Tank, loxo, nopp, bakan, bar, bett, gimen, ginaaw, bir, mbagg, bopp!

This is a really intimidating post to write because I have over a week to cover. Yikes.

We got back on Saturday from Saint Louis and before that Thies and Keur Sadaro. Keur Sadaro was our second village stay and Saint Louis was SIT's way of giving us a quasi-spring break I think.

Keur Sadaro was great and a huge contrast from the one at Kedougou. It's a Wolof village, and them people's delightfully crazy. If we didn't already have Senegalese names they gave them to us, and if we did already have Senegalese names they gave us new ones that they liked better. They were eager to teach us more Wolof, and taught us the Wolof equivalent of "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," which is the title of this here blog post (approximately--Wolof is an oral language, so no one really knows how anything is spelled so I just guessed). There was a lot more going on than in my Kedougou family, and lots of small children grabbing at us and our cameras. Some of us went to school with our host-siblings, which was interesting. Their school system is modeled after the French system, and kind of drives me nuts. Repetition and memorization is the name of the game. There was also a lot of singing and dancing going on in the village and on the last night we had a "sabar" where our families dressed us up in bou-bous, gave some of the girls (including myself) African manicures with henna and showed us mbalaax dancing. We taught them Otis Day's "Shout!" and the Macarena. Hilarious.

We only spent a brief time in Thies (a day pretty much), so I didn't see much of it except the hotel and the market.

Saint Louis was really fun, but it's definitely a touristy town, which got to be irritating at times. We were often pestered by vendors who wanted to charge us ridiculous amounts for cheap souvenirs. The beach was a highlight, and swimming in the ocean was a thrilling novelty for me. EVEN BETTER was when my friend Eric and I rented horses from a hotel on the beach and went riding up and down the beach for an hour. It was magical. I got my horsey fix and had a smile on my face all day. I had also climbed on a horse in the village, but it didn't really count because we didn't really go anywhere. Apparently horses who pull carts all the time don't understand riding cues...weird (kidding Lyle and Colleen, don't freak out). There were lots of fun animals in Keur Sadaro (sorry for the brief backtrack), like baby goats and cows (which we milked...or tried...). Also, the dust and wind were so bad that the sky looked like it was about to storm. Crazy.

We did have to do a small group project while in Saint Louis to make it seem like we were still students and not lame-ass tourists. My group looked at the church that the Frenchies built when they were taking over the place. It was apparently the first Catholic church in West Africa.

I'll work on getting pictures up between writing papers, getting my apartment set up with my friends Eric and Marc, and getting an advisor for my ISP.