One more post - I'm almost home!

At last - back in Dakar where I can get consistent internet access and even wireless! I come back to the states on Saturday morning (leave here at 2:45 in the morning, get into JFK around 8 a.m.) and now we have one final week in Dakar to finish writing papers, buy our souvenirs and say goodbye to our families.
The rest of my "stage" - i.e. time in the village was great. The family was really fun and I got to do lots of things with them, despite the fact that the over 100 degree heat every day meant that from 1-5 p.m. each day, no one did anything. It's hard to summarize 6 weeks, but basically my internship wasn't so much "work" intensive - they confuse the idea of researcher, ecotourist, volunteer and intern - so the first two weeks were me going to interview people, then there was about a week of cultural celebrations: a four day wrestling competition, a marriage, a male initiation ceremony and traditional dance evenings. The rest of the time was me working some in an organic garden and doing a little manual labor where they are constructing a biomass facility that will make natural gas from cow dung. The rest of the time when I wasn't working, I hung out with my family and did family chores - learning how to cook, make senegalese cous-cous etc. It was a little frustrating because the region where I was was Sereer - that means an entirely new language apart from Wolof. Wolof and Sereer are sometimes mixed together, which can make it more complicated. But anyways, I picked up a little but not much - it's hard learning a language with no books and no one who can even really describe how to conjugate a verb.
Anyhow there were plenty of fun and funny adventures - riding on a horsecart and having it break while we were on it, turning 21 and being forced to eat two pounds of vermicelli alone in my own honor, playing with the baby goat, having my host mother's brother show up drunk and threaten to burn me (had to be there, it really was kind of funny), eating lots of mangos, as well as rice, bread, cous-cous and fish (almost exclusively).
Anyhow, I will miss Senegal and most specifically my family in Mbam quite a bit. That said, the next few days will be a challenge because my room mate and I have discovered that money was taken from our room here, and so we will have an awkward goodbye period. Anyhow, I look forward to telling my stories to many of you in person soon! All the best. P.S. - again can't get pictures to load, sorry!