Hotel Neptune Saly

... for a small tropical excursion. It was amazing…the pictures speak for themselves. The island has nothing on it whatsoever but a bunch of birds and two small structures. One is a shade structure that I'm assuming the “tourism” people built on the island. The second is this old half-standing building that our “guide” (aka a random Senegalese man) explained to us was “haunted” (sort of ...

From Toubakouta we hired a sept place to take us all the way to the lovely and tiny fishing village of Toubab Dialaw. So peaceful and a really friendly place! We even ended up gettin our very own tourguide free of charge called Jamil who insisted on taking us everywhere around "his village" and often tried to convince us that we should stay there forever...he didnt even ask any of us to marry him ...

... time: beach weekend. Thies is about 30 mins away from a popular beach called Popenguine so every training stage gets together and rents a house for the weekend. We got a place right on the beach and spent a wonderful 36 hrs after morning classes on Sat/ before classes started on Mon at the beach. I was lucky enough to find a bed but some ppl brought tents and camped out on the beach, some slept on the floor, some didn't sleep, for those of you who ...

... the Parc de la Langue de Barbarie which is about 15 k from me. There are a few campements around us owned by expats from Switzerland and France so I'm hoping to make some friends and use their pools for free. One campement even has kayaks and windsurfers that they'll let us use which is excellent. The parks are near the mouth of the Senegal river which is seperated from the ocean by a thin peninsula. The whole area ...

... that they were setting up the framework for bilingual programs. As we walked around the campus, I saw my first baobab, the magnificent trees that I was introduced to in Le Petit Prince. Surrounded by the buildings, they did not have the same presence as they did in the countryside. We toured the library and thought the facility was nice, the actual resources (books, etc.) were disappointingly low. I was not sure what surprised me more-the facilities or lack of resources ...

... Senegalies fishing boat usually pushed around with one long stick like a gondola) with a motor and took a two hour boat trip to the mangroves and the deserted island we would be staying on. We ate cake packaged in plastic and celebrated Steven's birthday. The cake was surprisingly good and as we neared the island things got even better. One sole Rasta man lived there. It couldn't get more cliche then that but then we set up our tent on the beach and made ready ...

... il y en a au Quebec. Audrey et moi, on fait un stage dans un milieu difficile, fermé. Plusieurs personnes voulaient que je leur parle du stage que je faisais... Avant maintenant je preferais ne pas entrer dans les details, pour moi meme me convaincre que c'est ainsi, cest culturel... Non, je n'accepte pas tout les yeux fermer, je cherche a comprendre, mais je ne comprends pas toujours pourquoi... On ne peut malheureusement pas comprendre une culture en seulement deux mois...

... woke up those who were sleeping and brought out those who were awake. Mama tried to kill the roach by throwing her shoe at it, but instead, the shoe bounced off of the wall and flew back at us. The two of us, along with my two older brothers, laughed for a good five minutes while our dramatic little sister rolled around on the floor in fits of laughter. There's nothing like bonding over the killing of an innocent (dirty, disgusting ...

Hello! I've just finished week five of training here in Thies. This has been the hardest week by far. I had over 35 hours of training in language and reached the 100 hour mark. Only 20 more hours of language left to go. Next monday I find out where I will be placed for the next two years. Even though I have a very good idea of the location things are constantly changing here so I havent let my mind get wrapped around one city. It will be SOUTH ...

Hello! The journey begins tomorrow morning at 5AM. Mum is going to drive me to the airport, and my brother Matt will meet us there to say goodbye. I'm not really nervous yet. I think i'm in pre-departure shock. Very excited to get started though, and ready to escape the snow. Thank you all for your well wishing and support. For the first ...