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!