A typical day in the neighborhood!

A typical day for me:
Wake up at 7:30 am, take a cold shower get dressed walk to the “corner store” and buy half a baguette and a tea bag. Come back home boil water for my tea and put chocolate spread on my bread. I say good morning to my brother before he goes to school and to my dad on the way out the door. By 8:15 I start walking to school. During my 25 min walk to school every morning I always talk to one of the guards on a street near my house whose name is Mufassa and a women who is always sweeping the sidewalk outside of her house who I think gets a kick out of me speaking to her in Wolof. By the time I come on campus for my 9 o’clock class my back is always wet from the sweat I worked up from carrying my backpack in the Senegalese heat. (Embarrassing)
I have classes from 9-2:30 then most days for lunch me and my friends go to this “restaurant” close to the school where two women work and serve Mafe (my favorite!!) Ceebu Jen and this other dish with onion sauce and rice. I put restaurant in quotes because it really is just a little one room building with a sectioned off kitchen (which consist of two burners and a sink). A plate is 700 CFA which is roughly $1.50, and it is really filling although it has given some of my friends stomach aches. Or if we don’t go there Ill pick something up on campus. Although a girl told me last year someone got worms from eating there we still risk it, I always get the omelet sandwich, consisting of egg, lettuce, french fries, ketchup, and hot peppers on a baguette all for 500 CFA (sounds weird but taste sooo good).

After lunch back to school where I have classes until 6:30 most days and after class I hang out on campus for a little bit take a taxi back to Sacre-Coeur trios where I live and talk to my family and do homework. I normally have dinner around 10pm , which we eat in front of the TV, most of the time we watch the news, soccer games, or wrestling matches (the national sport of Senegal). Then I finish up my homework and go to bed. I only have classes on Monday through Thursday so on Fridays I typically go so where with some friends, like to the beach, centre ville to buy stuff, or to someone’s house.

Tubaab Dialaw

This weekend the CIEE program took the students to a "resort" called Touba Dialaow. Before I tell you how awesome it was, let me explain the name of this place. In Wolof, Toubaab means foreigner or white person and Dialaw comes from the word that means to keep coming, so loosely this resort, right on the coast of Dakar, is called the "White people keep coming". Just from the name I'm sure you can tell that this place was really nice or atleast very touristy. I went wave surfing with some friends on the beach, climbed a huge rock where I sat and thought about life while glazing out into the ocean,collected tons of cool looking shells, and lounged around all weekend. This was a real treat, a little get away from the hustle and bustle of the city life in Dakar. The program also paid for us to take a dance, drumming, or batiking class while we were there and I chose to batik. To batik, you make designs on your fabric with pencil (we started with a white cloth) then use a paint brush that you dip in wax and outline your design. The cloth is then dyed the color of your choice. After the first dying, you then color in with wax the parts of your cloth you want to stay this color (everything else will become the color that you dye with next) The cloth is dyed again and the final product is complete and your left with a two colored cloth decorated in the designs that you have drawn. It was a lot of fun, even with my limited artistic skills. (they had stencils that we could use so mine didnt come out too bad hahaha)


On Saturday night the people who took the dance class and the instructors put on a performance and then started a big circle where any one could come and learn dance moves. The dancing is full of energy with lots of kicks, flips and hip action. It definitely is a work out but still a lot of fun, I would love to be able to come back home and show off some of these moves.

The Friday before we left for Tubaab Dialaw, me a few other people from the program went to a dance performance at the Francaise Institute downtown. The performance showcased, modern, contemporary, and traditional Senegalese dance. Of course I loved the modern dance pieces the dancers were soo strong and their moves were so precise it was incredible watching what they could do. Although we weren't suppose to take any pictures, I did take a few (shhhh dont tell anyone) so hopefully you guys will be seeing them soon.

Sidenote: I just found out this week that my mom was a second wife, which can explain why they don't share a room and I see him mostly at night. Having more than one wife is very common here in Dakar and especially where I live in Sacre-Coeur (some one told me jokingly it was neighborhood of second wives).