eeeek! never enough time (2/5/03)

sorry guys, this will be a short email but action packed of course. i'm having another great week. about to go to art class to finish my batik project. this weekend was crazy. i decided to be adventurous and go to a little coastal town 3 hrs away with some friends. that sounds harmless enough but as with everything in senegal, it was an experience. they don't have the type of transportation i'm used to: buses, trains, etc. well they do, but if u want to go for bargains, and everyone does, u take this thing called a sept place. it's basically a station wagon that can transport 7 people. but there's not a set price. u spend 30 min bargaining, walking away many times before you finally decide on a price. 7 of us go a round trip fare for 25 bucks. that's 6 hrs for less than 4 dollars a person. amazing. when we arrived to this lil town, mboro, we found these adorable little huts, where we spent the night. we had the whole place to ourselves since it was off season, took over the bar, played whatever cds we had and danced the night away after a huge meal. yumm-my. the next morning we woke up early, walked along the beack, collected shells, read for our lit class and talked to random people. we met one guy who lived a lil ways down the beach who took us into the village to eat. he also gave me a bag of shells for my hair. now i'm styling. what was really surprising was that our driver actually showed up at the agreed upon time the next day and we made it back to dakar in one piece. life is good.

on a more serious note, but stranging comforting in a weird way...friday night one of the girls in the program was mugged....well more or less. teh attacker tried to steal her camera. she began to scream help, however, and about 10 guys ran to her rescue and chased the attacker down. i have never lived anywhere where people actually come to your aide when you yell help. anyway, nothing was stolen and everything was fine. of course, i don't want to test the calling for help system personally but it's good to know that there is always someone there to help if need be.

anyway, this weekend i'm going to a lake near dakar where the water is supposed to be red. some weird reflection thingy. then the next two weeks we have group trips to saint louis, the ancient capital of senegal, and joal, where leopold senghor, former president, was raised. i'm looking forward to both trips. and in 2 weeks, papa gets back from mecca. unfort, i will miss the big celebration, being in saint louis in all, but it should be fun.
well, time is up but i look forward to hearing from yáll. mmuuaahh

maya