Ma premiere adventure Africain!

Now all of the students on my program have arrived and it has been a lot of fun meeting them, all of them go to American colleges. We are all living together in a hotel right now but will be moving in with host families on friday. I am both scared and excited!!

Yesterday we had some time to explore Dakar a bit, and I would definitely not hesitate to call it an adventure. I was in a group with my friends from my program: Seth, Cameron, and Anish, and we decided to wander around and visit Dakar's biggest university-- Universite Cheikh Anta Diop. (We won't be having classes there, when we have class we will be joining the students at Suffolk University which I learned today is the only private American college in all of West Africa.) At any rate, as we were walking to the university, Seth needed a bottle of water. So we went into this gas station and the security guard came up to us. I thought he thought we were stealing something, but no, he just wanted to talk with us! His name was Bouba and he ended up talking with us for maybe 45 minutes, right there in the middle of the food aisles in the convenience store, it was awesome! He taught us some Wolof (or at least tried to, actually it was hilarious for both him and us when we struggled with pronounciation). He also christened us with Senegalese names (unfortunately I don't have much of an ear yet for Senegalese names so I don't remember mine). We also talked about Acon and some other famous Senegalese artists and athletes which was interesting. By this time some of his friends had already entered the store and he introduced us to them as well. By the end, he had given us his work schedule, given us his number, and had suggested that we all go dancing mbalax together. (Mbalax, pronounced "mblaK" is THE dance of Senegal). Not to worry-- we won't be calling him or getting together with him, but if we ever come back to that gas station we have a friend!!

So we continued to walk to the big university, and when we got there we watched part of a soccer game. It is interesting-- there were no other women in the stadium that we could identify except for Cameron and me. Wow. As we approached the stadium, apparently we caught someone's eye because the entire row of people watching the game turned around to look at us, and we were still a long way behind them and hadn't made any noise to attract attention. It will be interesting as I am here for the semester to learn exactly how much we stand out to other people. I feel that my western clothes stand out a lot, as well as my skin color and gender-- but I don't know how that is coming off to others.

I need to go, next time I will try to add pictures because I know those are interesting.

Ba beneen yoon! ("until next time" in Wolof)