Life has been pretty busy here so I have lots to say!

When we have class the days are very long.  Some days we have class from 9-11, 11-1, then go home for lunch, then more class from 3-5, then from 5-7.  It’s a lot.  Luckily, there isn’t too much homework because I don’t know when I’d do it!

I’ll go ahead and cut right to the chase and talk about the manifestations and political stuff that’s happening.  The elections are this coming Sunday (the 26^th).  From what I know at this point, Wade has not stepped down, even though many important leaders have asked him to do so (the US included).  The Senegalese choose to combat this with manifesting and demonstrating all the time.  When asking the question, “what will happen if Wade wins?” I’ve heard a range of answers including: “oh that’s impossible, he’ll step down”, and “there will be civil war,” (don’t worry, I think the latter is a bit of an exaggeration).  Until tonight though, I haven’t actually seen any of this manifesting.  Tonight, my host sister Mariama took me up to the roof and pointed out some protesters.  They were maybe 4 blocks away, burning things and yelling.  It was quite a sight to see!  I took a couple of pictures, though they don’t quite capture the whole feeling of the situation.  Despite the fact that this is going on in my neighborhood now, I still feel safe, so don’t fret Mom!  My family is very protective and I’ll be just fine.  Since all of this is going on, I’ll do my best to keep updating this blog more frequently.

Here is my attempt at taking a picture of some of the manifestations going on by my house.  The tree is not on fine, but there is a fire going on the road right behind the tree.

On a completely different note, this weekend was awesome.  We took a little road trip north to the city of Saint Louis.  When the French first colonized Senegal, Saint Louis was the capital.  It is quite close to the boarder to Mauritania and is situated at the mouth of the Senegal River.  The drive was about 5 hours total.  We went with our Islam professor, Babacar Ba, and the assistant to one of our program coordinators, Aida.  About 3 hours into the drive, we had to stop because there were a bunch of students blocking the road.  I guess the professors have all been on strike for something like 10 weeks and the students are not too thrilled about it anymore.  We made the wise decision to pull off the road and try to go around the road block.  Surprise surprise, our giant, 12-passenger, 1-wheel drive van got stuck in the sand.  It is, after all, the desert.   After about a half an hour (the road block was already dispersed), a bunch of Senegalese students came to help us dig out.  It was quite the ordeal.  Pretty comical though.  We got to Saint Louis at around 2 PM and had lunch at a restaurant.  They had a long menu with lots of choices, but there ended up only being the choice between 3 traditional Senegalese meals.  It was pretty good.  After about two and a half hours at the restaurant, we had until 6 PM to rest and take it easy (that’s Senegal for ya!).  The hotel was very fancy.  It was right by the water, and, best of all, there was hot water in the shower!  Best showers of my life!  The guy from UPenn that was with our group for the first month, Ryan, had gone up to Saint Louis the weekend before because that’s where he’s spending the rest of his semester, so we were able to meet up with him for a little bit and walk around town.  I really enjoyed Saint Louis!  It had a sort of Caribbean/New Orleans feel to it (from what I know about New Orleans at least).  Lots of fishing boats and colorful houses.  It was nice.  In the evening we took a tour in horse drawn carriages (fully embracing our touristy selves) around the town.  We had a very engaging tour guide.  No pun intended…he kept asking which four of us would be his wives.  He was very funny.  We got back to the hotel and had dinner at another restaurant around 9 PM.  After that we were all completely beat, plus we had to get up at 7 for the next day’s activities!  Breakfast was wonderful.  Real baguettes and croissants and coffee.  REAL coffee!  There was also bissap and bouye jam.  Bissap is made from hibiscus flowers I believe.  We drink the juice a lot here and it’s very sweet, the jam was quite delicious.  Buiye is made out of baobab fruit.  We also drink bouye juice too.  I hope I’m able to find a way to bring some back to share with people in the US because it’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted! So good.  We took a drive through a wildlife reserve type area.  Imagine a safari, but without any zebras, giraffes, lions, and whatnot.  Replace those with the occasional warthog and one or two monkeys.  It was fun though.  Relaxing.  Within the big park we took a boat tour and saw TONS of birds.  It was fun!  I’ve never seen so many pelicans in my life!  After the tour we went back and had lunch at the same restaurant, then rested some more.  In the evening we went to “La Langue de Barbary” which turned out to be some sort of sand spit.  I’m unclear as to what body of water we were on, but I think it was where the ocean met the Senegal River.  We watched the sunset and it was beautiful! There was a ton of trash on the beach though, unfortunately that’s just something we’re getting used to.