KO (Senegal)

Hi guys! Senegal is treating me very well. We started classes on Tuesday and theyre all going well so far. As you can probably tell, im also getting used to the different keyboard, but now i think it will be hard to go back to the english version.

it became very clear that cell phones are necessary and there is a guy at the baobab center where our program is located that said he would get us phones with sim cards for 30 000 cfa; which is about 60 american. my friends lily and margarent and i thought that was a little steep, so we went to this legit looking shop and asked the guy ther what the cheapest phone we could buy was and he showed us a nicer motorolla with a camera etc and he said since we were buying 3 he would give them to us for 20 000 each, plus 5 000 for the sim card. well we didnt have that much cash on us so we said wed come back. when we did; we gave him the money and he said he had to go get the phones, we assumed he had them under he counter. so he left on his moped with our money and came back an hour later with 3 different used crappy phones. we said we didnt want them we wanted the ones he showed us and he didnt really seem to understand french that well; but he got on his moped again and said he would be back in 5 minutes and we made sure he understood we wanted NEW phones. After he was gone we went and got someone from the baobab center who could talk to him in wolof and he returned another hour later with 3 of the same used phone. Again we said no we just want our money back, but this meant he had to leave again to return those phones from where ever he had gotten them and brough us our money back another hour later. Then; while I was getting luch the guys boss had the audacity to ask lily and margaret for 5 000 (10 dollars) for the trouble of making the guy run all over town. They laughed in his face and then the boss asked to take them out dancing. It was quite an ordeal so then we all decided to pay the 30 000 for the phones we knew we could trust.

Last weekend we went out with Amadou from Beloit, and 2 of his friends. We had dinner at Amadous house at midnight and then we went to a club and did lots of dancing until 4am. it was a lot of fun and the club had tons of prostitutes and it was kind of amusing to watch these pretty senegalese women with this kind of creepy old european men. we all got hit on a ton and we decided that in the future well all just say that we are all dating the one guy in our group of 8.

last night was one of the girls in our groups birthday, so we went out for dinner and then to this jazz club where we saw this reggae band play. when we were walking to the club these 2 guys on a moped tried to grab one girls bag, but she managed to hang on to it and run after them until they gave up. we were all on edge after that, i was worried because i had my camera with me; but the rest of the night unfolded without incident.

tonight is a muslim holiday called tamxarit in senegal, but something different everywhere else it the world. i realy have no idea what it i celebrating, but ive been told that is like a combo of halloween and thanksgiving. there is tons of food in my kitchen, which im very much looking forward to eating, and evidently all of the men are supposed to dress in womens clothes. hopefully by the end of the night ill figure out what is going on.