Update

My apologies for not posting anything in a couple of weeks...I have been a little under the weather and have spent all of my free time resting. I am still not at 100 %, but thought I would try to update everyone on my last couple of weeks here in Senegal.

So I started learning Wolof when I returned back to Bayakh, and wow.... It seems like it will be a fun language once I get the hang of it, but right now, my head is just spinning. It is completely different than french or english, both in grammatical structure and pronunciation. We were having class for 6 hours a day, so by the end of the day, all I wanted to do was go home and veg out...no time to process anything really. The only reason we were having so much class is because we technically only have 14 days to learn Wolof, so our LCF was trying to provide us with as much vocabulary and information as possible. That was very kind of him, however, my brain did not appreciate it. This week we kind of have a break from language which is nice, and I think when we go back to Bayakh, classes will run more smoothly.

Life in Bayakh hasn't been too eventful. As I mentioned earlier, I have been sick so I haven't spent that much time outside of class doing anything other than resting. However, there was a baptism one day that we were invited to. Baptism here are really baby-naming ceremonies. It's kind of an odd event, from my perspective at least. The baptism takes place one week after the baby is born. At some point in the morning, the Iman(Islamic religious leader) comes over and whispers the name (of the parents' choosing) of the baby into the baby's ear. After that, the mom goes and gets all dressed up (we're talking celebrity fabulous) and everyone else just hangs out at the house socializing. Up in the afternoon, the mom returns, and then everyone eats lunch. After that, the mom may go and change again for the evening party; I left before that happened. Most of the ceremonies here appear to be a good excuse for people to dress up and socialize; much like in the States, yet just seems really different since the cultures are so different.



Jamie and the new mom



One evening, our LCFs surprised us with a quick trip to the beach :) There is a small fishing community about 20 minutes away from Bayakh called Kayar. Absolutely gorgeous beach! I could hardly beleive that I was in Senegal. The trip was unexpected; the beach was gorgeous; and was a perfect ending to a rather heavy week of classes.

We also had our counterpart workshop this past weekend. This is a two-day workshop where the supervisors and counterparts for each new volunteer visit Thies to go over logistics and expectations of/for volunteers. We also put on an American Cultural Fair to show our counterparts differents aspects of American Culture that are important to us and might help to explain our "odd" behavior at times :) The 6 areas discussed were: American history and politics; the role of women; daily life and leisure activites; diversity; food and clothing; and pop culture vs. real culture. Our group presented on diversity; I think it went really well. Everyone was attentive and had some really good questions. The training coordinator even asked us to make a copy of everything for her so that she can use it when training new Senegalese staff.

Well, that's about it for now. I have two more weeks of training and then I will officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer :) The next couple of weeks will be rather busy, but I will try to post whenever I can. Until then, thank you for all the prayers and support :) I greatly appreciate them!