...And Im Back!

Yay! I made it to the internet cafe! If possible Im on an even worse computer than last time so please forgive all punctuation and spelling errors! I cant thank everyone enough for all the comments on my blog. It feels amazing to know people are still thinking of me back at home and consider my blog a great source of internet distraction!

Today is my third good day in a row! Im feeling a lot better about everything and Im really starting to mekd with my African family especially my mom as my Wolof improves. Its pretty amazing how much you can learn when emmersed and misserable. Class is still a lot of repetition and grammar in a stuffy fly infested hallway but today we went out to talk to some mango sellers. It was a challenge speaking to people who arent coached to speak slowly and listen to our horrible pronounciation. As we sat on the side of the road with the venders people just descended upon us asking us a million questions and creating chaos. It was fun though and I bought 10 mangos for 1.25 dollars! I gave them to my family for ndoggu or break the fast for Ramadan which is a nice gift for them and for me since I will get to eat some fruit! Yes! I would pay a million dollars for a salad. My diet consists of miscallaneous deep fried items rice and fish. Its incredibly monotonous. I plan on cooking at least dinner for myself when Im at my post.

It is supposed to storm really badly tonight which is not good since I have 0 confidence that my roof is fixed. Mostly because the newest fix only includes a tarp. Oh well. Maybe a little water will wash some of the cockroaches away... but probably not! The longer Im here the more bugs I discover and the nastier my legs look from not being shaved and from the bazillions of bug bites I have. I look pretty sexy every day.

Today was also the first day I wore any type of African dress and my whole village was all about my tradtional African wrap skirt. My mom almost dropped the tea pot and died laughing when I walked out of my room this morning. She and my sisters loved it. Everyone on my walk to school commentde on how beautiful my skirt was. The only problem is that the material which is called wax only softens after several washes so right now its really hard to walk in since it goes all the way down to my ankles. I cant wait to get my African dress tomorrow. Its sure to be the talk of the town!

Everything in Africa is pretty good right now. For the time being my spirts are high and its not too incredibly hot which is a plus. We also have a lot of field trips plqnned to microfinance firms and a neighboring village. Sunday is our first day off since we got here whiwh is really exciting. Now that my adrenaline and sheer horror/ terror of being in Africa has subsided I am exhausted and can not get enough sleep. Its impossible to go to bed early since we dont eat dinner until 10:30 ish. My family is a bunch of night owls and they stay up until all hours of the nightly blasting the radio and the television. So Sunday I plan on sleeping in and going to the market and going to one of the two resaurants in my town of 50k which are both called Fast Food.

I hope everything is great back in the States. Please appreciate the luxury of our everyday lives. I cant describe how hard life is here. It blows me away everday. Eat a salad, take a shower, and sit on the toilet for me! And since Im done writting Ive found the comma. Oh Africa.

Check back on Sunday.

Alyssa

Ps. I have amazing pictures of the mago sellers and some local children. I will post them as soon as I get back to the training center.