We're Planting Beach Trees!

For the past week I've been with my host family. I'm becoming increasingly more comfortable with the family and they are with me as well. I found out that my host brother, when he works, gives most of his money to his father, and my host mother does absolutely nothing, which is a sign of wealth. I did notice a change in the quality of diner since my last visit. My host sister was the one who made diner every night and after a few "blah" meals, I got the nerve to ask what was going on. My host sister informed me the maid was now making diner. However, for me, this posed a problem. The maid left in the early afternoon, so I am assuming she is preparing diner and leaving it out. Yuck!

Korite was on the 20th. It's the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. We all had to wear our nicest clothes and I got to wear my boubou. We walked around asking for forgiveness from our friends and neighbor. It was fun and a great cultural experience

I'm trying to progress in Wolof. I find it difficult because it's structure is OBJECT+SUBJECT+VERB and the tenses are as developped or structured as English or French. Time markers (ex "yesterday" "today")are what really denote the tense. But I have to have a working knowlegdge of Wolof because adult women and rural populations are not as likely to speak French; although, I would often just prefer to use French.

Monday afternoon we left for Popenguine. We rented out a beach house for the night and just hung out and partied. It was a nice relief and a chance to catch up and exchange stories. Surprisingly though, most of us didn't tell our families we were going to the beach. I conveniently left it out. One of the agriculture trainees said she was going to plant "beach trees." I didn't ask if her family believed her or not.

This week is our Counterpart Workshop. This means that every trainee is having both his or her supervisor and counterpart come for a 3 days conference. Given that there are around 55 trainees, the population of the center will flood to about 150, which is way above capacity. To solve this conundrum, our leaders decided yesterday to have certain groups of trainees commute from their training sites. I fall into this category. I'm really looking forward to the conference and getting to met the people I will be working with for the next two years.