First Real Day in Dakar

Hi everyone! I survived the flight in to Dakar with few hitches (surprisingly the trouble I had was in the US and not in Madrid or Dakar). I am writing my first words to everyone back home via the telecentre next door to the apartment that all 10 of us girls are staying in until we get our host families-which will be tomorrow night. You will all have to bear with me as I write as I am on an hour limit and writing with a french keyboard (think of what it was like when you were in 3rd grade learning how to type and you missed the keys all the time...I never realized how much I dont look at the keys anymore as well as the symbols-I still cant figure out where some of them are). Once I get into a routine and settled with my host family the baobab center has internet access so I should be able to get internet more regularly. I'll try to put up the many pictures I have already taken.

I cant really believe I am here, things still seem like a dream. Getting by with my french is not as bad as I thought, although we'll see what happens when I am on my own with the family.

Today we got a mini tour by some of the ladies (about our age maybe a little older) who work at the baobab center around Dakar. Things remind me a little of Mexico if I could compare it to anything-the heat/temperature (we are still in their summer so it is hot and humid even for them...aka like 90-95°), people all over the streets, the level of poverty, etc. The architecture in the area we are in is very similar to the styles of the middle east, think lots of arches and stone/plaster. I saw my first baobab tree! They are all over the city and not as big as the ones you see out on the plains, but still impressive.

So far though, I don't feel as out of place as I thought I would be as a white female. People have been super friendly; firsthand evidence of their hospitality. We start Wolof classes tomorrow which will be good because way more people speak it than outsiders believe. People are also way more impressed with you when you break out the Wolof. They laugh at us "toubabs" or foreigners but you can tell that it pleases them a lot to hear someone try to speak their native tongue. The gals who were our tour guides in the morning came over to our apartment while we ate (it is still Ramadan for them so most of them were fasting and didn't eat, although if you are a woman with your period you don"t have to follow it for the week) and hung out with us until we had to go back to the center. They were an awesome source of random Wolof vocab as well as just fun to ask girly cultural questions. If these ladies are anything like other Senegalese females, they are super open about everything.

The food has been well prepared for us every meal, I feel rather spoiled. Same type of food as what I experienced at my orientation in Madison; cooked root vegetables in some type of spice with rice and lots of baguette! They also do this casserole type thing with peas and beef and a sort of gravy/sauce...just like home. The only thing is that most things are made hot or cooked, which means you sweat even more than usual; hot food on a hot day, definitely very different from what we are used to. Breakfast is like how the French do things; baguette with their version of nutella, or jam, or this awesome swiss spreadable cheese. They gave us bananas for dessert at lunch, oh man I was so pumped. Fruit never tasted so good.

The girls on my program are all really fun. We've bonded like crazy in just these few days. I'm excited to have them around as we all seem pretty ready to be independent and meet Senegalese people, but also come back together to rehash the funny mishaps and discuss the new culture. I forsee more good times to come.

This little synopsis of my day has taken me quite a while to chicken peck out so I will need to cut this short, but I hope you are all doing well back home. To those of you who are going to skype, I'll be working on that as soon as possible; bear with me, time moves much slower and relaxed in these parts of the world.

As the Senegalese say: Jamm ak Jamm!