Toubab Dialo

A lot has happened since I last made an entry. I'll just say a few of the bigger things.

I've been here practically a month. I have about two and a half more months to go, and then ten days in Paris. I'm getting really used to how things work around here. It makes me feel so happy because I love and miss my life back at home so much but I"m glad to be here at the same time. I'm also almost as dark as the Senegalese, which is an added bonus. Gotta come back reppin' the Natives full on. The only thing is, I don't quite have the Native hairstyle going on, stereotypically speaking. I still need to achieve the long thick braided hair sometime in my life.

Anyway, I just got back from a weekend trip to Toubab Dialo. I totally didn't know what the trip was for before we left (I may have been the only one?) so it was a total surprise to me. We stayed at L'ecole du Sable (***i'm leaving out french accents, fyi***) which is a music and dance resort/camp. It was basically amazing. I could totally go back and live out the rest of my life there. We started our dance and jembe lessons on Friday and soon progressed into doing dance and music for about all of Saturday. I'm so sore. I learned to shake my booty though, and am quite good now. The dance/music studio at L'ecole du Sable is amazing. It's this big room outside. You walk in, there are some bleacher type seats leading down to the floor. The floor is padded and goes on for about 50ish feet? and then, AND THEN, there is no wall at the end, one sees the Toubab Dialo valley. It is so magnificent.

Sunday we left L'ecole du Sable for AccroBaobab, which is a Baobab tree climbing course. We all did these ropes courses, very high up, very frightening, but very cool. At the end, we divided into teams and climbed this huge Baobab tree. It had two areas where people could climb. I was the third person on our team to climb (we were called Team Victory). I was also the first person to make it all the way to the top on that side of the tree. You cannot believe how proud of myself I was, but also how sore I felt afterward. I could not move my fingers because they had been gripped so tightly around these little wooden pegs that were attached to the Baobab tree. Our team won which was cool. I miss the sense of competition from playing volleyball in high school and it was a nice, nostalgic feeling of victory.

Now, we're going on another trip to a village called Mboumba. We leave Thursday morning and will be gone for five days. We had to take a Pulaar language class in order to go. So yesterday, I started off the day with three hours of French class, then two hours of Wolof, and then three hours of Pulaar. My brain was so fried. It was really cool though, to be in the Pulaar class comprehending everything in four languages (English, French, Wolof, and Pulaar). HAH.

I'll update some more after I return.
ciao.