Bassari Country...again.

Hi everybody!

Sorry its been a long time since my last post; Laura and I have been rather busy. Remeber Bassari Country that I told you about last time? Well we went there again, except this time it was with a group of volunteers who teach English in St. Louis that we have made friends with. There were 14 of us, which was possibly a bit too big of a group for that sort of trip, but it was fun anyway. We spent this trip hiking and staying in the local villages, and we got to go back to the waterfall. We also got to hike to the cave at the top of it which was also very cool.

When we got back to Dakar from that trip we met Laura's sister who came to visit for a week. We stayed with the U.S. Ambassador in Dakar because she went to high school with Laura's aunt and uncle. Her house is amazing, and I was looking forward to a real hot shower, but of course the hot water wasn't working in the room we were staying in so I'll have to wait til I get home probably for that. I couldn't complain though, any shower, cold or not, beats the 1/3 of a bucket of water that we had to make do with in the little wicker enclosures in Bassari country. I'm not sure I have ever been that dirty in my life. We went with her and our friend Jonathan, who we teach English with sometimes, to Toubab Dialaw, a small town on the coast that Laura and I had already been to once before. It was a lot of fun and we got to go to Reserve de Bandia as well, where we saw all sorts of cool things: namely giraffes and rhinos. We even saw FIGHTING giraffes, which is rather silly looking as all they do is wrap their necks around each other and push. After that we went back to St. Louis and showed Marissa around there. We took a pirogue ride out to an island and had a picnic there with her and some of our friends. Having Marissa there made Laura and I realize how adapted we have become to Senegal. Neither of us were surprised to see the pile of goats tied to the roof of the bus, but I think Marissa found that a bit unusual.

Our volunteer friends are all starting to go home. Our best friend here, a Scottish girl named Frances, already left last weekend. We are really sad about it, but at least that will give us a bit of time to actually get some work done. We have actually started classes though! I switched my schedule around a bit because I really didn't like one of the classes I had originally signed up for, so now the ones I'm taking are decent to pretty good. We managed to arrange to only have class on Thursday and Friday though, so that makes travelling a bit easier for us.

Right now I'm in Dakar getting visas for our trips to The Gambia and Mali, but we are heading back to St. Louis tomorrow. I hope you all have been doing well and I hope to hear from you soon!

I miss everyone!
Love,
Christiana