Elizabeth's Birthday!

Today was supposed to be the day when I got back into the swing of things in Thies. Things never go according to plan. My top priorities were seeing Dioss and his mom, Madame Ly, to talk about the Artisan Expo and to check in on their progress. Neither of them answered their phones which makes it extremely difficult to check in. Dioss may be avoiding me since I told him that his mom and sister were kicking his ass at accounting, but school also started today and he usually teaches an art class on Monday's so I'm going to give him a pass. With my work on my big project impossible today, I headed out to do some errands.

First stop was the photo printing place to get some more pictures of the girls camp. There I received the worst pick-up line I've experienced in 14 months in Senegal. And I quote: "You are a beautiful child. We should hang out sometime." I don't think I need to explain how this was incredibly creepy on multiple levels. The best part was that we were packed into the photo place almost shoulder to shoulder and this guy was in my age range. I attempted to ignore him and when that didn't work I attempted to worm my way out of the situation nicely and when that didn't work I resorted to calling him fat, ugly, and poor in front of the twenty other men in the shop. That finally worked. Pictures in hand I headed off to the post office!

I didnt' know it, but it was apparently "social security" check day so there were literally hundreds of older men waiting at the post office for their checks to arrive. So many men in fact that a tent had been erected outside so the spillover people didn't have to sit in the sun. This meant sheer and utter insanity inside the post office, which made mailing my letters extremely difficult. It also meant that after elbowing old men to keep my place in line and to prop myself up against the counter so someone would finally see me I was drenched in sweat and looked like a wild woman. Luckily, the power was actually working so when I discovered that I had TWO packages waiting for me in the other room I spent a blissful hour to talking to my friends and getting my packages! This was after I ran into Emily, another volunteer in from down south, and the Peace Corps secretary all picking up mail at the post office!

SHOUT OUTS!!!

Thank you to Ma for the early, but still great Halloween package. For some reason Senegalese people really love Halloween and think it's a really important holiday in the US so I'm excited to give out the candy to my family and especially Ahmed on Halloween.

Shout out to my parents for another amazing package! My mom sent along a baby outfit for little Abdou complete with a box, tissue paper, and wrapping paper. It caused house wide chaos to say the least. I brought out the present after lunch when everyone was around and gave it to Jeenaba who was so overcome she didn't know what to do and gave the package to Mami to open. It was actually opened by Khady who grabbed it from Mami's hands, but regardless... Once they saw they outfit pandemonium broke lose about how much they love my mom and how much they love me for telling my mom that Jeenaba had a baby. Then everyone needed to hold the baby clothes up to themselves to show how cute they thought it was and how much they liked it. It was then decided that Abdou would wear it tomorrow after receiving a proper bath so he would look nice all day. The best part about this whole scene was the fact that the outfit had little animal ears on the hat. I attempted to explain that sometimes people in the US dress their babies up in different animal costumes or other costumes. Although one could barely tell this was a bear onesie this description failed to such an amazing extent that my family now finds me crazy even though I made this incredible gift magically appear. Oh well.

This afternoon I hung out with Elizabeth in honor of her 25th birthday. Elizabeth, Jackie, myself, and some other PCVs went out to Massa Massa for some wine and good food. I even stepped out of the lasagna comfort zone to a delicious meat and salad platter that I shared with Emily. It was a good night!