It Exists!

Emily is amazing and actually found the ephemeral organic food market in Thies last weekend and we visited together for the first time. When I say organic food market I mean 5 stands with women selling organic produce. Emily had introduced herself last week and we went around to all the vendors talking to them about their product, the prices, the visibility of the market within the community, and if they were interested in our help. The vendors sell mostly vegetables, but there was also some jams (which they need to put in smaller jars), honey, and some fish as well. The office is only open on Mondays and Fridays so we are planning to drop in next week. I already have a lot of ideas of how we could potentially help the market. It would be really cool if we could create a partnership with them. Even if we can't work with the market it was still a coup just to find it. It only took two months of asking around to track it down.

I did buy some lettuce, which I devoured when I got home, and some mysterious fruit. We have no idea what it is. We didn't know the word in Wolof and the word they told me in French did not sound French and I'm convinced the woman made it up, but the fruit was really good. It looks like little, green, apricots, but they are smaller and harder kind of like an apple, but not really. Regardless, the fresh produce tasted amazing especially since when I got home I was met with one of my least favorite lunches: fish balls and white rice. Ugh.

The fish balls put me in a worse mood than usual because I took a very long route home so that I could swing by the post office. I had a package. The little pink slips make me happy every time I see them! What does not make me happy is that the Post Office employees leave work 1.5 hours early because they feel like so I can't get my package. Now I have to wait until Monday. At least it gives me something to look forward to.

This afternoon was pretty uneventful except for our now daily power outages. After watching several hours of a French American Idol for children, I locked myself in my room to attempt to salvage some of my sanity. Last night we lost power for at least 4 hours, I went to bed so I don't know when it came back on, but this afternoon we lost it for around 2 hours. I was able to hide out for about an hour and a half before Ahmed burst into my room in a flurry of energy. We looked at Neiman Marcus' Christmas catalog together for about 45 minutes and had an intense discussion about high heels versus boots and we also named all the animals that appeared in the the pictures. It was pretty awesome.

While my day kind of had its ups and downs it definitely ended on a high note. We had an awesome dinner. Meat without fat. I know this may not seem like a big deal, but I chewing fat and then spitting it out on the floor isn't one of my favorite dinner time activities although it is fairly common. The meat was good, we had lots of fries and onions, and... we had more salad! Yeah! When I say salad I mean that I got about 3 leaves of lettuce, but it was still a good meal. Lettuce twice in one day is amazing. I'm currently on my last task of the day - Skyping into my family Channukah party! Presents!