Hotel Le Lagon 2 Dakar

... not hours, and it is wonderful. For those who don't know Julie and Kareem, I can tell you that there are few places outside of DC where I would feel more at home than in their home anywhere in the world. Julie and I first became friends by crying about our homesickness and the difficulty of school during our first year at Georgetown (she would go on to be valedictorian of the School of Foreign Service), and we lived together during our second year ...

... every now and again to the playing fields to see our teams clean up the competition.  I tried my luck at surfing, but of course the wind turned the ocean into a bunch of chop.  Fair enough, I found plenty of other ways to occupy my time...like beer and live music!  We were staying all over the city, but we all managed to meet up in the evenings for some fun parties.  Towards the end, my brain started to scrabble ...

... about Islam before dinner and heard a lot of the same information I have been hearing in class. Later on in the night I attended the explorer's seminar. We watched the movie "Cocaine Cowboys" which depicted the rise and fall of the cocaine wars in the 70's and 80's. One of the most interesting things I found out in the movie was that in the early 80's Castro sent boatloads of people that he thought were unfit for Cuba to the US. The movie was very ...

... repairman if it was ok to plug in my laptop adapter into a certain outlet(the outlets still looked odd to me, I tried to show him that my adapter is 120-240V). He didn't understand english, and just shoved it in the outlet, and I was like 'oh my gosh, it could have started a fire' Luckliy it worked. But after that, he saw the deadbolt lock on my door. He noticed it was loose and came back to fix it. Then he gave back AGAIN with ...

... chemins de fer et l'embarcadère pour Gorée et ailleurs. C'est tout. D'un côte et d'autre de la péninsule il y a une île, à gauche c'est Gorée et à droite la Madeleine.... Putain allez consulter le Lonely Planet, cette description ne sert à rien, disons juste que j'ai bien aimé cette ville et j'ai trouvé très chouette le service des « Sister Taxi », des petites voitures jaunes où tous les chauffeurs sont des femmes. Le Sénégal traverse une période difficile, lui aussi ...

... one of them was on the slightly negative side. The story of my week actually starts on the day of my last email. That morning when I woke up, I was not feeling very well but I just brushed it off. After I came back from writing the email and running one other errand, I went back to my room and effectively collasped in bed. My sister was off at Ile de Gorée with one of her friends from school who randomly was in Dakar ...

Today we traveled to Pikine which is one of the poorest areas of Dakar. We visited a school where the ages of the children range from kindergarten to 5th grade. I have never seen such a mess in my life! The school consisted of 4 classrooms all of which had holes in the roof and concrete falling from the walls. The "courtyard" was nothing more than an area full of sand and make-shift benches. Despite the fact that this was the most poor and sad looking area I have ever ...

... me so mluch here and tell me to have seconds looking upset if I dont! But there we go, the food is goodloqds of fish and rice. When people come in the house around lunch time or dinner time they are literally forced to eat. A guy came in the opther evening refused to serve himself but was forced to eat and was served a huge plate by the niece its nuts! Family are lovely though, they gave me a dress today for no real reason... Loads of love xxx

... our african american HR manager who grew up "in the (housing)projects" ie.the ghetto, in Washington DC) and Peter (British Reg prog Mngr) - all ended up talking over lots of ice cold beers on a hot sticky night about our respective "sense of where we are each from" and also where we most "belong" and "are most at home" (if those are different) and our different attitudes to community and family.... and what we have learnt. It was a really special evening, quite memorable, as was the bill.

... at one extroverted lady's instigation. Bunuel's Subida al Cielo (Mexican Bus Ride) has got nothing on this. Then there were the endless expanses of baobab trees, looking nothing so much like little African baby dolls rising from the landscape with thick trunks gradually tapering to tufted hair and stubby limbs. It was like a dream and a nightmare handing off the baton through the night. When the train finally rolled into the ...