Monday, September 5, 2011

I'm here!


After almost 24 hours of travel I arrived in Senegal.  There were three other girls from my program on my flight from Paris to Dakar.  It was great to get to know them, and to have company in the line for customs and the wait for baggage.  You should know that we disembarked from the plane right down to the pavement outside (a first), then took a van to the airport entrance.  After getting photographed and fingerprinted at customs, we waited for our bags the 1 baggage claim for the entire airport. Next we were picked up by Bouna, an important guy at SIT, and taken to the Hotel Good Rade where we will be staying for the week.  A nice hotel; I have a comfy bed, and the room has AC, which is much appreciated because it is VERY hot and sticky outside.

Today the entire group (21 of us) met for breakfast at the hotel. Then we walked down to the street to what I would call a restaurant, which had a large room in back where we had orientation all day.  Basically our academic director, Souleye, spoke to about the ins and outs of the program.  It will be more of the same thing all week.  Tomorrow we will go to the SIT head quarters, our home base, where all classes, activities, etc will be.

This is what we had for lunch. It's called chebujan (spelling?), the national dish of Senegal, which means fish and rice.  It was basically rice topped with seasoned balls of compressed fish, fish fillet, carrots, eggplant, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, all covered in a delicious sauce. Four or five people sit around one of these plates and you grab some food, roll it into a ball in your hand, and eat it! Then you lick your hand clean after you finish.  Very messy to say the least--I was covered in rice by the end, but it was definitely a totally new eating experience.
 

We learned a bit of Wolof today too.  Merrill laa tudd (my name is Merrill)! The teachers are all great, all Senegalese, and all fulent in Wolof, French, and English! Gives me something to aspire to! Also everyone in my group is awesome.  I look forward to getting to know everyone better in the months to come.

This is a picture of the road from the hotel. I'm really here!


1 comment:

  1. Ahhh! I miss Ceb u Jen! If you bring me some ingredients I'll make you some when you get home=}!
    Enjoy!

    ReplyDelete