Hello again everyone!
Lots of fun and exciting things have been happening since the last time I wrote, and tomorrow we are leaving Dakar to go to St. Louis, where we will be attending the university. Laura and I are both kind of sad to be leaving since we have been having a good time with our families and the people here. However, hopefully it will give us a chance to get to know more Senegalese people our own age.
Today we went to Ile de Ngor with two of Laura's host brothers. It was really beautiful and, thankfully, it had only a couple tourists and people trying to sell us necklaces. When we went to Ile de Goree last weekend, which is a historic landmark because of the slave trade that went through there, it was over run by toubabs (foreigners, though that includes us) and there were people trying to sell us things everywhere. But back to today, we took a little pirogue over to the island after walking around on the beach for a bit, where we found some really huge seashells that never would have been left on the beach in the U.S. and saw a man washing his sheep in the ocean, which was fairly amusing. We wandered around the island for a good while and after lunch we played in the water, and saw a dead eel which was over five feet long. It was really incredible and kind of scary.
We also went to the Lac Rose last weekend, which is literally a pink lake. It has a really high salt concentration so there are microorganisms in the lake that have a pinkish pigment that somehow counteracts the salt. We went with four military guys who are also taking classes at the baobab center and rode around the lake on a dune buggy sort of thing. The only bad part was when we got out by the lake and were swarmed by people trying to sell us things and accidentally bought a necklace that I didn't want in the first place for way more than it should have cost,but oh well. We also stopped at a Pulaar village that they gave us a little tour of, which was really interesting. I waved at a little girl so then we were friends and she held my hand for a while. We also got to stop at the beach which is really close to the lake and very pretty. After lunch Laura and I got to pet camels and ride ATVs around on the sand dunes and along the beach, so overall it was a really good day.
This week we have had some pretty funny dinners happening in my house. My host mom was sick so she wasn't cooking and the two other girls weren't doing anything at first and when they did cook it was always very late. So one night I was called up to my parents' room and loaves of bread were flying in through the window over the balcony, along with other food. We had a secret dinner in their bed room with just my host parents and little brother and sister, and they told me I had to tell everyone I wasn't hungry and wasn't eating and that it was a big secret. I was very amused by the whole thing.
I miss you all and hope you are doing well! Laura and I just got our finished traditional African boubous from the tailors today, so be on the look out for pictures of us wearing them to come up soon!
Love,
Christiana
