouse, where we got a view of as much city as the pollution would allow. It was good to get oriented - we are starting to understand how the geography works, working up to taking the "car rapides," which are basically brightly painted small buses. You stand by them, say where you want to go, they say if they are going there, you jump in the back door and then tap on the roof to get out, or so I hear.
Last night we went out for the first time to a local ,usic place that was really nice, for the birthday of one of our group members. The music was really good, though our host mother was horified that we paid the equivalent of sixty cents too much for the cab home. She is indeed pretty protective, but at the same time she lets us be pretty free and we have our own key and our own door to our room. The other funny contradiction with her is that she seems to love violent and dramatic movies. The tv is on all the time, often on a bad Brazilian soap opera that everybody here watches, or on US movies involving gun fights, alien abductions etc. She also finds some pretty raunchy music videos to be funny too. Our next quest with her will be to be allowed to a) help with dinner and b) be able to eat only as much as makes us full without feeling guilty. They are just being polite when they say to eat eat more (every day, at each meal, even when they arent eating), but its hard not to feel bad when you refuse.
Tomorrow we will start some of our real classes and then we will know our real schedule. I hope everybody is doing well!

Finally!

Hi All!
I finally can get the internet to accept the idea of blogspot.com, and so I'm able to write for five minutes. On my laptop I had something all written up and pictures, but I can't get wireless at the moment, so this will have to be brief. So far things are going well - the flight was smooth, our leaders and the group are all very nice. We have spent this week being oriented - having lectures/discussions of the culture and what to expect from our families, learning about the program and going on field trips. Unfortunately, I missed the latter because I was the first to succumb to the food and climate and got pretty sick. Today I think my appetite is finally completely back to normal, and fortunately my host family was very understanding.
Speaking of my family, we (another American, Vanessa) and I live with an older retired woman and a few of her grandchildren. Three of them live with her, but there are five who are usually there and eat with us a lot. She is catholic and very protective and nice. We seem to watch a lot of dubbed soap operas. Hopefully I'll be able to write more over the weekend, but for now, all the best!

Hello/Goodbye!

Hi All,

In a week I'll head off for Senegal until mid-May. For at least the first two months I'll be living with a host family in Dakar (the capital) and taking classes through the University of Minnesota. Later I'll have an internship somewhere in the country, somehow dealing with the environment and that's about all I know! I'll do my best to post here regularly and include some pictures so that those who want to follow along can. I'll have internet access while in Dakar, but my communication might not be so regular. Even so, I'd love to get some updates from you all, so please continue to e-mail/facebook post while I'm gone!

Thanks!