England

The Week That a Million Things Happened

Hey everyone!  I’ve got a lot to catch you up on today; it’s been a pretty eventful couple of weeks.  I’ll do my best to remember everything that’s happened.  Dijon has had its annual fair going on for the past couple of weeks.  Technically I believe they consider it to be two separate fairs happening right next to one another.  One part has amusement park rides and typical fair foods (candied apples, cotton candy, churros).  I’m not a huge fan of rides, so I didn’t spend too much time in that section, although I did walk around it for a bit just to see what they had to offer.  I think the most unique thing I saw was a large pool of water, where they were putting kids into those massive inflatable balls and letting them try to walk around on top of the water.  The other half of the fair was in celebration of the local cuisine.  We walked around and sampled different kinds of foods and drinks.  The other girls were brave and tried frog’s legs, but I still can’t bring myself to even consider doing that.  Too barbaric.  We did find one thing which I’m pretty sure was a version of the Egg, Meat and Cheese recipe that we use for appetizers, so that was interesting.  We also found a booth that was Quebecois, so the Canadian girls got to chat with people from their homeland for a bit, and I bought a bottle of my favorite maple syrup. 

     Last weekend, I cut a couple of days of classes and went to visit Katie and Helena in Birmingham, England for a bit.  I stayed in Katie’s apartment, and Helena and her boyfriend Ed came over just about every day so we could find cool things to do together.  I got there on November 6^th, the day after Bonfire Day in England (a celebration of Guy Fawkes’s failed attempt to blow up their parliament), just in time to celebrate at the University of Birmingham’s carnival and fireworks night.  We mostly just went for the fireworks since none of us wanted to go on the rides, but the carnival did look really cool.  There were lots of rides, and some people twirling flaming batons.  We grabbed some cotton candy (or candy floss as the Brits call it) and headed over to the grass to watch the fireworks.  They try to choreograph their fireworks display every year, so they had a great music selection going.  The funniest part was when they started shooting up dozens of the fireworks that look like smiley faces in time to ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams.  We tried to squeeze as many super British things into the weekend as possible.  We went out for tea and scones at an adorable little heritage house/gardens.  We ate bangers and mash (aka sausage and mashed potatoes) at a local pub.  We took trains to get anywhere we needed to.  It rained for pretty much all but ten minutes of the time I was there.  We also went to a nearby town called Litchfield, where we toured an amazing gothic-style cathedral.  Unfortunately I only got photographs of the outside since you had to buy a photography permit if you wanted to take photos of the interior, but you’ll have to take my word that it was absolutely breathtaking.  Hands down the most amazing cathedral I’ve ever been in.  To be honest though, I think that the thing I appreciated most about the weekend was just being able to get out of Dijon for a bit, and spend some time in a place that felt more like home.  The Brits are a lot more similar to Americans that the rest of the Europeans; in their style, in their humor, in their food options.  They also have Reese’s, and I even found some Angry Orchard Cider (made in Cincinnatti!), so I was able to eat some of the things I’ve been missing the most.  It was also nice to be able to sleep in a comfortable bed, and take a normal shower for a change. 

     Thursday, the Musée des Beaux Arts had a student night.  They extended their hours until midnight, and there were presentations going on in different rooms throughout the museum.  These ranged from classical music, to art lessons, to gypsy dancing.  My favorite was a couple that were playing guitar to popular movie songs.  They did a wonderful version of the French edition of ‘A Whole New World,’ and then did a duet in which the guy sat behind the girl, and they both strummed the same guitar while doing a mashup of a lot of popular movie theme songs.  They were incredibly talented.  After we finished walking through the museum, we headed over to the ice rink for a late-night skate session, which was really fun.  It’s been a while since I skated with other people that really knew what they were doing, so it was fun to try and match the speed of the hockey-playing Canadians.  I have learned that I should try to rent hockey skates instead of figure skates in the future though.  I trip over the toe pick pretty much every five minutes because I tend to shift my weight the way I would on inline skates when I’m trying to pick up speed or take sharp turns, and that doesn’t tend to work very well in figure skates. 
     Friday night was also a good time.  I let the Canadians talk me into going out in the rain to watch the Duc’s hockey game.  (They’re the local team).  We lost horribly, and their skill level is definitely nowhere near that of the NHL, but it was still nice to be at a hockey game again.  After I got back, I went over to the room of one of the Columbian girls, where a large group was watching the Columbia v. USA soccer game.  After the game, they started showing us clips of the Columbian team dancing (apparently they do it a lot, and it’s pretty funny; definitely worth looking up), which somehow escalated into a late night Salsa and Merengue dance lesson in the basement of the Residence, until we got yelled at for making too much noise after hours.  It was a really good time though, and I think we’re going to try to do it again during the day sometime.  Hopefully that’s just about all of the major things that have happened, I did my best to remember.  Until next time!!!!

Geneva

 

A Good Start to the Semester

Time here is flying by.  It’s crazy to think that this semester is almost halfway over now.  The autumn semester definitely has a different feel to it than the summer semester did.  We spend a lot more time in class, and there are so many students in the CIEF program that our schedules are staggered, so we don’t wind up with as much free time to explore.  It is a really good program though; I’ve learned a lot of French in the time I’ve been here.  There is a lot of casual conversation, so the vocabulary we learn tends to be more useful, and native French-speakers tend to have insights to rules of the French language that we never would learn back in the US.  We played Taboo in class the other day, which was really fun.  I think we’re going to try and buy it so we can play in the residence from time to time.  The majority of my friends here are Canadian now, although there are a couple of Norwegians and Colombians that hang out with us.  There is one other girl in the residence from California, and there is a school-group here from Wake Forest in North Carolina, but they live in host families so we don’t tend to see them as much.  Autumn semester has more of a ‘real-university’ feel to it.  We spend most of our time in class or doing homework, and when we have free time we tend to play sports, watch movies or go out drinking.  I tried beach volleyball for the first time last week, that was fun.  Yesterday CIEF hosted a trip to Geneva, Switzerland.  It got off to a rocky start, as there was a miscommunication between the school and the residence and it was never relayed to the students that the departure time had been moved from 6am to 7am, but the rest of the day was great.  Geneva was a lot cooler than I had expected.  Naturally they sell Swiss Army Knives and watches everywhere, and their ‘claim to fame’ is basically this huge spout of water in the middle of the city, which isn’t really my idea of an amazing attraction, but the city did have a lot of other things going for it.  We took a tour of the Red Cross Museum, which was very modernized.  Everyone wears headsets which sense when you walk into a new room and give you an introduction.  They can also give you more detail on exhibits that you are interested in, and there are certain parts of the museum where there are screens with life-size figures projected, which your headset can tune in to and you can listen to their stories.  The museum also has archives of every prisoner of war they have record of, so that people can glance through books and try to locate their family members.  I think I easily could have spent an entire day in that museum.  After the museum, Stephan (our guide and one of the teachers from CIEF) took us on a tour of the city, showing us all of the major sites.  It isn’t a very big city, but it has a lot of history.  We went past the United Nations, which was really cool.  Apparently if you aren’t there on a Saturday, you can actually tour the building.  We had a few hours of free time in the afternoon to roam the city before heading back, and Stephen showed me and a couple of my friends a nice fondue place where we ate lunch.  Someone should definitely start that trend in the US, fondue is wonderful.  And naturally, we bought as much chocolate as we could carry before heading back to the bus.  All in all, it was a pretty good day.

'Free Time' Kind of Sucks

Well, the dorms are continuing their streak of having the worst internet in the world.  They are seriously starting to drive me crazy, their system is completely ridiculous.  They forbid us from bringing in any kind of routers to set up our own Wi-Fi networks, claiming that it interferes with their wired system (which I’m pretty sure shouldn’t actually be possible) and then they allow their system to crash for weeks at a time.  It would be slightly more understandable if this dorm wasn’t exclusively for international students, whom they know have no other way of staying in touch.  I’m going mildly stir-crazy without the internet to keep me entertained.  I brought about 50 DVDs with me to France, and I’m pretty sure I’ve watched a solid majority of them by this point.  I’ve tried going out into the city by myself, but it just isn’t as interesting without the girls around.  I think adventures tend to be a lot more fun if you have someone to share them with.  I did finally make it over to the Archaeology Museum the other day, which was the last thing on my checklist for city attractions that I wanted to check out.  I’m afraid I’ve already burned through most of the cooler places in the city trying to cram in as much as possible before Katie and Helena went back to England.  And truth be told, Dijon isn’t really a very big city.  The museum was cool, and did have a lot of interesting artifacts, but it wasn’t really anything I haven’t seen before at half a dozen other museums.  It wasn’t really a very big museum either; the girls weren’t missing anything by not making it around to this one.  I suppose the one nice thing about not going out quite as often is that I’m not blowing through nearly as much money as I was for the first month.  What can I say, girls loving shopping and café lunches.  For the moment I’ve switched to microwavable meals and fresh bread from the local boulangerie, at least until the new semester starts and I’m back on the school’s dining plan.  I do love being able to get fresh bread and pastries anytime I want.  That is probably France’s number one selling-point in my opinion.  And it really is impossible to feel more French than when you’re strolling down the street with an entire baguette in your hand.

The End of Part I of the Semester

Once again, I’ve been slacking on the blog front.  My friends and I have been cramming as much as possible into the past two weeks so that we would see all of the major sites in Dijon before they left.  We’ve spent a lot of time at the more historical and educational sites of the city.  We’ve toured the majority of the Palace of the Dukes now.  We climbed to the top of the tower of Philip the Good, where we had an amazing view of the city, and explored the wing of the palace which has been converted into the Musee des Beaux Arts (roughly translates to Fine Arts Museum I believe?)  The museum was really cool.  It has all kinds of art, from ancient Egyptian pieces, to rooms displaying art from every period of France’s history, to modern art.  

There were severally pieces from notable artists such as Rude, Manet and Monet.  The museum also houses the Tombs of the Dukes in a room with some of the most exquisite detail I’ve ever seen.  We also visited the Jardin des Sciences, which are gorgeous gardens which also house several sculptures and art exhibits, a planetarium and a natural history museum.  The planetarium was closed, but we did a quick tour through the natural history museum.  To be honest, that wasn’t really all that interesting, just a lot of stuffed versions of different species of animals.  There was a huge market going on in the city center last Saturday.  Naturally, with four girls, we spent a lot more money there than we should have.  They did have some of the best deals I’ve seen since I got to this city though.  I’m going to have to find out if that market was a one-time occurrence or if it is something that happens regularly here.  

We found out that the ice skating rink has really cheap skating and rentals on Sunday mornings, so we took advantage of that this past weekend.  It was a lot of fun (particularly watching Katie use the penguins meant to help the children skate in order to get around the ice) and I think that I’m probably going to make that a regular thing this semester.  During the week it got kind of rainy, so we spent most of our time either at cafes enjoying the local delicacies, or in the basement of the residence watching movies.  We watched one French movie called Les Intouchables (The Intouchables if you’re looking for the English version) which I would highly recommend – it was about a man who started working for a guy in a wheelchair and became friends with him, and it was absolutely fantastic.  The last of my Anglophone friends left this Saturday I’m afraid, so I’m alone at the residence now.  I'm really going to miss those girls, we all became great friends in the past month.  Hopefully we'll all be able to visit each other sometime in the future.  We did have a really good semester, with lots of interesting debates in our classes, and we learned a lot.  It’s going to be interesting trying to find things to do now though, considering the next semester doesn’t start until October 6^th.  I’m sure I’ll figure something out, and I’ll try to do a better job of keeping you guys up to date in the future!

                      ^ Lucy, Mareike, Helena and Katie

New Friends, Mustard and Velotours

   

 

 

A Week of Culture

Hey guys!  I suppose I really am overdue for a blog posting at this point.  Things have been pretty crazy the past couple of weeks, my friends and I have been trying to fit in as much culture as possible since the majority of them are leaving before the end of the month.  We spend most of our afternoons in the town center since our classes are usually over between noon and 3pm, and our teachers tend to not give very much homework.  Our absolute favorite place to go is Coffee & Muffin, which is a small café which serves ridiculously addictive chocolate milkshakes.  It’s usually perfect for the afternoon too, since the weather here makes it difficult to dress properly for the day.  It tends to be fairly cold when we have to get up and go to classes, and our classrooms are typically cold, but by the afternoon we find we are sweating.  We took a taste tour of the city the other day which was really fascinating.  Dijon is known for three things: mustard, cassis (aka black currants) and pain d’epices, which roughly translates to spice bread although I wouldn’t describe it as particularly spicy.  My favorite is the orange-flavored one.   The tour was really fascinating.  The guide took us all around the city, and described the history of food in Dijon, as well as showing us where we could get the best foods in the city, and showing us how the local products are made.  We got to sample several foods, however this didn’t go quite as well as Helena, Katie and I would have liked as we made the amateur mistake of going for crepes before the taste tour, and found that we could barely stand the thought of food for the rest of the day.  I also managed to run into someone else from Connecticut in town the other day!  There was an exhibit with an old American Field Services ambulance, and I got excited when I noticed that the license plate on the vehicle was one of the old Connecticut ones.  The man working the exhibit overheard me, and told me that he was from Franklin, and has a friend he works with who lives in Glastonbury!  It always shocks me how small this world can be.  Yesterday was the 2014 Dijon Velotour (basically a bike race, except you aren’t really racing), so a bunch of us decided that we wanted to participate.  Turns out it’s really cheap to rent a bike for the weekend here.  8,000 participants showed up to tour the city on their bikes, and we were taken all over, through various buildings, including a church and a greenhouse, and along the canal.  There was entertainment all along the course, from a stuntman on a unicycle to live musicians at both the halfway point and endpoint.  The whole thing had the feel of a festival which had been stretched out throughout the city. Katie, Helena and I did the main course, as well as the longer of the two detours, for a total of about 25k, or 15 miles.  All of the costumes that people decided to don for the event were hilarious, and all-in-all it was just a really cool way to spend a Sunday.  Definitely a unique part of their culture here.

La Ville

                

              

Wandering Dijon

Helena and Katie (two of the English girls) and I decided to follow the Owl Path around the city yesterday.  This is a self-guided tour, in which you can pick up a booklet for a couple of dollars from the local tourism center, and then follow these little golden owls that have been paved into the sidewalk.  It’s supposed to take you by all of the major attractions in the city, as well as give you a bit of background about each one.  It’s really nice because the city has a lot of really cool buildings in it (with really amazing architecture – I’m a bit of a nerd for gothic-style architecture) and the city center isn’t really that big, so the entire tour can be done in about an hour.  The only thing we wound up going into was the local Notre-Dame church (which was absolutely incredible) but we got to see where all kinds of things were, such as the Fine Arts Museum, the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, the local market (set up Tuesday through Saturday) and various parks.   We also raided the tourism office for pamphlets so we’d have plenty of things to keep ourselves entertained in the upcoming weeks (museums, tours of the mustard factory, castles not far from the city) and picked up some of the event flyers that were being handed out in the streets.  Personally, I want to go to a salsa dancing class that is offered every week from Tuesday-Thursday for various levels of dancer which is only 5 euro.  Apparently there is some kind of international music and dance festival going on right now, so every half hour or so we stumbled across performers dancing through the streets in full costume.  Clearly, this is going to be a very interesting semester.

“How was school today?” “School-like.”

Apparently the way this semester will be working is I am first in a month long language-intensive course with all of the CIEF summer students, and then in early October I will be joining the Université de Bourgogne’s normal students at the beginning of their semester.  I will be leaving about a month before their semester typically ends, so I’m not really sure how all of that is going to work out, but I suppose it’ll all work itself out eventually.   We took a placement test on the first day, and I tested into the 4^th of 5 levels, so I guess my ten years of studying the language are paying off.  There are nine other people in my class, however three of them finished their last day in Dijon on Friday (it seems that the schedule for the summer classes isn’t really set, there are certain days of testing that you can join on and then you can stay as long as you like) so I guess our class is about to get smaller.  I think that the level five class is even smaller, so I am pretty happy with where I tested percentage-wise (I’m guessing there are about 100 students in the program.)  One thing that we did find interesting is that the majority of the English and Arabic speakers seem to have tested into the upper levels, while the lower levels are made up mostly of the Asian students.  I suppose this is because English is so close to French that we have an easier time grasping the majority of the vocabulary, and many Arabic speaking countries also dabble in French.  I do find it interesting though that so many people were willing to come to a foreign country with such a poor grasp of the language.  I feel as if I would be terrified to go into a region where nearly everyone speaks a language that I can’t really understand.  I haven’t decided yet whether or not level 4 really seems fitting for me.  Some students do petition to change levels if they feel that they are in over their heads, or aren’t being challenged enough, but since it is only a month I think I am going to just stay put.  Sometimes I feel as if I am in the right level, as the material does seem to be about what I should be focusing on, specific grammar points and such, however the pace at which the class moves seems really slow to me.  However, I don’t think that I am the only one which feels this way.  One of the English girls is also in my class, and she says that she feels as frustrated as I do by the pace at which the teacher moves.  Maybe this is just typical of French professors, I’m not really sure.

My New Room

   

The Accommodations

I honestly still haven’t made up my mind how I feel about the accommodations here.  They aren’t really bad enough to be worth complaining about (compared to some countries, I’m sure these residences are wonderful) but they do still leave a lot to be desired.  The worst part in my mind is the showers.  They at least have hot water, which is more than I can say for the ones in Senegal, but they operate almost the same way as those sinks where you push a button on top and it takes about 10 seconds for the button to work its way back to the top, at which point the water shuts off.  The shower’s button probably lasts closer to 30 seconds, but it is still ridiculously annoying to have to be pushing a button a couple of times a minute just to keep the water flowing.  The “kitchen” that we were promised is also a disappointment, as we are merely given a fridge in each of our rooms, and then a microwave and sink that is shared by the entire floor.  From what I have heard from the other European students here, France is actually renowned for having really poor residence halls for its university students.  I suppose this is what happens when the students aren’t being forced to pay thousands of dollars for their education.  Still, I suppose it is nice to have our own space.  I would definitely prefer crummy residence halls to being in another homestay for the entire semester.  It will be interesting to see if the internet connection stays up this time.  The reason that it took me such a long time to start posting in the blog again is that we are not allowed Wi-Fi in the residence hall, so I had to bring my computer onto the campus to re-download the Ethernet driver for my computer, which was apparently never properly installed.  I managed to get this task accomplished just in time to have the entire residence’s internet crash.  Thankfully, it only took them four days to fix the internet, rather than the week we were originally quoted.  We all do find it rather annoying though, as the residence that we are staying in is solely for international students, so they are aware that everyone in the dorm is reliant on the internet in order to stay in touch with their friends and family back home.  We’ve tried going out to cafés and such to find Wi-Fi, but so far the only place in town we’ve been able to find with a reliable connection has been McDonald’s.  Hopefully this time the internet will stay up, but I’m afraid I can’t promise anything.  Since I am staying in the International Residence, there is quite a mix of students who are in the hall with me.  The majority seem to be Japanese, since I think there was a large school group which all came together.  I have also met students from New Zealand, Tunisia, England, Germany, Poland, Palestine and Brazil.  Those with common languages do tend to drift together, since it is nice to speak in our own tongue during our downtime, so I have been spending a lot of time with the girls from England.  We also tend to eat lunch with the Germans, since they have a fairly good grasp of English.

Dublin

Let’s Start from the Beginning…

Hello again, everyone!  I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get my blog going again, I’ve been having a lot of trouble finding an internet connection out here.  I’m in Dijon now, but it’s been a bit of a journey getting here.  I flew out of JFK on Thursday night, and arrived in Dublin at 6am local time, with a 13 hour layover.  I sweet-talked the customs officials into giving me a day pass so I could go out and see the city a bit rather than spending 13 hours sitting in an airport, and caught the first taxi I could find into the center of town.  I stopped off at a McDonald’s in order to get some breakfast and message my Mom while I waited for the city to wake up, and then set off exploring.  Unfortunately, since I don’t sleep very well on airplanes, I was pretty tired, and tired of walking around the city by about 10am.  I was about to call it quits and head back to the airport for a nap when I spotted one of those double-decker tourist buses.  I followed it back to their base and purchased a ticket, and proceeded to spend the next 2 hours being driven around the city and learning the history of all of the major stops.  I decided to take a less traditional approach to the city, and rather than descending to tour any of the famous churches or the Guinness factory (Ireland’s second religion) I opted for a tour of a local prison.  It was called the Kilmainham Gaol, and was active from about 1796-1924.  The prison had an extremely interesting history, as it was one of the first to consider the role of a prison as a reformative institution, and to separate the prisoners into separate cells and enforce silence at all times.  Several prisoners were also sentenced to death at the prison, and were either hung or shot by a firing squad in the courtyard.  One prisoner was gravely ill when he was sentenced to death, but they brought him in from the hospital on a stretcher in order to kill him.  The newer wing of the prison was constructed in a similar fashion to gothic churches, where everything is designed in order to draw the eye upwards, towards the heavens.  This was meant to encourage the prisoners to repent their sins.  This wing has also been used as a set in several films, such as the Italian Job.  Once I had finished at the prison, I headed back towards the airport, and caught a short flight into Paris, where I stayed for two days at what may be the coolest hotel I’ve ever seen.  It was called Citizen M, and everything in the room (lights and their colors, TV, music, curtains) could be controlled by a tablet that was right next to a super-comfortable bed.  Sunday morning I hopped on a bus which took me to Gare de Lyon (a Parisian train station) where I caught a train to Dijon.  I was supposed to be taking a shuttle to the school from the train station, but I waited for a few hours and never saw one so I eventually just gave a taxi driver the address that was listed on my paperwork stating that the University had promised me accommodations.  Thankfully, the address was for the building where I was supposed to be staying, so I suppose everything worked out for the best.  I just wish the communication had been a bit better going into the trip so some of these problems could have been avoided. 

Day 24 - Au Revoir Senegal

Well, it seems my time in Senegal is finally up.  I spent the morning having one last beach day with some of the American students and their host families, and I will be boarding a plane heading back to the US in just a few hours (conveniently landing the morning of my 21^st birthday!)  As sad as it will be to leave this country, and all of the friends that I’ve made here, I think I am ready to head back.  Most of us have our entire afternoons planned out for when we get back to Columbus.  Personally, I plan to go get a delicious Subway sandwich, and then take a nice hot shower, watch some Netflix and eat Reese’s before going out with my friends for some pool and drinking.  This past month has truly been an invaluable experience.  It has been amazing to live in a culture which is so different from my own, and to gain an understanding of a completely different set of values and beliefs.  Upon reflection, I don’t the people and their lifestyle here are really as different from US culture as I had expected them to be, in many ways it is as if they are simply a few years behind us.  The most shocking differences are all well below the surface, in their political perceptions and views on gender equality which have been shaped by centuries of tradition and religious influence.  I think that many of the people here are also striving to create a nation which is very similar to my own, although that may be a long ways down the road for them.  There is a lot of culture here, but I feel that a lot of it is intended as more of a tourist trap than an expression of the people here.  The parts of the culture which do matter to the people are the more tribalistic-clothing and music, both of which exist as often in American styles as African ones (although the people here tend to dress a bit nicer than the casual American style, jeans and t-shirts are not uncommon, and I here American music all the time – I’m actually glad that after today I will most likely not have to listen to Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ for quite a while).  Religion is also very important to the people here.  Mosques are everywhere, as are prayer rugs for their daily prayers (I believe they are required to pray five times per day).  Although the majority of the people are Muslim, the government is considered to be more Christian-based, and tends to follow the Christian holidays.  Evidently they take religion much more seriously here, as everyone stayed home from work and school today in honor of the Christian holiday of Ascension.  Having grown up in a Christian household for 18 years, I could not have told you that Ascension was today, or even really what Ascension is all about.  It’s interesting how much of a difference a few differences in core values can make in the shaping of a culture.  That’s all for now!  I hope you’ve all enjoyed following my adventures this month.  I will see you all again when I venture to France for Autumn semester!

Day 23 - Bittersweet Farewells

My time in Senegal is coming to a close.  Today we started off with a reflection on the trip, with everyone sharing both negative and positive impressions of the country.  Most of them were fairly predictable, such as the differences in hospitality and political expression, and the poor waste management and difficulty of trying to practice French in a country where it was really only the second language.  The one point which did spark a fairly heated debate, as usual, was the oppression of women in this country.  It’s an extremely complex issue, with lots of complications rooted in religion and tradition.  The attempts to create a feminist movement are also points of debate, and whether the role of women in the US ought to be used as a basis for comparison.  That argument went on for a solid 20 minutes before our professor finally just cut us off and told us it was time to head out.  After the reflection we had a sort of farewell-party with our Senegalese partners, a last-hurrah before heading back to the States.  Although I think that it is likely that many of the students from this trip will be returning.  Ashley has an internship lined up in January, which Chatondra is also looking into, and Pat and Kenisha have both made very close friends that they will most likely be coming back to visit.  Our farewell party was back on Ngor Island.  I think that’s Thiam’s favorite spot in the city.  It was a great way to wind down, relaxing on the beach and doing a bit of swimming.  I was considering asking for permission to swim back to the mainland from the island after we were done, since it isn’t really that far, until I realized that there were jellyfish in the water closer to the mainland.  We had a nice lunch at the island restaurant and then headed back, saying goodbye to all of the Senegalese students and our bus driver before heading back to our individual partners.  Other than that there really isn’t too much to report, it was kind of a lazy day.  I discovered that I can download a Nook app onto my tablet, so I’ve taken to reading again during my free time.  That’s how I spent the majority of the evening.  Our plane leaves the Senegal airport around 1am Friday morning, so tomorrow’s post will be my last.

Touba

Day 22: God's City? Or.....

Well, Touba was….. hot.  It was cool and all to see a really big place of worship, I’m just not sure it was worth a four-hour drive to the middle of the desert.  The majority of the people at Touba seem to spend almost all of their time napping, which I think makes them much smarter than us.  We took an hour-long tour in 110*F weather.  The architecture within the mosque was amazing, but it was difficult to pay attention to anything our guide was trying to tell us, because we were swarmed by young boys.  They tried begging for the first minute, but when it became clear we weren’t going to give them anything, they didn’t go away, they decided to follow us around and either listen to the lecture we were being given, or stare at the white people.  I couldn’t decide which.  Probably the most upsetting part of being at Touba was when we walked past a man lying on the floor of the temple whose face & body were covered in boils.  To be honest, I’m not even positive he was still alive.  It kind of made us all realize that it’s really common for people to go pray at major religious spots when they’re extremely sick, and clearly no one keeps them out here.  I can handle any kind of deformities or mental illnesses, but I’m guessing whichever diseases cause boils are probably a little more contagious.  Needless to say, we went through a lot of Purell when we got back onto the bus.  I was also amused by their insistence that everyone remove their shoes before entering the mosque.  This was intended to keep their place of worship clean, but the reality of the situation was that there was still sand everywhere and people were just getting sand on their feet instead of their shoes and tracking it all over the place.  I actually think that shoes probably would have been cleaner.  The gender bias in this country continues to amaze me.  I understood that it was important for the women to cover up when entering the religious city, to the point that the only thing actually showing were our faces.  However, I hadn’t realized that no such standards existed for the men.  I think they might have still been required to wear pants, but there were plenty of men wearing simple t-shirts.  It was really unfair.  No one should be forced to wear so much clothing when it’s that hot out, and clearly the men will never understand because they aren’t being forced to do the same.  I also really just don’t understand who decided that it was a good idea to build an extremely conservative religious city in the middle of the desert in the first place.  If you’re going to have one, at least put it somewhere cooler, like along the coast.  I think they actually chose one of the hottest places in Senegal.  And this isn’t even their hottest time of the year yet.  The one really cute touch the place did have was people outside of the mosques selling finches, you could buy one and release it to ‘release all bad feelings.’  It was a cute idea.  Also, a monkey ran across the road in front of our bus this morning.  I have no idea where it came from, or if monkeys are even native to Senegal.  I’ll have to ask the professor tomorrow.

P.S. The power outages have been getting more frequent.  We’ve probably had 5 or 6 during the past two weeks – at least during the time that I’m actually home.  Really not sure what that’s about.

I'm alive

My computer's refusing to connect to the internet right now, so you guys will have to wait until tomorrow to read about Touba, sorry for the delay.

Day 21 - Islam

Well, I write today’s post as possibly my last will and testament.  We go to Touba tomorrow, which is a desert where it is supposed to be over 100 degrees.  It is also a religious city, so everyone is required to wear extremely conservative clothing, meaning long sleeves and skirts, and scarves covering our heads.  There’s at least a 75% chance that I am going to die of heat stroke before the day’s over.  If I do die, I would like my ashes scattered off the coast of Maine, I feel like that’s a nice touch.  I don’t really have any money for people to fight over, so there’s no point in worrying about that.  Whoever wants my possessions can duel for them.  With swords. 

Nothing terribly interesting to report for today.  We went to a university that specializes in business, actually just down the street from where I’m living, and had back-to-back lectures on Islam.  To be honest I missed a lot of what was said, they kind of lost my interest once the lecture turned into more of a history lesson.  It’s hard enough for me to remember US history.  The one point that has managed to stick with me has been the lack of rights that Muslim women have.  The most shocking in my opinion is the role of polygamy in their relationships.  I’ve never really had a huge problem with polygamy before, it doesn’t bother me at all in the Mormon religion.  As long as all parties are aware that they are entering into polygamous relations, and are consenting, I fully support the right of people to do whatever they please.  However, that is not how polygamous relationships work in Senegal.  Here, a married man will start to see another woman on the side without informing his wife.  In fact, she is not told until he is actually engaged to the other woman.  Sometimes, the husband won’t even be the one to tell the wife that he has taken a second fiancée, he will convince his brother to handle the situation for him.  The majority of women here do not seem to particularly like this situation, but they also do not feel as if they really have a choice.  They have learned to accept that it is part of their religion, and there is very little they can do to stop their husband if he chooses to take on other wives as long as he is financially capable of supporting multiple families.  Divorce is almost unheard of in the Muslim religion, as it is only granted under extreme circumstances.  I think it will be a long time before the women here manage to gain a strong enough voice to be treated with the respect they deserve.

One Band, One Sound

 

Day 20 - Going Native

I continue to have no idea what the relationships are here between family, friends, etc.  People kind of just wander in and out, they often stay just long enough to say hello, and then wander back out the door no more than a minute later.  I’m not sure how far they’re coming from for such a short visit, although we do live behind the Mosque, so maybe they are dropping by after their religious services or something at least some of the time.  There’s one boy that showed up about 3 days ago, and he now seems to spend almost the entire day here, but he doesn’t spend too much time talking to most of the family, and no one made any attempt to introduce him to me.  The best guess I’ve got is that maybe one of the 28-year olds are engaged to him or something, but if that’s not it than I’m completely baffled.  I’m not even sure where he is in the house the majority of the time, as he seems to spend very little time in the common room where most people relax.  So far he only wanders out for some meals and soccer games (that Madrid game was both awesome and ridiculous by the way.  Poor Atletico… good thing I prefer Real – not that I actually watch soccer when I’m not being forced into it.)  We had lessons today in African-style drumming and dancing.  The drumming went significantly smoother than the dancing, although none of us were particularly good at either.  I now have a lot more respect for drummers in general, even though they’re job is just to keep the beat, it’s really not as easy as it seems.  We were all terrible at the dance.  I think that I’ve decided that even one of us could have done it perfectly, their style of dancing just seems ridiculous when it’s a white person doing it.  It’s just too tribal looking for us to pull off.  I think I’ll leave the dancing to the true Africans from now on.  Unfortunately, it appears that video was taken of a significant portion of this class, so you all may get your chance to laugh at our non-existent skills. 

Day 19 - Finally Learning the Ropes

I am quite certain that sheep are the most annoying creatures on the face of the Earth.  Why anyone ever decided that they wanted to domesticate these animals and bring them to live on their land is beyond me.  I do finally understand how we began slaughtering and eating animals though.  It had nothing to do with hunger.  Today was another pretty slow day.  Chatondra and I got up early (well, early in my mind) to go downtown and check out the shops there, since she still needed a gift for her brother.  There are a lot of cute booths down there, although I think a lot of it was geared towards tourists.  There are a bunch of rather pushy men who wander around looking for foreigners so that they can insist on either taking them to their shop, or ‘showing them around’ which actually means leading them directly to the shops with the most expensive goods, and trying to help the stores make a profit off of the ‘wealthy Americans.’  It actually worked out pretty well though, because we decided to cave to one of the guides and let him show us around, so we got a good feel for the market and found out where everything we wanted was while our guide kept unwanted company at bay.  When we got tired of following him, we claimed that we were hungry and going to get lunch (we actually did stop for a quick ice cream break) and then doubled back really quick to the spots where we had seen something we wanted to buy.  I also finally cracked the secret to haggling with the vendors.  Most of us have been struggling with that, I think because we are clearly Americans, and the shop keepers know that we aren’t used to having to barter for what we want.  It turns out, if you say what you are willing to pay, and then simply turn and leave when the vendor refuses to lower his price even a little bit, he will come running after you and agree to the price you had offered.  If only I had figured this out three weeks ago…

Day 18 - Home Again

Not too much to report today.  We left Toubab Dialo pretty early, and journeyed back to Dakar.  It was just the students this time, since I guess our professors had decided to stay another day for something, and a few of the students convinced the bus driver to let them out about an hour from Dakar because their African partners wanted to show them some kind of religious building.  I realized that on trips like this, I still don’t acknowledge the fact that we are all technically adults, since I am always shocked when people are permitted to do pretty much whatever they want to.  Everyone was kind of tired when we first got back, so no one really felt like doing anything, and Fridays are the religious days in the Muslim religion, so most things shut down in the afternoon.  I spent most of the day just browsing my wonderful American websites (which I’m pretty sure they just steal here like they do our music – the girls in my household are always playing these dress-up games online, but they are clearly on American sites) and then I went to the market in the afternoon under the pretense of getting more juice.  In reality I just wanted chocolate.  Food here is meant to be shared all the time, and the family would consider it rude if they found out that any of us kept our own food stocked in our rooms.  They would assume they weren’t feeding us enough at mealtimes, so it would be a personal affront.  We’re pretty sure that they wouldn’t understand the fact that American girls just need chocolate sometimes, so most of us have been sneaking out to get it from time to time.  I also stopped by the local pharmacy to see if they had anything good for allergies.  The hotel in Toubab Dialo had been crawling in cats, and the mediocre meds I brought just weren’t cutting it, so I decided that I was desperate enough to try sketchy African meds.  Those were effective, but they knocked me on my ass, so I wound up sleeping until dinner time (which is around 9:30pm here).  I’m still kind of tired actually, so I’m probably going to go back to sleep after I post this.

Toubab Dialo - View from our Hotel

Day 17 - Toubabs in Toubab Dialo

Can’t decide how I felt about today.  It was really interesting, and we learned a lot.  However, I think that our professors tried to pack too much into one day.  We were constantly on the move, and this was by far the hottest day we’ve had so far.  We were all ready to collapse by the end of the day.  We started off the day at a preserve, a small haven within a very polluted country.  The preserve was entirely run by women.  We listened to a lecture on the history of the preserve, and the efforts that they make, and then took a tour of part of the preserve as well as a small garden that they keep.  The garden seemed to be made almost entirely from recycled materials.  Smaller plants were grown in halves of plastic bottles, and peanut shells were used as soil.  Recycling seemed to be a big theme with the preserve.  The women make necklaces using recycled newspaper, and bags out of plastic.  Half of their profits go towards the preserve.  It’s pretty refreshing to see people actually caring about the environment for a change.  People here are terrible about dealing with trash, and what trash is collected is usually burned.  No one seems to understand that this is bad for the environment.  Our professor was surprised when we told him.  After the preserve, we drove to Joal to have lunch at Thiam’s parents’ house, and then walked down the street to a museum which was the house of Diogoye Senghor, the father of the first president of Senegal.  He was a fairly interesting man, although he seemed to be quite the womanizer.  He was a Christian, but he was also a polygamist.  We then went on a tour which led us across a couple of islands, both by foot and by boat.  The population on the main island was mostly Christian, which is the opposite of what is typical in Senegal, a country which is around 90% Muslim.  We visited a church there, and the other islands held a cemetery and a series of small huts which were used to store couscous after it had been prepared.  It was a good day for spotting wildlife.  Pigs run rampant on the island, and many of them had piglets.  There are also very colorful lizards, and roosters.  There was a pelican hanging out off the coast, and I tried to get a picture of it, but I’m afraid it didn’t come out very well.  Same for the little sand crabs that were scuttling about.  I also spotted a wild boar among the trees on our way back to Toubab Dialo.  That trip back was terrifying, by the way.  Buses simply do not belong on dirt roads.  They react much too harshly to potholes to be going over uneven ground all the time.  We didn’t do too much after we got back.  The Sengalese boys (four of our partners decided to accompany us this week) spent a decent amount of time trying to teach the American boys how to make a special kind of tea that is often drunk after meals here.  It was actually kind of cold here for the first time tonight.  The wind was coming in pretty strong.  I almost regretted not having a jacket.  Almost.

Day 16 - Sorry I'm Late in Posting

Looks like I’m not going to be having Wi-Fi here.  Oh well, I’m just going to write my posts anyway and I’ll upload them when I get a chance.  There’s supposed to be a little courtyard across the street which is sporadically open and has free Wi-Fi, so maybe I’ll be able to head over there at some point.  We are now in Toubab Dialo.  It’s another ocean-side city, and our hotel is absolutely gorgeous, and right on the beach.  Our only complaint so far is the water, which comes from a well and occasionally simply stops.  We spent most of the day just lounging on the beach, getting tan, climbing the rocks, and playing in the waves.  There are tourist-y little stands right outside of our hotel too if we decide that we want to buy some souvenirs, which is nice because it’s actually pretty difficult to find things like that in Dakar.  We had a writer come speak to us for about an hour, although to be honest I’m not sure I understood a lot of what he was talking about.  He talked a lot about dryness, and the universality of rhythm.  I’m pretty sure there was also something about salt-eating zombies, but I pretty much just gave up trying to understand at that point.  He looked kind of crazy too, so that wasn’t really helping.  We watched the sunset from our hotel’s deck, and later built a pretty good bonfire down on the beach, especially considering the amount of wood that we had to work with.  We borrowed Thiam’s speakers so we could play music and sing, and had a good time just hanging out, without the adults around.  All in all it was a pretty perfect day.

The View from Sea Plaza (Dakar mall)

Day 15 - An Average Day in Dakar

We have had two power outages in the last two days.  My host brother says that this typically happens when it’s really hot out, somehow that messes with their electricity.  I suppose that balances out, since I think their lines must be underground or something (since I have yet to see anything that looks like it deals with electricity), so they aren’t frequently struck by cars or lightning the way ours are.  I did find out that my phone’s flashlight was actually strong enough to light up an entire room though, so that was nice.  We had another double-lecture today.  The first was on the role of women’s rights.  The guest lecturer got into quite a debate with our professor over what Senegalese women ought to be striving for, feminism seems to be quite a controversial topic here.  Then again, when isn’t feminism a controversial topic?  The problem is, no two women want the same thing, but we still expect the world to conform to our individual ideals.  It was interesting to find out that Senegalese women are almost trapped in their marriages, because they can lose their pensions and inheritance if they remarry.  However, they do have a tendency to leave their husbands, not in divorce, but for a short period of time in protest when they are angered by their treatment.  The second lecture was another one on Wolof.  Oumou and Papis have also been trying to help teach me Wolof, teaching me common phrases and going over the material from the lectures with me.  It is a really hard language to pick up though.  I do alright with pronouncing the strange sounds, and reading the language, but the phrases are so long that it is difficult to memorize them.  I also feel like we’ve been given way too much information to learn in such a short period of time.  After the lectures a bunch of us decided to head over to a local market, since a lot of people want to have African clothes made before they leave.  It is much cheaper here to buy cloth and have a tailor custom-make your clothing than to buy it in a store.  Chattondra and I decided to walk instead of taking the Car Rapide with the others, since we didn’t want to have too many Americans in one group.  Turns out, we probably should have stuck with the group.  We found a market, but we have no idea if it was the one we were supposed to be going to, since we never found anyone selling fabric.  There were a lot of booths though and I don’t think we got to more than half of the market before we got tired and decided to head back.  Most of the booths were selling clothes that looked as if they were most likely second-hand.  It is kind of frustrating shopping here as a white woman, because you can’t pause to look at something without being flocked by vendors trying to force things on you.  I miss being able to just browse and take my time looking at all of their goods.  It continues to amaze me how good Dakar is for connections.  The city kind of reminds me of D.C. that way.  Embassies are everywhere throughout the city.  Dr. Saydi, the Dakar professor who has been accompanying us most days, runs into people that he knows everywhere, usually people with really diverse and interesting backgrounds.  Thiam finds a lot of people that he knows too, despite the fact that he hasn’t lived here in approximately a decade I believe.  Thiam found out that our women’s rights guest lecturer was going to an interesting conference in the afternoon, so he decided to leave us with the second speaker and accompany her instead.  One girl who is studying with us actually hasn’t been coming to the majority of our lectures, because on one of the first tours we took of the city, we were introduced to a man who works in the burn care unit at the local hospital, and he offered her an internship for the remainder of her time here.  He is working on creating such a center in the US, since there are too many burn victims here for the hospital to handle, and many of the ones with money are transported to Europe for care, and I guess Ashley has experience in advertising so they decided to team up.  Everyone here seems to thrive on the connections that they make.  Apparently tomorrow we are leaving for another 3-day trip (it was in the schedule but no one actually understood that it was more than a day trip until someone asked a question about it this afternoon) so bear with me if I do not post anything for a few days.  Hopefully I will be able to find Wi-Fi there but I’m not making any promises.

Day 14 - More lectures. Yayy.

I was starting to think that maybe things weren’t really safe in this country for girls, as I’ve been getting heckled more and more when I go out into the streets by myself.  I’m gradually realizing though that it’s not all girls, just the blonde American ones.  Lucky me.  We had two guest lecturers today.  The first was about Saint-Louis, it discussed the importance of the city as a major trade port, and the French and English fight for ownership of the region.  I didn’t really catch most of the details, I’ll have to read over my notes later to grasp the full lecture.  I’m not particularly good at simultaneously copying down notes and listening to lectures when they’re in French.  I should probably work on that.  The other lecture was another Wolof one, but we had a different professor this time and he was much better than the first.  He actually taught us some useful verbs and phrases, as well as the basic conjugations.  Actually, Wolof seems to be much simpler than most languages, unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever have a use for it again after this trip.  This has been the most useful thing we’ve learned so far: Ndax dègg nga wolof? Déeded, waante maangiy jàng wolof.  That roughly translate to: Do you understand Wolof?  No, but I am in the process of learning Wolof.  That will probably be the only full sentence that I actually attempt to memorize.  I think we’re supposed to have another lecture in Wolof tomorrow, hopefully we will be able to get the same professor for that one.  I think it’s kind of strange actually that roughly half of our lectures have been about Wolof.  Our French has gotten plenty of practice, but we haven’t really been learning about anything that relates to French.  I’m fairly certain that if the study abroad office knew what was going on during this trip they’d be fairly upset.  That and the fact that our professor hasn’t been sticking to our schedule at all.  We’ve stopped even reading it, because nothing on it is ever right.  We just ask him each day when and where he wants to meet us the next day.  Out of the three papers we were supposed to have written by now, we’ve only written one, and it was in a blog posting style rather than a typical essay format like it was originally supposed to be.  Not that I’m complaining about the lack of work, I’m just giggling at the idea of the school learning what we’ve been up to.  For now I will just enjoy it and hope that lack of assignments means that he plans on being an easy-grader for this class.

P.S. The three year-old in the house just bumped into my computer, and it fell and part of the screen is cracked.  Since it’s a touch screen, this could create problems.  If things get worse and I can no longer use it, I will try to start getting to WARC earlier so I can type up a blog piece before classes, but posts might become less frequent, especially if we’re going on day trips.  Fingers crossed the cracks just stay as they are, and don’t complicate things.  (And yes, things like this do always happen to me.  Deal with it.)

 

Sunset by the Beach

Day 13 - Beach day

Enjoyed catching up on sleep today.  Pretty sure my family was judging me because I didn’t get up until about ten, when I’m pretty sure they wake up around 5 or 6am most mornings.  I don’t care though, it felt good.  I didn’t get nearly enough sleep when we were at Saint-Louis.  I spent most of the morning just hanging out, talking to friends and listening to music that I like for a change (they listen to American music all the time here, but for the most part its rap or reggae, which aren’t particularly my favorites.  I was missing my rock and alternative.)  In the afternoon I decided to accompany a couple of the boys and their host brothers/host brothers’ friends to the beach.  For some reason, when I walked through the Case de Mermoz (kind of like a concrete park near where I live, we’ve been using it as our meeting place), I was having a lot of issues with being hit on by creeps today.  One literally stopped his car to tell me that he loved me.  In English.  It was awkward.  I wound up calling Pat to find out where he lived so I didn’t have to wait for them to get to the Case.  We took a Car Rapide to the beach.  That was pretty cool.  It’s their version of a bus, but it only costs $0.20 to go anywhere in the city.  You mount the bus from the back, and there are guys that actually hang off the back of the buses to note who’s getting on so they can come collect money from some them at some point.  Once everyone who wants to has boarded, they bang on the roof to signal to the bus driver that he can move again.  It’s an interesting system.  When they get really crowded, more than just the guys who work for the Car Rapide will be hanging off the back.  Not sure it’s exactly safe, but I suppose it works.  The beach we went to was pretty nice.  There were a lot of rocks in the water though once you got out past waist height, so we determined that it wasn’t really safe to swim, since the waves coming in there were above our heads sometimes and we were afraid of being sucked into the rocks.  I know I definitely got pulled under two or three times.  You probably could have surfed there if you were willing to brave the waves to get out there.  I still haven’t really gotten used to seeing cactuses growing on the rocks here.  It doesn’t really seem like the right climate for them, but I guess they’re thriving here.