also, sarcasm doesn't translate. but it's fine.
so today we began with the typical senegalese breakfast, a baguette with jam or nutella (guess which one i chose WHAT UP)
as my incredibly clever father says the internal time for africans is spelled w-a-i-t, so when breakfast is "served" at 8:30 you can imagine we were still baking in the sun by 9:30 waiting to come inside. how silly of us time oriented americans bahaha.
after breakfast we began our orientation/welcome session. basically we learned that we are here to study and do well in our classes but one of our advisors serigne ndiaye (male, pronounced sur-een) told us what he really means by that is life is not all about hard work but experiencing and living it adventurously (except by yourself at night).s erigne also walks around the classroom in bare feet. hallelujah i am home.
here are some things i learned today:
-i will be getting my calcium through powdered milk...not so bad once you get through the chunks at the bottom.
-the taxis here have cow tails attached to the back. they are supposed to be filled with magical powers for protection (shield charm?)
- if you accept gifts from men...you are no longer single.
- food is still awesome. everyone says we should be getting diarrhea soon but so far my body is totally content (minus the plane incident)
-in Wolof (local language) there is no word for cousin. this is interesting because the only relatives are brother, sister, mama, papa, tata (aunt) and tonton (uncle). everyone is family or kolere which means "shared experience" but also really family. that means neighbors are family and everyone is my brother or sister. it is such a beautiful culture on that reason alone i think.
(the power just went out hehehe)
also today i got to see where i will be living and it is a short bus ride on the car rapide to my neighborhood called Ouakam (wakum). i don't really know anything else about it yet except it seems like an awesome place and the neighborhood squirrels will be goats. we get a stipend every 2 weeks because we (there are a few other CIEE students in Ouakam) live farthest from the school but this guy jason and i were like DUDE give me that extra cash and i'll walk to school for free....but that short bus ride might be a little longer than we originally thought. oh well.
this is a car rapide. as they say, bon voyage!
No comments:
Post a Comment