Joyeux Noel

We had a Christmas party at our apartment.  About 15 girls came which was really exciting.  Most of them were Becky's friends/current & former students.  Amanda and I invited two girls that we've become friends with at the shop that sells American products.


So, three days before Christmas, we put decorations up. 

As I look at this now, it seems pathetic.  But it really did feel Christmas-y.

Amanda and I with our two new friends! :)

When people first started arriving, it was a tad bit awkward.  Or maybe more than a tad.  So what do I talk about?  How bad my Wolof is.  That usually makes people laugh.  Becky finished cooking and we served dinner.  We had fajita style mexican-y food..  white rice, black beans, grilled peppers and onions with beef.  Did anyone actually like it?  Maybe 1 or 2 girls out of 15.  It's really funny to watch them move the food around much like we do when we go to their houses.  There is a huge difference, however.  They don't eat hardly any of it and didn't mind telling us that they didn't like it.  We could NEVER do that in their house.  We seriously get force-fed til our insides are going to explode and then get told we didn't eat anything.  So I had a good time last night telling them to "eat" which they didn't do at all. 

Becky read the Christmas story in Wolof to them and there were no cries of outrage (always a good thing).  They all took it well, in fact.  We then made a chain by writing things we were thankful for and introducing ourselves and reading out loud.  Overall, the evening turned out pretty good! 




We went to a nearby village for Christmas where our friend Sherrill lives.  It was a nice relaxing time for the most part.  Lots of laying around and eating :)  My kind of time!  haha...  The food we had was delicious!  Fresh green beans are coming into season here now so we had the first of them..  along with homemade mashed potatoes, chicken, my corn casserole (that I saved my one box of Jiffy and creamed corn for), etc...   The only not so good thing was that none of us slept very well because our cousins decided to chant literally all night long to make their presence known..  Monday night, I slept for 12 hours straight after not sleeping much over the holiday. 

Here's a pic of us eating our Christmas meal together:

On Monday on our way home, we stopped to go to Acrobaobab.  It was phenomenal!!!  It's a ropes course through Baobab trees.  Seriously cannot wait to go back and do it again!  Amanda, on the other hand, would be happy if she never got in another tree again.  So she took our pictures!

Here is Acrobaobab...  just kidding!  Playing in a litle kids playground.  I'm training ;)

Aren't the trees just gorgeous? 

This is the very last thing you do after you've completed the course you get to zip line down!

After the ropes course, you could rock climb the tree if you wanted to.. when your arms were like jello. 

You can barely see but I made it almost all the way up!

Finally, as a closing treat.  Amanda and I decided to buy these as Christmas presents to ourselves because we laughed so hard when we found them. Even better is the look on any African's face when they see us in them...