sewering in

Last Friday we swore in  officially at the ambassador house in Dakar. It was really nice we all got dressed up in traditional Senegalese dress and took the same oath of office that the president takes. Then we had a representative from each langue group give a speech in the local langue. It was really nice but all in all it was like every other graduation I sat through a lot of talking and went and shook hands. After that we descended upon the food like ravenous dogs. The funny part was that it was in the ambassadors garden and we walk out and the food is on tables on the grass. Which confused us because we have been walking around in sand for a long time so we were like can we walk on this I don't want to kill it. Lucky for us food is more powerful and we charged on. After gorging ourselves with food we went to the american club to fill out paper work and spend the rest of the after noon lounging by the pool. afterwards we headed back to the training center and had dinner in Thies. Then next morning we packed up our stuff and said good bye to each other as we slowly trickled out of the training center. We then headed to the regional house were we will spend the next few days buying every thing we need to install in our sites. I have spent the last couple of days meeting my new work partners. Last night we went out to this chicken restaurant that was the worst dive I have ever been in but I got a quarter of a chiken salad and fries for 1500, plus it was amazing food. After theses couple of days I am headed off to my new village for a five week stent so I will be out of contact for a while but I am spending theses five weeks learning the language. Of course it dose not hurt that our country director said if we did this he would cook any thing we wanted at his house. So heres hoping for bratwurst and potatoes.

beaches, good byes, deaths, and random cow intestines.

out side my host families house

street out side my house

right out side my house

beach at popengine

my host brothers

two of my host sisters

the family car outside my window

my host parents house

my room

me and my host mom (the one in the pink)

me and my adoptive mom (pink) and my aunt

So first things first we are perfectly fine over here. I know bin ladin is dead and every one I have talked to over here is perfectly fine with it to they just can't understand why we would party in the streets over killing some one. Quite frankly niether can I.  Any way now for the second most important news DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE MAIL AT THE TRAINING CENTER. MY NEW ADDRESS IS:
 BP 06 Djilor-Saloum
Senegal West Africa
any mail sent to the training center I will not get until mid summer.

I am happy that I have gotten to the point where I speak seereer and people know what I am saying. Walking down the streets of ngoundian I feel like a native and people have been treating me as one. Wich brings me to a funny story last weekend when took a weekend off and went to popenguine witch is a beach side town gourgious. I spent the week end swimming in the Alantic and lounging around. Any way when me and my friend Jessica (who is also from misssouri, the other side) went up to get supplies and nurious our bodies we were walking down the streets and seeing french tourists looking like we did two months ago. mean while we are walking down the streets greating everyone and talking. Half way through our journey we look at eachother and said "they are treating us different than the french tourists" to wich I replyed wait we are not white any more?" Proof that either I am delusional or the immerson program really works. I am going with the latter.

This last week was bitter sweet in the village for two raesons first is that I had to say good bye to my host fammily, sad times expecally saying good bye to my mothers and host sisters. I had to say good bye in the middle of a funeral, for those of you who know me this should not supprise you since I never do anything normal. My host grandmother died and the whole family came in from out of town and by whole family I mean over 100 people. I went home and people were confused at why a white tubaub is walking around in the middle of ngoundian. Then I totally blew their brains when I awnsered bonjour back in seereer. I made friends, some enimies, had to fight off random relitives trying to marry me to my sisters, but I got plenty of Bissap juice all day. Seriously this stuff is amazing and I have devloped a bad addiction to the stuff. I don't know what I will do when I go back to the states and start having withdraws. On a side note I should say thins about Senaglies Culture. People over here do not travil alot so when the occasion arrives for the family to get to geather they stuff their faces with good food. This useusally means the slaughtering of an animal, wich I did not get to see (sad face). Which leads me to the list of

WIERD ANIMAL PARTS I HAVE EATIN IN AFRICA
1: Cow kidneys
2. Cow stomic (or as my family said the eating part of the cow stomic)
3. Cow heart (delicious)
4. Cow small intestines

The first three where at the funeral (which was has been going on for two days) My family slaughtered a cow and we ate the meat for lunch then the other goodies for dinner. The kidneys were not bad although I am pretty sure I found a kidney stone, or rock I don't know wich. The heart was amazing tender and flakey, witch you would not think about since it is the strongest mussle in your body. Who knew that in biolab I could have suplimented my lunch with tastey heart, that is if it was not pumped full of fermaldihide. The stomic was ok just really chewy and hard to cut with a spoon. The small intestines I ate at one of our fellow trainie's houses and hermom cooked us macceronni and potatoes and cow. Excited we started chowing down on the delcious and seemingly american meal. Then I got a giant bite of atipose tissue (fat for non bio people) and was like hells yes. Mainly because I have not eatin anything with fat for the last two months. Then we started to look at it more closely and saw that there were small little finger like folds sticking out of the piece of meat. Then we all looked at each other and were like ewwwwwww and took another piece. Of course the next day my friend Kirstin who lived in my compound got sick and threw out. Other than that I am looking foward to swearing in but am very sad I will most likly never see my host family agian.