Day 1 in Senegal

This may be a bit jumbled because I don’t want to sit on the laptop for too long, but here are a few highlights from my first day in Senegal.

We flew in at about 5 am, and got to the apartment. Codou’s family is loud and wild and so stoked to see her! I wish I could understand some words in Wolof.

The food rocks. This morning (at 1:30pm when we woke up) we had this huge dish on the floor and we all sat around it and ate. Really spicy good food. Tonight for dinner we had a huge dish of fresh lamb. It was so moist and full of flavor mmmyeah it was excellent! To drink they have bottled water around, Sprite, Fanta, or this unbelievably sugary pineapple juice. It tastes like you’re literally drinking candy.

The roads are mostly just made of sand and the the drivers here are absolutely nutso. There are no traffic lights or signs or anything, and apparently there aren’t any rules either! There are piles of cars just trying to get around each other.

One thing that is absolutely killing me is the language barrier. There is one sister, Awmy (no idea how to spell it), who is 21 and learning English so we can talk with her a little. Oumy, the model who lives in Nice, France but has an apartment here where we’re staying, speaks English really well. But most of the time they are all loudly jabbering away in Wolof!! It’s so nuts! I can’t seem to pick up any patterns at all… the only thing I’ve learned in Wolof so far is “jiddy jiff” which means thank you. Again, no idea on the spelling. . I don’t have time to consciously write the way I want to but like I said, I’ll have to give you quick snapshots.

It’s really humid and pretty hot but not unbearable. We have AC in our rooms so that is something to be thankful for.. Anyways I should get to bed so I don’t get too thrown off and jet lagged. It’s nearly 1 am here. I probably won’t upload any pictures until I get home, sorry!

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