Asalaa Maalekum. I arrived in Saint-Louis yesterday around 1 pm safe and sound, and surprisingly with no problems, alxamdulilai! All 11 of us girls (Megan "Alaska" is now an honorary member of our program, she was at the baobab center with us in Dakar and is attending school at UGB too) packed into the sept-place with our gear for the year and took 4 hours to get to Universite Gaston Berger [UGB] (having what will probably be the most comfortable trip to Saint-Louis we will have all year). We arrived on campus dirty, disheveled, and exhausted (most of us had been up late making the most of our last night in Dakar with our families). We got a quick mini-tour of where classes are and then met with Baydallaye (the program director at UGB). As we were completely glazed over as Baydallaye was telling us the program for the next day (today), he caught on immediately, kept things short, and sent us on our way to eat. We had an awesome lunch that had been pre arranged by Baydallaye at a restaurant on campus, chicken with cooked carrots, onions, a salad and french fries...Glorious! Afterwards we got our rooms and had time to unpack/rest. All I wanted was to clean and shower so I did. Mom, you would of been proud, I cleaned my room for 2 1/2 hours before unpacking!
The dorms are in what I think is a pretty sweet set-up. They are arranged into what are called "villages", labeled A-F. Within the villages there are "blocs" or the dorms, 7 total. My building has I think 14 or so rooms, and only two floors (some have 3 or 4). The rooms are all open to the outdoors. Inside, we each have a bed, desk, and closet. The closet to me is HUGE, much roomier than at Wisconsin, or maybe it is just that I have a lot less stuff, either way I feel like I have a ton of space. Each room also has a sink and shower connected to the room. Sounds super ritzy, but there is one downfall, they only turn on the water upstairs from 11pm to 7am... We are given buckets that we can use to fill up with water at the downstairs faucet and then bring back to our rooms. I took my first "sponge" bath yesterday, somehow I mastered it enough to feel totally refreshed and clean. The bathroom/toilet situation was another fun adventure... one has to bring what we Americans call the "bring your own flush", or a little bucket that you fill with water from the little spigot inside the stall and use to flush down the turkish toilet (it is also supposed to be used to wash yourself with, but I think I'm still going to stick with BYOTP). It seemed rather sketchy my first time, but already I feel like I am used to using one now. This whole time my roommate hadn't arrived yet so I had the place to myself, something I'm still a little grateful for. Surprisingly, I definitely was having some homesick twinges; with having to say goodbye to my host family and just having to deal with another new environment I was feeling kind of overwhelmed.
Since arriving, us girls have started to create analogies for everything here. For instance, campus reminds us of camp. Lot of sand, everything really mellow and somewhat planned, but also a lot of free time. Walking into the "resto" you are completely reminded of camp mess halls, food included. Kind of funny analogy that Jill made yesterday was that "we are the weird kids, whose only friends are the other weird kids". Being the conspicuous white kids who just arrived we all feel a little estranged but I know it will just take a little time. Other than the camp comparison, things feel strangely similar to freshman year; new roommate, need to find new friends, don't know where anything is on campus, general ignorance of what is going on. Today things have already started to come together, I recognize places and where to get here or there, etc.
Today all we did was meet with Baydallaye at noon where we also met our Islam lecturer and Wolof prof. We figured out when/where we were going to start lessons and then with Baydallaye discussed our group tour of downtown St.Louis tomorrow. In between breakfast and meeting with Baydallaye I was hanging out in my room when I heard some girls talking outside by my door. I wasn't really doing anything so I decided to bite the bullet and go out and introduce myself. It went over really well. Two of the girls were my neighbors and the third was a friend of theirs who lived in one of the other blocs. All of them were really nice and friendly to me, which was very encouraging since some of the girls who had met their roommates already said they hadn't been that welcoming. They told me that my roommate is from Mauritania and in the math department. They didn't know when she would be arriving so I'm roommateless for the moment. Kind of exciting to have a roommate from someplace other than Senegal!
It's Natalie's birthday today so we are going to try and do something fun tonight, like have a mini party for her. Kind of hard to plan things when we don't know the area, but hopefully we'll be able to make it a decent celebration.
Later!
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