Islands in the Sun

It's been difficult to post the past couple days because the power keeps going out. But here it is--a jam-packed blog post.

Would it be confusing if I went out of chronological order? Because I really want to talk about Saturday. You're not writing this so I'm going do that. Hold on to your hats.

SATURDAY WAS ONE OF THE BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE. Serious. My friends Calla and Paige and I went to Ile de la Madeleine (Trans: Madeleine Island), which is protected by the national park system and ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL. You take a boat from an off the beaten trail national park office on the beach in Dakar and get dropped off with a guide. The island is made up of volcanic rock and has wicked cool rock formations. There's lots of birds and fishies in the water because no one's allowed to kill them (even though people still do...arg). There are baobab trees all over the place. The best part was the natural little pool where we could swim without being sucked into the washing machine ocean on the other side of the rocks. That was my first time swimming in the ocean. I felt like I was being baptised. We also climbed up rocks and the view was awesome. AND...I saw a PUFFER FISH! So cool. Our guide showed us around the island when we first got there and then gave us the rest of the day to swim and do whatever. We were there for about five hours. I'm in the process of posting photos from that day (My Photos Part III: The Islands) and from Friday when we went to Goree Island, which I will talk about now....

Goree Island--take off point for the slave trade and super tourist trap. Gorgeous but also super depressing and frustrating. There's a slave house where they kept all the slaves before sending them through the "Door of No Return" onto ships. I felt nauseous the whole time we were there. It's really a beautiful place, but it's also hard to enjoy when there's vendors approaching you constantly trying to get you to buy things because you're white and look like a tourist.

Schoolwork is definitely picking up. I handed in a paper about the village stay yesterday (big pain in the rear), I have a project due next week, and a proposal for my giant project due the week after that. Mix in some some French and Wolof homework and bake at 100 degrees and out pops stress-o-rific me. Luckily I've almost nailed down a topic for my big ISP (Independent Study Project) that we spend the last month working on. I think I will research and writing about ethics in business education. Are business students being taught ethics in business schools? Do they need to be? It'll be great. I hope. We'll see how it goes. There are other topic possibilities in the wings if need be.

I've now graduated from taking the big bus to school to taking the car rapides, which are junky mini-buses that cost even less and are brightly painted and kinda insane. I think the Senegalese are impressed when us toubab girls are brave enough to take them.

This week we're taking more music classes and since the kora class were filled up I'm taking more djembe class. Fine with me. Maybe I'll get good at it and be a djembe-playing fool when I get home!