Greetings ladies and gents!

I am now back from my volunteer visit at site and am feeling pretty good.  I love the Kaolack region and am super happy I am close to the city of Kaolack.  It is so down to earth and African!  It has character and a sweet market so I cannot wait for installation because I get to buy supplies and furnish my hut which is almost (not quite) but almost like furnishing an apartment.  I can make it my own and that is comforting while living on another continent.

So my town is a small town but near the main road so not hard to get to.  There is a dirt road I could follow into the bush to explore which I will be doing pronto.  My family is the coolest family in town and have a huge heard of cows!!  Fresh milk everyday which I could not be happier about.  What you should be more jealous about is that I got to milk a cow the other night after guiding a bunch of baby cows to their mommas.  I had so much fun because the little boys of my family were running all around me and they are adorable.  I rode a donkey cheret to the field which is a small wooden platform on wheels pulled by a donkey.  The donkey had an adolescent and a baby which trotted alongside.  It was a bumpy ride and cow slop was splishing on me the whole time but seriously, I could not believe I was getting a peak of my life for the next couple years.  Dogs and puppies were following and playing with each other, the scenery was gorgeous and he sun was setting.  I am told the cow fields are basically fields of endless watermelon in the rainy season so that is pretty awesome.  Baobab trees and meem trees line the horizon and you can see the surrounding area for miles.  Another cool thing is that there is a small covering in the cow field where someone from my family sleeps every night to watch over the herd of cows from the daunting HYENAS!  I was told you can sometimes hear them at night but it is rare to see them and they do not come around too often.  Well the first night my mind ran away from me.  There were all sorts of animal noises throughout the night and some of them I could identify but some of them I could not.  I heard one that I was like yep those are hyenas.  The next morning I asked and my VV host said no they aren’t around often so they probably weren’t around last night  But then a couple days later my host brother said there were 4 about 100 yards from my hut!  EXHILERATING!

 

So I am now coming back to this post on a word document and it has been a couple weeks since the first half of this post.  I have been extremely busy and never spending two nights in one place.  We were at our host family sites for a while and it went by superfast.  I guess cause we had lots of “Homework”.  E went to the Poste de Sante de Bayakh for a baby weighing and vaccination day.  That was interesting and there were babies EVERYWHERE.  We have had a bunch of writing/essays to write including our readiness to serve assignment.  A BIG DEAL. We also had a quiz about Islam and some journaling to do.  Pretty much busy bees last week.  But it was okay because we went to the BEACH last weekend.  Popenguine.  AWESOME time to say the very least.  We arrived after much anticipation to a wonderful water front mansion!  It was like an MTV house.  Real World Senegal version.  We rushed to choose our beds as we got there and I got a sweet bottom bunk in an upstairs room (didn’t sleep in it that night but that’s another story.  Ended up sleeping in a tent that I was three feet too long for.  Anywho the house was great! Full front porch with gorgeous scenery of nothing but ocean and beautiful flowers.  I can only hope I took enough pictures cause I was so anxious to get down to the beach that I kinda got swept up in the excitement.  We went down to the beach and immediately jumped in the ocean.  We took over the beach which was great.  We swam out pretty darn far cause the current was strong and enjoyed the freezing water.  Then an innocent game of touch football ensued.  Seriously a wonderful day!  Afterwards we climbed on this very large rock down the beach a ways and I scaled a sheet rock wall but totally worth the scrapes and risk cause the view was PHENOMINAL!! Took lots of pictures there.  I’ll put some up next time.  Afterwards we ate a nice beach side lunch at a small French restaurant that ran out of eggs and complained that making half of their drinks on the menu would take too long.  Kinda ridiculous.  But still my vegetable crepe was divine.  Then we went to the Toubab market to buy some wine and treats.  When we came back the fun started! I played DJ and we just chilled on the porch talking and reading magazines.  Then we made sangria. Drank it. Then decided to make a trip for more wine.  So that’s what we did but we had to run so we would make it back in time to climb the rock before sunset.  We ended up making it just in time but then some clouds ruined our fun.  We still chilled on the rock for awhile and I got brave enough to climb down to this teensy ledge over the ocean.  The rest of the night was filled with dancing and group cooking of spaghetti, salad and garlic bread, eating the spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread, more dancing and a whole lot of fun!!  The next day was more hanging out on the beach although I got the sunburn of a life time.  Am currently feeling the effects of that UN fortunately..

Okay I’ll wrap this up cause it seriously is on the long side.  Just got back to the training center from a stay in Bayalh.  We did our fake language assessment and I’m good to go at the level we need to be at for swear in!  YAY!  I’ve been doing much better at speaking with my host family and my neighbors in Bayakh which makes me feel a lot better about swearing in in less than two weeks!  Tomorrow, were having a thank you party for our training host families and my lovely mother had a dress made for me!!  Shes the greatest and I am so pumped to wear it tomorrow.  We also get to go to Dakar on Tuesday so definitely a full schedule in front of me.

Love you all again and more pictures will be coming.. especially of the sansee beach house J

 

Until next time,  Peace!