I have a family!

Two of them actually!  They met tonight in Dakar after one of the longest days (and best) of my life.  I'll write about it later, but I'm trying to build some suspense for now.  Yay Senegal and family and love!  Oh, and I performed with SenCirk today, which was fabulous.

An uneventful week?

I haven't posted lately because I haven't felt like I had anything to post about, but that's kind of crazy.  So here's some of what's been happening in my life:

Last Friday we officially finished classes for the "quarter", then we got all dressed up and went back to Diamond to meet up with our new celebrity friends.  There were way too many people there, everyone was smoking, the music was (of course) too loud to understand anyone who was talking to me, and I didn't actually have any desire to dance.

Y.Dee, the emcee we met Tuesday, had been texting me all week and making it clear that he wanted to go out with me.  Friday night he said he wanted to be in a serious relationship with me and wants me to meet his family. I can't help but think that's hilarious, given that I don't know him at all, or vice versa.  Not to mention, I'm not over my last serious relationship.  Apparently a friend of his told Meredith, "I want to get serious with you like Y.Dee is with Erica."  So I guess I'll have to put an end to that soon.  Senegalese boys are just crazy.

Saturday I had circus at 9 in the morning, so I didn't get much sleep.  I did have a great time, though.  Every time I hang out with the circus gang, I love them even more.  This morning, I got a standing ovation from all the boys for figuring out how to re-assemble our puzzle-style interlocking tumbling mat.  I was the one who decided to figure out how many pieces there were (140) and thus what its dimensions should be (10 x 14), after we had tried to haphazardly put it together incorrectly without knowing the dimensions.

On the way home from circus today, Modou told me that he's proud of me for coming in, training with them, doing good work on the fabric, helping out without being asked, and generally fitting in well with the group.  It kind of made my day.

I don't remember much of what I did for the rest of my Saturday, but I went to bed early, slept in late, and then napped a lot on Sunday.  Sunday night we all saw Sarah off to the airport.  I cried less than I expected to, but it was still really sad.  I can't believe that she won't be here for the rest of our time here.  Also, Friday night I had to say goodbye to several people from another study abroad program who I'd gotten close to.  I already miss them too.

On a brighter note, my family is coming in a week!  In fact, a little less than a week!  I can't wait to see them.  Miraculously, my circus performance was postponed until the 26th, so they'll be here to see it.  I think we're going to have a little Christmas dessert party in the apartment on the 25th.

I should also mention that things with Caleb are resolved to exactly where I wanted them to be in the first place.  It makes my mind a happier place not to have that be an issue anymore.

This evening I'm going to the market with Rachel and some others, and then hopefully picking up clothes from the tailor.

Oh, and I've been meaning to do this for a while.  Here's a list of books I've read since I came to Senegal:
The Last Song
Dear John
The Truth About My Fathers
Pride and Prejudice
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
What is the What
The Village of Waiting

Okay, general conclusion to this post (since it so completely lacks one so far).  I'm enjoying my time here, and thinking about ever leaving is surreal.  I'm definitely not ready to go yet, but I am recognizing some things that I miss from home (like blenders and pillows that aren't lumpy).  At the same time, I've adjusted to the point where the hardness of my mattress and frequency of power outages isn't noticeable any more.  It's just part of an ordinary day of an ordinary life (no, Dad, I don't think my life is ordinary).  I've heard about the three-month point in study abroad being a turning point, and I can definitely feel that I've been significantly more comfortable lately than I had been since arriving.

What the hell happened last night?

I remember everything, but I'm trying to believe that it actually happened.  Here's how it went down:

We finished our final class and final presentations, and then promptly headed downstairs and drank beer.  Then we went home for dinner, got dressed up, and headed out to a club.  We were planning on going to Duplex, which is a swanky club downtown, but it was closed, so we went to Diamond instead.  Diamond is another swanky club, but we got in for free rather than the usual $10.

Then Meredith and Christine chatted up the owner of the club, who said we could get free entry any time.  Then he gave us a bottle of Absolut vodka and juices and ice for drinks.  We saw later that they charge $100 for that bottle of alcohol normally.

Meredith and Theresa and I went and ate a snack at the restaurant in the club, and then we met some interesting people.  First was Al Hassan, the famous soccer player who plays in France.  He's in Dakar for a concert and to work with his association that provides aid and Christmas gifts to Talibe (quaranic scholar children who are forced to beg in the streets).  He was extremely amused by our Senegalese names and sat down at our table with us to chat.

Then his other friends came over--a rapper and an MC.  I didn't get to talk to the rapper much, but I spent a lot of time with the MC, who called himself YD.  He knew all kinds of famous artists, and he'd MC'd for most of them.  He was doing a lot of MC work for the World Festival of Black Arts, which just started in Dakar.  The festival has attracted various presidents and tourists from all over the world.  There are artists from everywhere here right now, and there are free concerts every night.  It's crazy, and I'm loving it.  So apparently YD is super involved in the festival, which means he's connected like crazy.

As the night went on, more and more famous artists and people kept coming in to the club and seeing their friends with us and chatting with us.  It was a great time and kind of surreal.  Lesson learned: go clubbing on Tuesdays and speak Wolof as much as possible.

What a great Tuesday night.

Time Keeps on Slipping

I can't believe we're halfway through December already!  My family is coming in less than two weeks!

The circus show at the pool is a week from Friday, which is coming up fast.  Yesterday I was at circus from 3-7:30.  I'm a little sore today.

We went to Toubab Diallaw this last weekend, and it was gorgeous.  I got to take a drumming class, make a batik, and make a clay baobab tree.  I think I'll take my family back there when they visit.  Conveniently, it's not far from Dakar, and Lac Rose and the animal reservation are on the way.  Perfect!  Also, there's wifi there, the room we slept in cost $8/night, they provide toilet paper, the resort is right on the ocean, and there are hammocks everywhere.  Oh, and the food is fabulous.  And the landscaping is unbelievable.

I decided to just put up pictures of this place instead of trying to describe it.

Oh, there's a circus performance at Toubab Diallaw before the one at the pool, so I may be going back there soon.  They may also decide that it'd be easier not to take me (since they can't rig the silk there anyways), which would be fine.

I don't think there's anything else especially interesting going on, but I'm sure that will change soon.  Ba bennen! (Until next time!)

Circus

Finally, the long awaited post.  Awaited by me, anyways.

SenCirk is composed of somewhere around 12 young men and a woman named Valentina, who is French.  Anya is a Swedish woman who comes every year to help with training and shows.  Modou and Al Hassan are the leaders of the troupe.  Modou trained with Anya in Sweden in 2008 (I think?) and I believe Al Hassan trained at a Guinean circus school.

I paid 13,500 CFA ($27) to get 10 workouts with the circus people.  So far I've been to three morning practices and had two private lessons, so ten for the month will almost definitely not be enough.

I'm pretty definitely in the performance on the 25th, which is the one at the Olympic pool rigged under the diving board over the pool.  I've always (since I started doing silks) dreamed of doing silks over water, so I'm really excited about this

I'm pretty out of shape right now, given that I had 4 months with no circus workouts.  It sucks.  Still, I'm doing a lot better than I (or anyone else) expected.  I should be at about the same level as Modou (who I can call the national expert at aerial silks) when I'm back in normal shape.  He's a lot stronger than me, but I'm a lot more flexible, so it balances out.

Modou is great.  I'm really excited that he's the one I'm working with, because he's not arrogant, creepy, or discouraging.  He always seems a little sheepish, and his French is not very good, but he's an extremely nice guy and he knows a lot of tricks that I don't know.  We're doing a lot of exchanging, which is a lot of fun.  I'm thinking of ordering some rigging equipment to gift to SenCirk, because theirs is not nearly good enough.

I feel really lucky that everyone at SenCirk has been so welcoming and friendly, and no one has questioned my abilities or intentions.  It's great to see that circus people are circus people all over the world.  Everyone is silly and happy and loves playing around and making people smile.  No one is too serious to have a good time.  I feel really at home around them, and I can't express how glad I am to have found them.

Also, SenCirk is the top circus troupe in Senegal, and Modou is the best at silks, so I'm getting private lessons from the best guy in the country.  That'll be fun to put on my resume.  Bwahaha.

On a different note, my friend Rachel came to Dakar last night! She was one of my first childhood friends, and I had a great time hanging out with her and showing her around Dakar today.  I made her do a lot of walking, but it was fun (for me, at least.  Hopefully for her, too).

This weekend we're going to Toubab Diallo, which is a sort of resort.  They have classes in batik, ballet, acroyoga, drumming, and all sorts of other cool things.  I'm looking forward to it.

Sokone

I'm writing this on the bus back from Sokone on Sunday, Dec 5.  I'll try to get in the most important parts of my weekend, but mostly I want to focus on Saturday.

On Thursday night, we all went out for dinner and then dancing to celebrate Meredith's 21st birthday.  I got tired of dancing pretty quickly, and then happened to end up talking to a guy I'd danced with a little.  He's from Toulouse, a French Air Force paratrooper stationed in Dakar for the next few years. We chatted for a while and it was pleasant and he was respectful.  He asked if he could kiss me ("No.") rather than just trying to kiss me, he gave me his number rather than asking for mine, and he wasn't ridiculous and persistent like Senegalese men tend to be.  So that was good, but I'm not planning to see him again.

We left at 9ish on Friday morning and got to Sokone at 4ish.  Ate lunch and then had way too many things to do and the power was out until about 11.  The village near the hostel (pictures of the hostel to follow) threw us a dance, which was cool, but then they made us dance a ton.  I'm not huge into dancing, I had danced the night before, and they were doing traditional Senegalese dance and music, so I had no idea what to do, was intimidated, and didn't enjoy it that much.  Ah well.

The next morning, Saturday, we had a lovely breakfast:

Then we went to a honey-making place:

And were given a container of mangrove honey.  Oh yeah, that's a big thing: Sokone is known for its mangrove forests, which are super cool and gorgeous.  We then went on a little barefoot walk through the mud into the mangrove grove to see the beehive boxes they kept in there.  There were crabs everywhere!

They were these adorable little colorful crabs that were purple and red and white:

After that we went to a dock and got on a boat:

The boat took us to some beach that was a mile or so walk from a village called Bambou.  Bambou is a
preserve, where there is no fishing or farming or nature-reaping of any kind permitted.  We had a delicious lunch of yassa poulet:

After lunch we lounged in the shade and then went kayaking and swimming in some water.  We had to walk through a stream through a dense mangrove forest to get to a bigger river, and there were, again, so many crabs!  Literally herds of hundreds of crabs skittered away from us wherever we walked.  There were so many of them that there was a sort of rushing clicking sound from their collective skittering.
We did some handstands and cartwheels on the beach and then swam and then went back and had watermelon.  When we finally got back on the boat to head back, there was a brilliant sunset starting.  We watched from the boat and enjoyed the clean water of the river (unlike the Senegal River up by St Louis/Richard Toll) and the lovely sunset.

We were headed to l'Isle d'Oiseaux (leel dwah-ZOE), whatever that was.  It was getting pretty dark and we still weren't seeing any birds, until suddenly we came across this:

It was crazy!  There were so many birds on this one stand of mangroves, and for no apparent reason!  Also, possibly related, there were whole schools of fish around us leaping out of the water.

We finally got back to the dock at about 7:30, when it was full dark.  I had already decided that this was one of the most incredible days of my life.  But then, there was this man who had come from Gambia (20 mins away) to eat dinner with us.

Not just any man.  This guy was Papa Diop (our professor)'s brother-in-law.  Oh, also...he's a famous reggae singer, the lead singer, composer, and creator of a band called Black African Positive.  He played us his music, sang for us, hung out, and told us to call him if/when we come to Gambia (we're seeing if we can go this week).

Finally we went to bed and slept like rocks.

UNTIL 6:20, when we woke up to watch the sun rise.  We walked down to this nearby salt marsh and sat out and watched one of the most gorgeous sunrises I've ever seen and took pictures of it and of us in front of it.  I will probably be tagged in some on Facebook soon.  Another great breakfast, this time with fresh mangrove honey (which is fabulous), and then we took a nap.  Did some gift shopping, hung out with some Senegalese school girls, ate lunch, and then headed back.

This has been a wonderful experience.

Today also marks the halfway point in my program.  Today is December 5th (Happy birthday, Mom!), and my flight to New York and then Detroit is March 5th.  I never expected to be having such a good time, and I think it'll only get better from here.

Thank you for reading my blog.  It means a lot to me; I talk to my friends here about how cool it is that I can put this stuff online and then hear from friends and family how fun it was for them to read it.  Keep reading and commenting and I'll keep posting.  Deal?  Deal.

Dreams

I've dreamed nearly every night since somewhere around halfway through my junior year of high school.  I don't always remember what I dreamed, but I generally do have some sense of what happened during the night.  Lately they've been really interesting, and last night was fabulous, so I thought I'd share.

Last night started out at a party at some mountain cabin hosted by my friend Zack (I heard from him for the first time in a while yesterday, hence his appearance in my subconscious).  It was a very Senegalese bash--great music, lots of dancing, tasty food and beverages.  I don't remember much of this part other than being thrilled to see Zack again and having a great time.

Skip forward a little and I was taking a trek through these mountains, now covered in snow and in northern Michigan, I think.  Somehow I knew that I needed to be careful of moose, because the males could be dangerous if I got too close to their babies.  One of my goals for this trip was to see some moose, so I was thrilled when there was not one, not two, but TEN moose wading in a freezing river right next to me!

Naturally, the cabin where I was suddenly destined was across the river, and of course I had to swim it.  So I gingerly got into the (wonderfully warm) frozen river upstream from the moose family.  I was being careful to keep my distance as I swam along, but then they all started swimming towards me!  Soon, I was being swarmed by baby moose.  I tried to make it clear to their daddies that I was staying in one place and it was them approaching me, not the other way around. They, too, started coming towards me, and I was afraid they would attack me with their huge antlers.

They swam up to me, sniffed me, nuzzled my shoulder, and hung out.  I continued crossing the river and they followed me onto the shore and into the cabin.  I had a little moose party and it was fabulous.

The end.

I hope that was as entertaining for you as it was for me last night.

That sounded a little weirder than I meant it.

I should write about Papa a bit.  He had a stroke about two weeks ago, and he spent about 4 days in the hospital.  He's home now, and starting to regain control over the left side of his body.  He can sort of fling his arm around, and he can move his leg a little.  He can talk, using mostly the right side of his mouth, and his Wolof is fine, but his French is pretty incomprehensible.  He likes to try to talk to me, but he doesn't enunciate at all and I don't speak enough Wolof to understand him.  Someone translates for him when he talks to me.

Papa is in his early sixties, I think, which is past the average life expectancy here (58 for men).  His health has been bad since I've been here, and it's been much worse lately.  I know that he's recovering, but I feel like that doesn't mean much in the long-term.  To make things worse, my family doesn't have a car, so when they have to take Papa back to the hospital tomorrow, they'll have to take a taxi.  Papa can't walk, so a lot of the strain is landing on Youssou.

Youssou and I went out walking last night for the first time in a long while and had a nice talk.  He bought me ice cream and was relieved to feel the sea breeze since it was his first time out of the house all day.

I wish there was more I could do to support my family right now.  I'm spending more time just hanging out and being social with them, but I worry about the strain my presence puts on them.  We'll see.  Hopefully things will get a lot better soon.

Happy first night of Hanukkah!  Hopefully I'll have some good stories to tell about that tomorrow.