So I’m at a cybercafé right now, which means a couple things: (1) the apostrophe is the 4 key, and you have to press the Shift key for a period, so get ready for some extreme typos; (2) the computer is slow and dusty, and the Internet Explorer homepage is http://www.vipvideoporn.com… I highly recommend it.
This blog post is going to be brief, if not for the fact that this past week has been uneventful, then at least because I’m going to the bar in less than 20 minutes.
Friday night was the birthday party of Georgetown’s own Stacey. The fête was a week after her actual birthday, but was nonetheless a welcome break from oily Senegalese dinners. It was the most unique of American get-togethers — the pot luck — so everyone brought a little something. I was planning on getting Coca Light, but to my chagrin a liter bottle cost 1,350 CFA, so I let that dream go. Instead, Molly and I pooled our respective contributions and bought bagfuls of fruits and vegetables: cucumbers, tomatoes, bananas, oranges, and apples. We also bought my new favorite vegetable of Doug fame: the beet, a delicious but sadly underrated tuber. Anyway, we cut all that shit up and mixed the veggies with some lime juice, and the fruit with lait caillé (yogurt). It was delicious. Stacey made pasta with meat sauce and a huge heart-shaped Funfetti cake was also provided. Also delicious.
Saturday we went downtown and ate lunch at the Institut Français, which Lonely Planet described as a “leafy” place. It was indeed leafy and lush and green, and very European (in a good way). The meals were a little pricey, but the food was so good that I didn’t mind paying almost 10 dollars. (I can’t use a dollar sign because this keyboard ain’t got one. Heathens.) It was actually pretty funny: As soon a our waiter, he let us know that they were out of hamburger, which was fine with us since as soon as we sat down and saw the menu, we had all immediately decided to get the Avocado Chicken salad, because avocados are, well, avocados. Funnily enough, the kitchen had run out of avocados, and had replaced them (without our knowledge) with apples and cantaloupe. It was funny in that Senegal-sometimes-makes-you-want-to-kill-something way because the waiter made it a point to say they’d run out of hamburger, but neglected to mentioned that the main ingredient of the salad the SIX of us ordered was, well, not available. And to further enrage us, a group of obviously rich African students came after us and were immediately served hot, steaming, ketchup-and-mustardy — you guessed it — hamburgers. AFRICA 4 LYFE!!
Sunday I slept late, laid around, Skyped with my parents, and did other lazy things.
Today we’re going to Raddho, a human-rights-cum-election-observation organization (they supervised the observation that we were supposed to do but was canceled for not apparent reason). Friday we leave for Sine-Saloum, a river delta in the south of Senegal (but north of the Casamance, where the rebel fighting has “taken a turn for the worse”). In typical Baobab Center fashion, we’re not going to find out exactly when or where we’re going until Thursday — that’s right, the day before. “You gotta be flexible, guys…” That’s their motto/excuse for their incompetence. But I won’t let that get me down because…
Spring Break is in less than a week! I’m extremely excited. I’m a little sad that I’ll be away from the family for two weeks, since that’s an eon in Senegalese time, especially given the fact that when I get back in April I’ll be showing Ben around for a week, then I have a week of rural visits, then a long weekend of political deliberations in the bush. So that doesn’t really leave a lot of time, which is good on one hand because classes will end soon, but bad on the other because I’ll basically never be at home for the last month of my study abroad experience. Oh well, I think the family will survive, especially if I bring them back pastries, candy, and Italian-made shoes.
But, seriously, my shower this morning was unbearably cold. The weather has been really uncharacteristic (lows in the mid-60s!) and everyone, even the Whiteys, are cold. The wind doesn’t help either, so it makes cleaning oneself quite difficult. It’s funny how you start defining levels of cleanliness: there’s the full shower, where you shampoo and use soap and wash your face; and the medium shower, with just shampoo and face wash; and the disgusting non-shower, where you just wash your hair and hope for the best. Hot showers. Six days.
Oh, in other news: I found out that I got GUROP, which is awesome because now I can stay in DC for the summer for sure. And I think most of the tenants of 1691 35th Street will be there as well, which leads me to believe that this will be a summer full of BBQ, beer, and (fingers crossed!) blackouts. The humidity might kill me, but I’d rather die sweating in my single in Georgetown than in my room in Strip Mall USA.
I’ll try to post again before we leave for Sine-Saloum, especially if I call my internship (yes, that’s right, the one I was supposed to start six weeks ago). Oh, inefficiency, you are constant companion.
P.S. Would anyone else sacrifice their first-born for the class schedule to be up?
I expect to be on the short list of people that you notify as soon as the class schedule is posted.
Miss you!
Also, you wrote this post in the future, because it’s 10am on Tuesday here. Crazy.
So does the crazy keyboard account for the grammatical errors as well?
85% of your postings are food-related. thats a fact.