Fof ina moyyi...

So all is good here in Senegal. It's still incredibly crazy that I'm here and of course I have my really good days and my incredibly horrible days where I don't understand anything that people are attempting to communicate to me. Which is the worst, actually the worst is when I can't pronounce anything in the language I'm learning. But honestly I wouldn't have it any other way, well except for the part that I could at least pronounce the words correctly.

I found out I'm learning the hardest language here, and I love that because any other language here would be incredibly easy. But I also want to learn French because I feel like that's going to be really beneficial in areas that don't speak my language or even large causeries in larger villages where not everyone speaks Pulaar; and I feel like more health workers would respect me more if I spoke French because it's a language associated with the people's level of education because all the schools are taught in French. (This is totally my personal opinion and I'll find out for sure once I get to my site and start workin' with the health workers)

Anyways, I'm really enjoying myself here and I'm going to be a real volunteer May 16th I believe, that's when we swear in as VOLUNTEERS since we're just trainees right now. It's a really long process of how things are done and I'll write a blog completely detailing it out. I've been attempting to post videos that I've done of like tours of compound and my homestay but our internet is way too slow here and it wont load. Inshallah it'll be online.

For all my friends out there following this, I love getting mail. Lately I've been getting soliciting mail from our Idaho candidates who want my absentee vote to go towards them. Now all the other volunteers are afraid of going to Idaho because of these postcards/letters from the candidates. I guess everyone else doesn't get postcards of the candidate saying how he's going to fight back against Obama and reinstate our 2nd amendment. Neat! People now come up to me and ask me stories about Idaho so they don't wish they were back in America. hahahah yet I bet all of them are gonna come visit me in Idaho because Idaho's mountains and outdoorsy activities are way too good to pass up.

Shout out to Destinie sorry girl the power went out for a little while and our internet stayed down, but your haircut is adorable!! Congrats girl it must have been so hard cutting off all that hair!

Gretch- Just act; think later.

Mom- stop asking me to come home. :) love you!!

Huda- tell Layla I got her smiley face! I'll post a pic soon of me and the picture u drew.



My crazy story of the day:
I'm in Thies today and Thies is a pretty big city, the market is incredibly intimidating because we've got children asking us for money (they're called talibes I'll give you more details about that later- that'll be a long post) and people are trying to get us to come look at their stuff. You really can't shop in peace and I normally try to just walk as fast as possible and I don't do much shopping except at the taobob store because everything has a set price and no bargaining is needed. Well today I wanted to get fabric it's called Mayloose (i believe) it's from Mauritania and it's incredibly nice to have in the Futa because it's so freakin' hot. So I found one lady who looked really chill - she didn't speak Pulaar but understood what I was attemping to say; she was trying to talk to me in French but because my French just isn't good enough and it might do more damage than good I stuck to Pulaar, but my friend Meera is fluent and she was with me so if I needed help it was available. SO ultimately I bought the fabric didn't have to bargain even though I tried because she didn't know how many meters I was buying but she was like - I'm not trying to rip you off, this is the set price. (UM amazing!! We call the tax here Taobob tax, because we're white they jack everything up for us...when in all reality we really don't have much money- in comparison to them yes but it sucks getting ripped off when our money has to go an incredibly long way for us)
So after that successful journey I went to buy a dress that was already made it's this really cool loose fitting dress and i love it; I talked to the wife and husband in pulaar forever come to find out the husband's relatives live in Aram (my future site) and he called his relative asked if they knew my future dad in Aram then got my dad's number and called him to say Hi- I'm standing with your daughter. It was adorable!! And I got a dress from him and it was only 3500 when my friend bought the same dress from someone else and they told her it was 10,000 and she had to bargain down to 5,000 i believe maybe less. But they told me 4,000 and I thought they said 8,000 cuz my french numbers suck and I was like damn I don't have enough, then they went down and my friend Meera translated and told me they were saying 3,500. haha genius!! this is why i don't speak to people in French. I mess up my numbers and I always almost pay too much: yes this has happened before.

Anyways, love ya'll and I will write you soon and email you back soon I promise! xoxo
haa gonngol.