Enjoy :)

It's been a week since the candidates were announced for the upcoming election.  We've had to be cautious at times and so last weekend I had a lot of time on my hands.  I decided to spend some time making my first video :)  I hope this gives you a glimpse into what life looks like here!

Flashback to the 80's.. anyone?

Our heads were starting to itch + having to sunscreen the parts that never see sunlight = time to come out. 

500 hair tie removals.
1 hour to take out.
One pound of hair lost in the process.

Good thing Amanda looked up a make-it-yourself hair serum (an egg + olive oil) to give our hair some TLC after some major mistreatment.

Also, I learned the Wolof words during this process for dry skin and itchy which will probably never be useful again.

Island trip and cow legs!

This is our last week of language.  So naturally, the good students that we are, we would like to party instead of learn.  So today was leave the house day for an adventure.  [To be fair, yesterday we worked for an hour later than we were supposed to and the next two days are going to be real language days as well].  This is how the conversation went down:

Lindy:  We decided that we don't want to learn today.
Amanda:  Which is different from any other day?
Lindy:  What can we do that is fun here that we haven't already done?
Patricia:  I'm thinking.  We can go to [insert market name here].
Amanda:  Okay, that's fine.
Lindy:  No way!  If you've been to one market here, you've been to them all.  Let's do something we haven't done before. 
Patricia:  Okay, I'm thinking.
Lindy:  You're a native here!  Surely there has to be something fun in this city that we haven't done.
Patricia:  Okay, we can go to this island.  You have to take a little boat to get there.
Lindy:  Yes!  That is it!  Let's go!
Amanda: [Immediately goes and takes a dramamine]
Patricia:  You're taking medicine?  It's just a little boat.
Amanda:  That's why I'm taking medicine.
Lindy:  Nu dem (let's go!)

We procede to get in a taxi that almost hits a man walking across the road and then "runs out of gas" aka breaks down right before we get to our destination.  So we walk. 

The absolute best part of the day was watching our language teacher get in and out of this boat that took us literally what seemed like 20 feet away to this random island.  The water is incredibly clear which is surprising to say the least as there is very little beauty that isn't destroyed in this country somehow or another. 

The actual island was not too terribly exciting.  Just walked around.  Just nice to be on the beach for a day.  I did find a really cool African outfit that I thought was a onesie but it wasn't.  Close enough.   When we came back, everyone was jumping out of the boat on one side so it started to tilt.  I thought it was gonna flip so I jumped out real fast which apparently knocked it even more off kilter which made Patricia fall.  Oh man, how I love that lady!  She is absolutely hilarious and not steady on her feet.  Anyhow.  Enjoy these pictures!  Still rockin' those braids!  Amanda is cheating and covering hers :)

Oh yeah, these life jackets don't close in any way.  Good thing we're not going far.

Also, this is quite disturbing to me.  Yesterday, I was walking to go see some sheep that I really like (and by loving these sheep we get invited into a home of this really cool family!)  and I pass by this guy with this bucket on his head.  I knew what they were - I just didn't know from what animal.  So I call Amanda and Patricia (who are at a boutique) to come see this.  The guy informs us that these are cow legs.  I ask if we can take a picture and he says we have to pay.  This was well worth spending a dollar to show the world what in the world kind of stuff is sold here.  Patricia's input:  "Oh, they're soo delicious!"  Yeah, right.

In case you're curious, one leg will set you back about six US dollars.

Hello there forehead!

So I always think that I don't have alot to blog about.  But when I actually do sit down to write an update, I have a lot more than I think.  So I'll just update with a lot of pictures and some words on the important points.

First up:  Tea making lessons.

Thing #8756 I've never done before:  Light charcoal with none other than the trash paper on the street.

This is after I've spilled the tea several times.  Starting to get the hang of it here :)  It's a lot harder than it seems!



Second, we went up a "mountain" (aka a glorified hill but might as well be a mountain as I don't exercise) to a lighthouse.  It's really calm and nice up there.  You can see a good chunk of our city and it's quite a different perspective because looking down, it almost seems calm, serene, non-chaotic.  But we know better.

This is the western-most point of our continent :)



I like doing handstands with cool backgrounds!

When we left, we were standing on a roundpoint trying to catch a taxi.  We notice a herd of cows walking on the opposite side of the road from where we are.  If you know me, you know I love any kind of animal and one of my favorite things about this place is the incorporation of livestock into everyday life.  So naturally, I'm stoked at the sighting of a herd of cows.  I ask Amanda to start taking pictures. 



Still far away at this point.

Wait.. are they coming this way???

Lindy:  "Omgoodness!! This is awesome!  Keep taking pictures!!!"   Amanda:  "We HAVE to get out of here!"  Lindy:  "No! No!  It's okay.. keep taking pictures!!"

Cows stopping traffic.

This picture was taken after we waited til the very last second to run away from them :)

Hair braiding extravaganza!  Yes, it did and still does hurt.  Yes, I look sometimes like the Chucky doll or that I am a proud owner of a mullet.  Yes, my forehead is huge and shiny.  But you know what?  It's not about us! :)



Working on Amanda's!!

Look how happy the girls look!!

Lookin good!!  haha!

I really like these sheep closeby so we took a some pictures.  I'm just putting this one up so you can get the full scope of how silly I look with braids.  Only in West Africa.







New Years/The hairiest chicken I've ever seen

For New Years Day of 2012, we went to the home of a new friend that works really close to our apartment..  She invited us over for lunch.  This is really exciting to us because it's the first time that we've been invited into someone's house.  Our language teacher went with us.  We get there and they are finishing up cooking lunch  so we had live entertainment by her two kids (among others... family members?) 


The Friday before, we stopped by her work to finalize plans for coming and of course at that time they were eating lunch.  So, the words that I've come to LOVE hearing: "Kaay lekk" (come eat) happened...  You never know what in the world is going to be in the bowl.  I told them that we had already eaten but that we would taste which is the polite thing to do.  So we walk over and I think it's the typical chebu-jenn (fish and rice) until I put a bite of it in my mouth.  It's really, really fishy, cool and runny (like watery rice).  The fish for the dish was small & very boney and as I was chewing, I realize that I have a bone in my mouth..  not knowing if it's rude to spit out bones, I swallowed it...  I just thought that someone was a worse cook than I am.  But the next day we learned that it was a new dish altogether- it's supposed to be runny.  I am pretty sure I could go my whole life without eating that one. 


So... back to New Years Day: when we get to our friends house, because of the previous experience, we're a little nervous about the meal.  I taught our language teacher the m's pryer:  I'll put it down if You keep it down.  She thought this was the funniest thing ever.  When the bowl comes with spoons, it's regular chebu-jenn but it's the white kind.  That means that there is no tomato paste in it to help take away fishy taste.  So we dig in and, by the grace of the Lord above, it wasn't really that fishy!  I actually was sort of enjoying it until one bite when it tasted like I had eaten my once pet goldfish.  Chew & swallow.  Don't think.  After it was all said and done,    our langugage teacher says "I'm proud of you two!"... haha!  She's the one African that knows us well enough to know what we are really thinking.


So the rest of the day was spent hanging out and drinking attaya which is my favorite.  The kids played around.  Her son, Cheikh, kept calling Patricia a boy which was the funniest thing ever.  He was such a ham! 


I see this chicken running around in their yard.  It has feathers on it's feet.  I've never seen such a thing in my life...  They tell me it's just a baby and that they bought it for $16 because when it's grown it can be sold for $50.  Because I'm so amazed, we walked to the end of the street where they sell this same breed of chickens so I could see them as adults. Coolest. chickens. ever.  Upon arriving in Africa to find that lions, cheetahs, and monkeys don't exist here (everything I've been taught is a lie!! haha) I have to be impressed with the livestock :)

Wrestling

Dancing

I still don't know what some of the things are in the middle of this dish.  I'm convinced part of it looks like brain.

Making attaya!

 

Seriously.. this is the coolest chicken ever.

 

 

 

Here's a big one!  This thing had to be like 20 or so pounds!

 

 

 

 

Can't wait to go back and visit again!

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...

Our love/hate relationship with appliances...

First off, before I even let you read on, let me just tell you that I am really appreciative of our appliances.  Seriously.  It's nice to come to the apartment and it's about as westernized as you are going to find in West Africa.  We love our appliances.  For real.  But there are just times when when you laugh about phrases spoken in relation to the appliances.  We wanted to share some of those with you here.


From least ridiculous to most ridiculous.

First up: the water filter.

Gone are the days of water directly out of the fridge or sink for that matter. Who knows what tiny microrganisms lie waiting to destroy us.  So this beast cranks out clean water.  We just have to pour it in there ever day or so.  Do not underestimate it's power.  When we stayed with the host family, they had one and the top layer of water before it was filterered was BROWN.  It came out clear at the bottom.  And we drank it with no sickness to show.  So mad props to the water filter!

Here is our water heater.  To save electricity money, we unplug and plug in the water heater (sometimes).  I'm thankful for hot water! (Now that it's getting cooler it is nice to have.)  I was on the phone with a friend one night and asked Amanda if she could "plug in the shower."  That's a sentence I've never said before :)

The dishwasher! Bahahahaha...

The oven and the thermometer.  And can everyone see the tiny hole in the middle where you stick a match in?  First, you turn the gas on.  Stick the lit match into the gas encased oven.  Turn knob and wait for fire to spread out over the bottom.  Tons of fun.  LOVE doing this every time! :)


Last but not least, who of you gets to say that every time you do a load of laundry, you get to hold the washing machine in place?  We do! :)  You can wash about 3 pieces of clothing at a time and when it gets to the spin cycle, it seriously sounds like a rocket about to blast off into outer space.  We don't want our washing machine zooming into outer space (or across the bathroom floor) so we hold it in place.  Sometimes it takes more than one person.  This time in the video below it was pretty calm.  (Sorry, it is sideways...)