Sunday and Monday: My Aunt's Birthday

What to say about Sunday and Monday? Perhaps I'll try to make this entry short because I'm a bit tired and am laying in my day ready for sleep to overcome me.

Sunday was an interesting day that I quite enjoyed. I'm sure my parents will be glad to here that I went to church for the first time in 4 years (well perhaps even longer) haha. I must supplement that statement by saying that it wasn't for religious reasons but rather a strong motivation to leave the house and experience the outside world. Plus I wanted to see if Senegalese catholicism was much different than Catholicism in the USA as I've known and grown up with. Since my cousin Gizele and I both woke up late we had to attend the children's mass so I must say, it wasn't a fair comparison. The walk to the church was a challenging one. Before I left for Senegal I bought some Sketchers outdoor shoes to help with my lack of shoe variety but unfortunately by the time we reached the church my feet were covered with blisters and aching terribly. I remedied this situation by taking my shoes off during church... :). I must say though, I definitely have problems sitting in one spot for too long, especially when I can't understand a word that the priest is saying. He did teach the kids a song which I've recorded to memory “Jesus est mon ami, tous les jours...”

Going to the children's mass was a pleasant surprise because I was entertained by the doings of the youngest children who flirted with each other the way only kids know how. There was this adorable adorable girl who was standing to my right accompanied by her mother. She had ABC beads in her hair and had the most gorgeous smile. Every now and then she'd catch me day dreaming or goofing off and she'd giggle and I'd wave. As for my cousin Gizele who was sitting next to me. Well, to be quite honest, she doesn't talk much at all. If I sit still and don't say a word, we will sit in silence for long periods of time. Sometimes she'll randomly ask me a question or point out something “Quelle heure est-t-il?” for example, or “that's my school.” Sometimes I get the feeling that she's done this so many times she must have lost her tongue somewhere in the process lol. Either way, I'm pretty determined to make an impression with my family so whenever I can I tell jokes to Gizele and try to make her laugh, hopefully she'll come around but I'm thinking it's just her personality.

Also, Sunday was my Aunt's birthday and I had the chance to meet her because she came over to celebrate. My aunt as far as I can tell, is quite the party. She carries joy around with her in her eyes and on her lips. When I first introduced myself she was very excited to meet me and made me feel very welcomed. Of course, since my family is catholic, they chose to celebrate my aunt's birthday with a bottle of wine which they split between the two of them (did I mention Yaye owns a liquor store? lol). They did give me a small amount of wine and Angelique my sister also had some as well. I warned them that I didn't drink wine that much and that there was a grave chance that at first sip my face would contort into all sorts of odd expressions, and of course they laughed when it did so. Fortunately, the bissap juice that I have been drinking non-stop since my stay in Senegal was wonderful company to the wine and I filled half my glass with it. After that the wine was more like spiked bissap and it tasted pretty good :). We sat around and talked for a bit which was relatively nice but after awhile my but got sore and my mind started wandering. Eventually I asked my mom if I could visit Rosie again and she said of course so I grabbed some stuff and went on my way. Half-way to Rosie's house there was a group of CIEE students in the street, Rosie among them. They were sharing stories of their new families and of course I joined in. We all went for a walk around Sacre Coeur looking for a Cyber Cafe but when we finally decided to ask for directions we were told they were closed. We never did find that cyber cafe...it's one of my goals because I'm determined to have at least 1 hour of internet during the weekend lol. After our walk, Rosie came back with me to my house and met my aunt. While we were out I had bought some cookies for her as a present and when I gave them to her she was very happy because they happened to be her favorite—score :)! Rosie also shared the pineapple juice she had originally bought herself and that happened to be my Yaye's fav juice—double score! So we all just sat together and talked and watched Bébé wolf which was this weird TV show with children. At one point they asked the children to fake laugh and cry in to the microphone and then they just asked them trivia questions. Who knows with Senegalese TV lol. There was an awkward point, at least for me, because whenever my aunt met Rosie and asked for her name, she made a racist joke lol. She basically grabbed a fork and was like oh I thought your name was going to be...and dropped the fork. I'm not sure if anyone reading this gets that...but imagine the sound of a fork and go from there. I didn't really laugh at the joke but more at the awkwardness of the situation. I also apologized to Rosie but she was just laughing along with me. She didn't know if we got it so she did it again. Oh Senegalese people...they think all asians come from China and make name jokes...just like Americans.

On another note lol, my aunt loves cooking and I got to watch her prepare dinner. We had some leftovers remade but they were still pretty delicious—including the french fries my Yaye made lol. I heard a lot of vegetarian jokes throughout dinner, but quickly put those to an end after I won an arm wrestling match with my aunt. Ok I kind of cheated because she wasn't ready and was buckled in laughter, but still, I won! When my aunt finally got ready to return home, we walked her to the taxi and on the way I decided to do a little dance---a little something called the twist. If you know me well you know it isn't odd for me to start randomly dancing or singing. They saw me and started laughing and when I told them it was the twist I got it half way out of my mouth when Yaye and my aunt both yelled in unison “THE TWIST!” and started dancing it and singing the song. It was pretty funny we had quite a laugh and showed our moves off to the security guard outside. After that long long day I retired to my room, did some yoga, and fell asleep early in preparation for the first day of classes.

Monday was less eventful day filled with ups and downs, I'll do my best to summarize it below:

The day started off with Yaye and I chatting over some breakfast when the doorbell rang. Mind you, it was probably around 7:45am-8am when this happened. Yaye got up thinking it was Fatou who had returned from a visit with her family for the weekend, but it was actually a customer. She talked to him in wolof for awhile and then came back, retrieved a bottle of alcohol, and gave it to the customer. When she came back she told me that he was muslim and she tried to convince him that it was too early but he insisted heavily. She also told me he asked for a plastic bottle so that he could hide it in his pocket. Apparently Yaye knows everyone's secrets when it comes to that kind of stuff. She told me that she remembers every single one of her clients, and many of them are muslim. I can attest to that as she gets much business throughout the day and with a 95% population of muslims not all of them can be catholics. Yaye says that sometimes customers pretend they don't know her when she sees them in the streets but she remembers every single one. What an interesting place to have that profession—selling alcohol.

Today was also the first day of classes. Wolof was fun as I have a pretty awesome professor—plus learning languages has just always been fun for me. The Public health teacher didn't show because he forgot it was the first day of classes...fail. I'm hoping that class doesn't turn out to be a joke because the syllabus looked awesome. Either way, my class had an extra hour added to our lunch so a bunch of us headed to the bookstore. I looked around a bit but didn't really see anything I liked...plus everything was terribly expensive. Afterwards the group decided to have lunch but since it was a larger group it didn't really decide a good place to eat so we ended up following this one guy who took us to a bakery that only served bread. I was hungry and thirsty (I had forgotten my water bottle at home) and immediately opted for something else. A bunch of us went to go look for sandwiches but I didn't find anything I could eat so I decided to return to CIEE and try to get something there. There was no chef today, however, so I was stuck without food and a roaring stomach. I found Rosie a bit later and she was waiting on a friend to go out to lunch so I ended up chilling with them trying to fill out applications to stave off my hunger. It only made it worse lol and I probably got a bit grumpy because my internet on my lap-top wouldn't work (whoops). Either way, the internship director Gamu worked a little magic for me with the pub next door who made me a vegetarian sandwich for 4 bucks. It wasn't the bees knees or anything but it was better than air and stomach acid that's for sure! I also accompanied it with bissap juice (no surprise lol) and a cookie from the next door bakery. The cookie was lack luster just incase you were wondering. My advanced french II class was relatively boring because my instructor talks fast and confused the whole class several times but surprisingly my phonetics class was terribly interesting because the instructor was so lively. He was really into the subject and explaining the importance of phonetics that I was drawn into it as well (Alex, can you imagine me taking another phonetics class after the first nightmare lol? Oh I know love, but with this professor I'm sure it will be just fine!)

After class Tasha came to visit Sacre Coeur (she lives in Wakam) and we went to Rosie's house for lunch although I didn't eat anything (I WOULD HAVE IF IT WAS VEG BELIEVE ME). We talked politics over a bowl and I found it quite interesting listening to the girls perspectives about the whole political situation that is currently unraveling around us. Which by the way, is absolutely enthralling. Every day I come home and my mom is watching the news on TV shaking her head at the new scandal Wade has cooked up. I'm sincerely hoping he won't find a way to get himself elected and that the opposing candidates will be better for Senegal in all ways. This country deserves a time out from old ass politicians like Wade—he's about 85, that's like 10 generations passed, you'd think he'd let go of the power but he's attached to it quite like a fly is to fly paper. Dinner was wonderful as I had spaghetti, eggs in tomato sauce, rice with onion sauce, radishes, cucumbers, and baby tomatoes (the kind that you pop in your mouth and juice explodes everywhere). My sister Angelique also brought home dessert for me which was just lovely, honey sicks of some sort, very good! And yes, I'm going to get fat here. Sorry Waseem lol, more for you to love. Did I mention I did yoga yesterday? Not today...today I'm sleeping until 10am. Goodnight everyone!