Tape Players Still Exist

The men who work at the post office want to meet my mom when she comes to visit. That said, I would like to thank my dad, grandma, and CJ for picking out some very delicious camping style treats for me at the REI in Denver! Good choices! And a special shout out to Shirley who is the letter queen. Thanks for the card!

After my adventure to the post office, I rode my bike to Dioss' (sounds almost like Josh) atelier. I absolutely love going to the studio. Today Dioss was working on an abstract painting and I sat there for 2.5 hours listening to a Boyz 2 Men tape while he painted. I only realized we were listening to a tape when someone got up when the music ended and flipped it! Send me old tapes! Watching Dioss paint was relaxing and wonderful. The atelier itself is beautiful and all the guys (all members of the same family) who work and hang out there are incredibly nice and helpful with my Wolof aka extremely patient. Some of Dioss' art is amazing. His abstract work is really cool. I can't wait to take some pictures. I'm hoping I will have the opportunity Wednesday because I'm going over for lunch before we go to a school where Dioss teaches an art class. He's also going to take me to a meeting for an artisan association he belongs to. They want to start a website so I might help them do that. So, not only was going to the atelier successful in setting up future work, but it's a great place to hang out and really relaxing.

This afternoon I went to Keur Yaay to help with a computer class, which I actually ended up just teaching. The younger girls who have some base knowledge in computers left when the real teacher didn't show up and I was left with some middle aged women who didn't know how to turn on a computer. Attempting to explain left click versus right click in Wolof may actually be impossible. Unfortunately, the women I was left with didn't really speak French and the lesson was a little bit of a disaster. I ended up guiding their hands with mine on the mouse. It was much like a boy hitting on a girl by teaching her to play pool in a seductive manner expect I was trying to teach middle aged Senegalese women to use a mouse and follow the cursor with their eyes and move their hands at the same time. It should be interesting moving forward. I told them to practice so hopefully they will be as diligent as my other students.

The rest of my day was fairly uneventful. My family is pretty subdued today and a lot of people aren't home. I never have any idea why people aren't at home or what they do when they aren't here. Oh well. I had chicken for dinner and that's all that really matters!