Day 3!

Today was the coolest day I've spent here thus far, only a little over 90 degrees! It was quite comfortable compared to the weather since I arrived. It was mostly due to the drop in humidity. There was a terrible thunderstorm last night. When I mean terrible, I mean the trees (aside from the Baobab trees) were blown well over a 45 degree angle. The rain just poured and poured, which also showed where all the holes in the roof are. Not too many, no worries. There was lots of lightning, which lit up the sky, but no thunder that we could hear. My host dad said that he thinks this is the end of the rains, which means the dry season is coming. I think I'll sleep quite comfortably tonight since my room is definitely under 95 degrees, which it has stayed consistently above.

I bought a cell phone today and a converter. The cell phone, of course, did not come with a box or anything but did come with instructions. The converter came wrapped much like a toy with cardboard on one side and plastic on the other. When I opened it up tonight, I realized I didn't know where the trash can was. In fact, there are no trash cans in the house. There is very VERY little trash… in our house. There is plenty of trash strewn through the streets. But here, nothing. There is one small box, against one of the walls in the backyard that has trash in it. It's rarely emptied, and the local stray cats often dine out of it when the members of this household aren't around and shooing them away. Trash like fish guts and blood and other various liquid-type garbage (the fish we eat is caught by my host dad) are tossed/poured into a hole in the cement in the middle of the backyard. By the way, the entire backyard is cement, aside from that one hole, the other larger whole which a huge tree grows out of, and the back corner which has a 4x4 area of sand for the "sheep." Just another way living here is much MUCH different from the States.

Last night and tonight have consisted of two things with my host siblings: games and language lessons. Marianne, the littlest, always wants to play games. At night, when her two brothers closest to her in age are done playing futbol with the other boys on the street, they join us as well. We play cache-cache (hide and seek). It usually begins with us in all the rooms of the house. And ends with us simply hiding in my room… in the same three hiding spots repeatedly (there's nowhere else to hide in the room). The kids always pretend that they don't know where each other are, and just get a kick out of who has moved to which spot. I usually stand repeatedly behind the door of the room with my hand over my eyes. I'm a pro, I know.

My language lessons at the Baobab Center this week is Wolof. My lessons are in French and my textbook is in English. Quite an interesting combination. Today, I was responding to my professor with a sentence in Wolof and absentmindedly slipped a Spanish word in. My professor's eyeballs almost popped out of her head. She couldn't stop laughing for quite some time. At home, the kids love quizzing me on all my Wolof words. They think it's absolutely wonderful that I'm learning that language. Mohammed has become my teacher (he's 10), and Moctar and Marianne always whisper me the answer if I can't think of it immediately. When Mohammed isn't teaching me Wolof, he is pointing out things in the house and telling me the French words for them. Yesterday during the thunderstorm, he pointed out specific parts on his toy Escalade teaching me the appropriate French word for things like "rims." It's quite the education.

In other news, I ate both a hamburger AND a salad today. I was downtown touring with a guide during lunch time, so I was able to eat at one of the "best, most famous" restaurants in Senegal. It's called Ali Baba and serves fast food. Except, the hamburger was a real homemade hamburger patty (nothing like mcdonalds, and huge) and there were french fries crammed between it and the bun. It was absolutely delicious, haha. The salad was before dinner with my host dad. It was the most vegetables I've eaten since arriving. They simply don't eat many here. I've never been so excited to eat cucumbers and tomatoes in my life.

My trip through central Dakar was quite interesting. In a nutshell, since this entry is much too long like the others, the place is like one huge market. Tons (TONS) of people, traffic with no regard for the pedestrian, and stuff everywhere. It's almost like every sidewalk is an outdoor market. They, of course, also have outdoor markets. But almost every street is filled with street vendors packed side to side, and those who don't have a booth set up are wandering around on foot trying to sell you whatever they happened to have in a bag or a box. I didn't find them any more insistent than those in Latin America or even in the States at times, but that could change. I did go in one supermarket, which made me feel the most "at home in the States" as I've felt since arriving. In that supermarket the number of foreigners also outnumbered the locals.