Quick Monday update!

I spent Saturday just lounging around the house, reading and writing and catching up with a few friends online. Saturday was also laundry day, which means something a little different in a country where washing machines are neither affordable nor sensible for the average resident, due to utilities being expensive and fallible (I've been taking showers using a bucket and cup). For the Kobar family, two maids come in once or twice a week to hand-wash the family's clothes (and mine) and hang them out to dry and iron them. My poor t-shirts (used to years of my careless machine-washing and haphazard folding) never knew what hit them.

Sunday morning I took the Dakar Dem Dikk bus to the Marche Sandarga with some other girls from MSID. The DDD are the largest vehicles on the road, and the most recognizable as city buses to Americans. We visited a large store packed with cloth and clothing, and each bought a dress. Mine is purple tie-dye. I probably will also go shopping this coming weekend for a nice dress for Tabaski, which is September 23.

Today we started our classes for real. We met all of our professors and had Wolof and our specialized track class in Environment and Sustainability. Tomorrow is an easy day for me - just French, which I'm auditing, and Wolof, and all done by afternoon. WARC is a really nice place to study, though, so I can see myself spending even my afternoons without classes there.

It has been very hot, though today it cooled down a little, and is thundering like it is about to rain now. I will have to adjust to these kinds of temperatures until things begin to cool off - I'm told after the rainy season is over things are a little easier.

I've been using my laptop sparingly - I can charge it at the WARC or at an internet cafe (there's a rather nice one about a block from where I live), but we're discouraged from charging it at our residences because electricity is rather expensive here.

Tomorrow I'm taking my camera with me, so I'll at least have some pictures of the WARC and surrounding neighborhood. I feel a little awkward taking pictures here, partly because I don't take a lot of pictures in general, and partly because it's not my country. It feels disrespectful, somehow.