Family Time

As you probably know, my family came to visit last week.  I'm still recovering, but I had a fabulous time.

I'm not going to try to recount everything we did, because that would take far too long. I'll go through some highlights, though.

• We went to the market HLM to buy fabric and clothes.  We got lots of fabric and took it to my tailor, and the menfolk got boubous.  We found outfits for my grandma.  Mom got grazed by a taxi
• We made breakfast in the apartment every morning--some variation of eggs, bread, jam, cheese, and coffee
• We went to the resort at Toubab Dialaw and had a relaxing 36 or so hours by the ocean
• We ate lots of fabulous Senegalese meals.  Lunch on Friday was prepared by the maid at the apartment.  She cooked and we watched, took notes, and then ate our best lunch of the week.
• We ate a cheb bu jen lunch at my host family house. It was my family's first experience eating out of a communal bowl and having the hostess eat with her hands and distribute food to everyone
• We threw a dinner party at the apartment for all my friends.  We made fish and cheese enchilada casserole, a salad, and green beans
• We took tons of taxis, cramming all five of us into them
• I got some holiday presents! New headphones to replace the ones my host sister broke, a Kindle to read on, lots of baked goods, fuzzy pajamas, etc.  Good stuff!

I think my favorite part of my family's visit was just how much they appreciated Dakar.  Dakar is not a pretty city aesthetically, but it is gorgeously rich in tradition and culture.  The people are incredible and the atmosphere is completely unique.  I had been afraid that my family would only see skin-deep, but that wasn't the case at all.  We had innumerable discussions about culture, tradition, development, and meanings of things we saw in Dakar.  I got to say aloud all the things I'd been thinking about Dakar for the last few months, and I feel like I got a deeper appreciation and understanding of all I'd been seeing.  It meant a lot to me to see that my family was willing and able to see the city through my eyes and love it like I do.

I also learned a lot from their visit.  I hadn't realized how much I rely on my French skills.  When Mom first heard me yell at our landlord in French, she was blown away by how fluently I speak now.  I truly have improved a ton.  But it wasn't so apparent to me before I had to translate everything for my parents (and a little for Dan and Becca, but they did exceedingly well with their high school French).  Particularly at the end of market visits, I found myself thoroughly exhausted.  Bargaining for everything for everyone in my family was a lot more work than I'd expected.

On a less warm and fuzzy note, I think I'm coming down with a little something.  I wonder if the season is changing, because I'm suddenly feeling tingly in my sinuses.  My head has also been hurting almost constantly for the last two weeks, and I've been having stomach issues on and off.  Hopefully it'll all pass soon; for now I'm rationing out my drugs.

On the agenda for this week: I need to call Prof Thioub (choob) to let him know that my internship site does not exist at the address he gave me.  Wolof classes resume for a while.  Circus practices resume.  I need to start getting out more and still getting a lot of sleep, get over my current ickiness, and get over the homesickness that showed up right after my family left.