Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (of last week!)

Alright, here's to catching up on my blog posts! First I'd like to apologize for my excessive use of bad language in my previous blog. When I write I let things flow out naturally and on that specific blog post there were several situations that called for harsh language, nevertheless, I promise to be more considerate to my reader base in future blogs.

Friday:

Friday was an interesting day that was spent wisely. The beginning of my day started off well as I had a 30min skype conversation with Waseem and afterwards went to my internship. The guys at my internship were very friendly and humorous and one of them even kindly made some tea for me. We ended up getting in a playful debate on whether or not women need men and whether or not women work harder than men, and I played the feminist card quite a good deal. Still, it was interesting to see my fellow co-worker's perspective since I work under male supervisors. Even though there was plenty of work to be done and I was planning on staying late, I had to retire early because my charger stopped charging. I was annoyed because I was enjoying my work but after my computer died I packed up shop and told the guys I would be in search of a charger so I could return back to work soon. After that I was walking home when I ran into Tasha. She asked if she could come over to my house for lunch and I agreed so we both walked over to my house. Unfortunately, I haven't mentioned that my family and I have been having interesting relations to say the least as of late. For the past week, my house mom has gotten colder and colder towards me and at this point she barely has the energy to say good morning. I've been stressing about this situation for awhile, but since I don't know what I did wrong I'm at a loss for words. I tried to talk to my mom about it today (Tuesday) but a bunch of relatives came over so I didn't have a chance to talk to her one on one. Either way, I'm going to really try to make a relationship between us happen because I'd really hate for her to feel distant from me and vice versa for the remaining three months I have here. As an added thought....it's been a month! I've been gone for a whole month!!! Wow, time surely does pass by so fast...

Continuing on with Friday's story, my family wasn't too warm with Tasha and I ended up apologizing to her because after a wait of an hour she ended up having to leave with nothing in her belly since lunch wasn't ready. She reassured me that it was no big deal but I still felt bad. We didn't end up eating lunch until 4:10pm and it was quite a challenge for me to subdue my hunger pains in an attempt to be polite. After lunch, which was a yummy mixture of sauce, vegetables, and rice, I decided I'd head over to the school to use the internet so that I could see whether or not I'd received word back from the Cary M Maguire public internship I'd applied to. While on my way to school I ran in to Jos, (a student that attends the university of law that shares the building with CIEE, and is from chad) and we exchanged a few words about life and about love. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend on account of her jealous behavior and I tried my best to comfort him. In all honesty, Jos has been the best thing to happen to my french here in Senegal. Talking with him has improved my French more than anything else because he is so persistent that I speak in french around him even when my American friends are around. Smart guy Jos is, smart guy. So we ended up standing on the sidewalk talking for about an hour. When we finally finished the conversation I told him I was on the way to school to use the internet and he told me that the reason he had stopped me in the first place was to tell me that the school was closed. We laughed at this and he asked me if I had any plans or if my schedule had freed up. Of course it had so he offered to walk me back to Sacre Coeur. During our conversation I mentioned how I wanted to eat some sweet bread and use an internet cafe and he said there was a bakery with some delicious pastries and a cyber café in his neighborhood. Unknowingly, I excitingly agreed to go on a 4 mile hike in the direction of liberté 6, Jos's neighborhood lol. We walked alongside the VDN (the major highway) for quite some time just chatting in French about how Jos is a don juan and a womanizer. The conversation did have some significant meaning though as I found out that for Jos' culture, a relationship is solid when there is lots of physical contact, when there is no physical contact it signifies that the relationship is in trouble, this goes for both guys and girls. I told Jos that generally in the US people have a complex with personal space. That if one is too touchy, Americans are weirded out and may even possibly be offended. Another side effect of physically touching an American, especially if they are a girl and you are a guy, is that they may think you like them—this could mean they may develop feelings for you or try to avoid you. The conversation was a good conversation for our friendship because he understood exactly where I stood with physical contact, and where some of my friends stand as well, and I understood his womanizing behavior which really just ended up being Jos's personal exaggeration of Chadian culture. When we finally reached the bakery he bought me a bunch of bread to take home to Tasha and Rosie and we shared a couple of pieces there. We never made it to the cyber cafe because we got distracted and walked to Rosie's house where I offered all my bread to her family. Rosie's mama invited Jos and I to eat around the bowl with them and we had a yummy concoction of eggs and spaghetti. It was a really fun night, as I always have fun with Rosie's family. I've actually grown a lot closer to Rosie's family than with my own since Rosie's family is a lot more friendly and warm—that is partially due to the fact there are younger children in the house and in my house everyone is already grown and serious haha. Essentially Rosie's family catches my humor while my family does not. It's a working process, I really do want to have a good relationship with my family and I'm hoping that things get better between us in the future.

Saturday was a lot of fun too and consisted of a bunch of random events. It also was Jos's last day of vacation, as he is a very serious student and will be studying non-stop for the next month, so on his request no one can hang out with him until the end of April :(! Still, he met me at the hotel mariama at 10am and him and I took a car rapide to centre ville in search of a mac charger. We also arranged to meet Tasha downtown too. Halfway downtown we stopped at this random boutique and inquired about a charger. The price tag was a misconception since it had 10,000 written over 80,000. We thought it was 10,000 and Jos begin trying to bargain down to 5,000 but the lady just laughed at him and told him that 10,000 was actually a 100,000 that they marked down to 80,000. Both of us just stepped back from the counter and walked out. Just for you Americans reading this post...80,000 cfa is 160 dollars for a mac charger. So of course I declined. After that Jos and I jumped on a bus towards downtown and we met some of his cousins on the bus. Jos has a lot of cousins, since we ran into one at the bakery the day before as well, I inquired whether or not they were actually his cousins or if he was just using that as a fond title. Nope, they're all actually his cousins. That's the thing about polygamy, families are extensive and connections are literally endless—with so much family, in Jos's case around 300 cousins, you're bound to know someone somewhere. He tried to convince me to marry one of his cousins so we could be family and so that I could have a huge family too but I politely declined and reminded him that I am in love with a wonderful man named Waseem lol. After wandering around looking for chargers we ended up meeting up with Tasha at the French institute. Tasha met us downtown so that she could buy a towel cheaply, but thanks to my terrible bargaining skills and tendency to throw out random numbers without thinking, she had to pay 4.00 for a towel...woops lol. I helped her out with the cost to ease my guilt so it all worked out. After that she invited us to a lunch date she was invited to and Jos and I heartedly agreed although we were already an hour late. We hopped on the Car Rapide in the direction of Oakam and exchanged stories about spanish, french, love, and farts. When we finally got to Oakam we walked in the direction of the statue hoping that the guy wouldn't be too upset about our tardiness (which was technically my fault). Tasha and I ended up scaling a wall and running across the highway as an attempted short cut to the statue, but Jos who took the regular walkway still got their faster than both of us which was pretty embarrassing seeing that I was plain out of breath by the time I reached where Jos had been waiting for 5 min. Tasha's lunch date Senegalese man arrived to meet us wearing a british t-shirt and torn fitted jeans, quite the personality that one. His name was Ibrahim and we followed him to his house where he introduced us to his family and later ate Ceebu Jen blanche around the bowl and drank tea in his room. We also had a political argument about Wade and Jos pretended to like dictators. At one point I thought he was being serious and I started getting really worked up at his comments, but after awhile I reminded myself it was jus t Jos and rolled my eyes at his incitement of conflict lol. After lunch Jos bought Tasha and I some bananas and we all shared them. The idea was for Tasha to take some bananas home to her family but some Talibé boys came up and so Tasha gave them the majority of the bananas, keeping two. When we returned to the house Tasha gave a banana to her brother and offered the other banana to her mom but her mom didn't want it because it was only one banana. Tasha's mom is kind of a grump. I think I prefer my mama to Tasha's mama, even though it's been rough around here the past couple of days. Tasha's mama honestly just has a grumpy personality—grumpier than I've ever encountered. She literally gets mad at everything. Tasha and I discussed the possibility of her moving out of her house, but she really likes her brother Mikael (who I think is cool too) and so I think she's deciding to bite the bullet. I told her if she's going to have to deal with a grumpy mama the best way to do so is with humor and patience.

Anyways, I chilled at Tasha's for awhile and won her brother over with my laughter and cheesy jokes. We ended up watching an Eddie Murphey classic together and it was a lot of fun. It only was a bit awkward when the sexual parts came up during the movie...since her brother and her friend were watching with us. My recation was to just giggle and look away and her brother got embarrassed and changed the channel. Pretty hilarious. Eventually Jos came by the house and him and I took the bus back to Sacre Coeur 3. We had a long conversation about debating and taking the opposite side of a situation to incite discussion—since he wants to be a lawyer he has learned the importance of this in his law classes. I am in agreement, solely because taking the opposite side always provides everyone with a better understanding of the topic. In my opinion the point of conversational debating would not be to change the other person's mind, but to simply provide them with both perspectives and to learn. Then again I'm no debater.

Later on that night Jos and I met some of the SC3 people at the SC3 bar and we went out to “Le Patio”--otherwise known as my first Senegalese club experience. It was definitely an unforgettable experience as the dance clubs in Senegal are much different than those in the states, or at least those that I have frequented. The price to get in to “The Patio” was $6 but I and a couple of friends managed to sneak in for free since we went in through the back door. There was a typical bouncer standing at the door but I think he let us slide since it was our first time at the club. Some of the other CIEE students were already at the club and so when we went in we jumped into a dancing crowd and it was a lot of fun. Half way through the night I decided I wanted to dance alone (that is my favorite way to dance if I'm not accompanied by Waseem) but I found that to be practically impossible since the minute I went off on my own I was surrounded by 4 or 5 guys. I just thought it to be humorous since I didn't want to dance with any of them. At one point, two guys decided they would go for me at the same time. One reached for my right hand and the other reached for my left hand, one of the guys was definitely a foreigner (from France or Arab country perhaps?) and the other guy appeared to be Senegalese. I laughed at their attempt because it ended up turning into a dancing triangle—that's right the guys held hands too lol. This whole time I was just cracking up and was relieved because in their attempts to fight over me they actually made it easier for me to reject them both. Eventually my friend Jos walked by and I grabbed on to his arm, leading myself out of the awkward triangle. Later on that night I ran into the Senegalese looking dude again and we danced to some American songs. In the midst of breaking it down (we were coordinating dance moves, he leaned left while I leaned right kind of thing lol) the french dude came back and grabbed our hands. Once again I was dancing in this awkward triangle haha. I rolled my eyes and danced for a bit but then I got pretty thirsty and motioned that I was going to go get a drink. The Senegalese lookin' dude grabbed my hand and led me towards the bar and the French dude grabbed my other hand and tried to pull me back to the dance floor. Needless to say this all looked rather silly. Eventually I tugged myself away from the French dude (who by this time was seriously creeping me out) and the Senegalese guy and I went to the bar. When we got to the bar I made it clear to him that I wasn't looking for anything except friendship. He tried to buy me a drink but I told him that he should save his money for another girl. We ended up getting some free water and had a conversation about politics and his mother country, which ended up being the Maurtinique. Afterwards we went back in the club and I saw Jos and we danced together a bit. After that a bunch of us jumped in a cab and went home. All in all it was a very interesting night.

Since I'm once again behind on my blog...this is becoming a habitual thing...I hardly have time to write! The elections were this weekend and so it's been very difficult to get access to the internet. Nevertheless, I will have an update on the past week tomorrow. Thanks for your patience everybody!