A salaam waalekum!

AHHHHHHHHHHHH! My computer is finally getting an internet signal! Oh my god what great days these have been, my first days in the Peace Corps. I'm just gonna stream of consciousness here and not try to write like a pro or anything. Here we go.

Okay so we landed in Dakar airport and took two buses to the training center in Thies 1.5 hours away. 50 volunteers piled out to people singing a welcome song at 7am. We were oriented into the training center. The center is beautiful. All the trees are beautiful, the flowers are beautiful, the people are so professional, nice and intelligent. We are being trained by the best staff peace corps has to offer no doubt. I want to sum up every day we've had here:Wake up at 7, eat breakfast which at the training center is coffee and tea and baguettes, and jelly, peanut butter, nutella, butter, or spicy beans, whatever you'd like and how ever many you'd like. Then first class, whatever that may be; language, security, cross cultural, logistics of everything thats gonna happen, and some other stuff. Then tea time, where you eat the same thing as breakfast, and drink coffee or tea. Every time you eat and every time your anywhere you have the ability to talk to the staff here, which I and others do. Thats when you really learn a lot in a more personal opinion way. You also can ask them how to say anything, like insults such as "your a cat!" or "big butt", or real stuff like greetings and other phrases and vocab. Then more learning and activities, then lunch which is a large bowl and many different tasty dishes; it can be short grain rice and meat and veggies: big chunks of delicious carrot, potato, bitter tomato, and beef or lamb or goat or fish. SO good! Then more learning, then free time till 7:30 when its dinner which is always great, then its free time again. Free time can be frisbee, soccer, running, going to market, playing music with people (i brought a harmonica) etc. I'm having the time of my life.

This morning we found out what languages we are learning, and begun to learn them. I'm going to learn Pulaar Fulakunda. It is a great language so far, much easier to learn than Arabic which i took in college. And my arabic is helping because the Pulaar people are proud that they introduced Islam to west african countries. So my teacher gives me more respect I think, maybe haha. I'm with three other girls in language classes and we are moving into our Community Based Training site tomorrow, which is the beach neighborhood of our city, Thies. Ahhhhh! I got so lucky! HERES HOW I DID IT: Be really cool to everyone, and give M&Ms to current PC Volunteers. I'll post this now and continue with another post.

This is great, if your outgoing and you like to be nice to people then you'd have a blast SO JOIN the PEACE CORPS. I havent been installed in my actual site yet but I will be in 8 weeks after training.

plus, there are 40 girls and 8 boys in my group, so thats great.

New good post coming soon

many of our computers stopped getting internet, they worked yesterday and now we cant get a signal. I have lots of pictures and I cant wait to post though. talk to you later.

I don't think there is such a thing as tears of joy. It's at least a misnomer! You cry because your sad; even though you have a smile on your face, everything is going great, your reaching your self actualization goals =), you still don't want to leave the people you love. Thanks to everyone who saw me off, bought me drinks, met me in the rain, helped me prepare, took care of my cat, and said see ya soon. You mean the whole crazy, mixed up world to me.


FYI: I like the word misnomer and will name my "pet" rat it, maybe