Amusingly Bad Night

Yesterday was Sarah's birthday.  I had a great day and a wonderful evening.  I went to bed excited to meet some circus folks in the morning...

And then everything went wrong.

I mentioned that on Friday night on the island I was getting eaten by mosquitoes.  I didn't mention that I now have over 60 mosquito bites just from my knees down.  I'd taken Benadryl the last couple nights because I knew that otherwise I wouldn't sleep through the itching.  I didn't want to take drugs to sleep for a third night in a row, particularly since I'd been having some trouble waking up.

After over an hour of unsuccessfully trying to sleep, I took half a Benadryl at midnight.  Around two, I finally dozed off.  Only to be woken up at three by something crawling over me.  Something kind of big.  I turned on my flashlight to discover a rather large (1.5 inch long) cockroach in my bed with me.  It quickly began scampering all over my mosquito net and I ducked out and grabbed a shoe.  I spent close to 30 mins chasing around this stupid giant cockroach as it skittered under my bed, up my wall, behind some plastic bags...and then I managed to corner it and club it with my shoe.

After that, of course, I was pumping with adrenaline.  Also, my mosquito bites were all itching again.  I ended up taking the second half of the Benadryl and falling asleep about an hour later, at around 4:30.

This morning I had my meeting.  Or I would have, if the circus people had shown up.  Instead, the guy who was supposed to be introducing me expressed his deep love for me and all beautiful American girls of Polish descent.  Then his friend joined us and found out I was Jewish and was thrilled at having met a Jewish girl (he loves Jewish people) and so he hung around for about an hour.  I missed two classes to get proposed to and talked at and in the end didn't get to meet the guys I wanted to meet.

There is a plan in place to get me introduced to these boys, and I'm impatient to see some progress.  For now...this is life in Senegal.  Comme ci, comme ca.