Pauline

Dioss called me early this morning to see if I had time to meet his infamous (only in my mind) French intern, Pauline. I have to admit that I've been jealous of her and the idea of her since I heard about it and am interested in who she actually is. Dioss, one of his friends, and I met up with Pauline at her "office." She's very French, but very nice. Pauline and Dioss discussed the catalog she's working on for his artist association. This is when I started to like Pauline because she's obviously already frustrated with Senegal and she only landed ten days ago.

She is at a disadvantage. Although she speaks French, obviously, she's not associated with and NGO or university. Her sister is in an agriculture program in Thies and Pauline tagged along and then found Dioss and his artist association through a series of coincidences. Pauline is having trouble getting people to meet with her, take her project seriously, and difficultly in finding the right people to talk to. Shocking. The more she complained the more I smiled to myself. Ten months in I can completely understand her frustrations and revel in the fact that she's more annoyed than I am. She's only here for two months and is legitimately worried that she wont be able to to finish her projects.

Dioss wanted to take Pauline about town to meet people. Before Dioss takes me places I force him to call the person we're supposed to meet because I hate arriving at a deserted location, but Pauline doesn't know this trick. We went to five different homes and saw zero people. At each failed attempted I evilly enjoyed myself more as the frustration showed on Pauline's face. The last place we went was an abandoned basketball court where someone had painted a giant mural that Dioss wanted Pauline to take pictures of. Obviously it was locked and no one had a key. As Pauline, Dioss, and the friend pondered where to go next I climbed a tree, jumped over the wall, and opened the gate from the inside. Yeah, I'm a total badass. Not to bask in all of Pauline's "failures," but I felt great about myself when Dioss suddenly realized that he had to translate his Wolof conversation into French for Pauline and remarked about it out loud. Although it may not seem like it after this post, I do wish Pauline the best because I wish Dioss the best and I think she promised him more than she can deliver and he's going to be disappointed. Hopefully we'll be able to work together in some respect so at that very least I know what's going on when she has to return to school in France with unfinished business in Senegal.

Back at home I watched the USA v. Algeria soccer game. It was awesome. Especially since my family decided that Algeria is in fact in Africa and started to cheer for them against the US. Their rationale? All of the other Africa teams are choking so they're going to take whoever they can get. The US had a lot of scoring opportunities and in my opinion we were robbed of another goal because of a questionable offsides call. We finally scored in extra time and it was awesome. I started screaming and rubbing it in everyone's faces, which my family actually enjoyed because they think I'm ridiculous when I watch sports and I bought them cookies.

OK, I'm going to post this and shower before our power turns off for the night!