Will someone in the States please eat some organic locally made granola with rice milk and maybe some organic fruit for me? God I miss granola. Sometimes I think I'm getting used to this whole meat deal and I can chomp it down with the best of them, and sometimes I completely lose my appetite when I look at my plate of carcass. Today was like that. I ordered poisson aloka, which is a small fish grilled with an onion sauce stuff that comes on everything and fried plaintains on the side (there are no nonmeat dishes here unless I special order something, which is sort of a pain in the ass for the cooks at the WARC, where we all eat our lunch). The plaintains were actually not plaintains but were bananas so they were too sweet and I started to eat the fish, but I kept thinking about it swimming around in the ocean and I just didn't want it at all even though it has started to taste good. Meat is sticky, it sticks to my teeth like taffy. Do meat eaters notice this phenomenon? Sticksticksicksick.
Days are challenging, challenging. Adjusting is a bitch. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing really well and my French is getting better and I'm starting to pick up a little wolof, and sometimes I feel like I am never going to understand anything and I wish the whole year was passed already and I was in Paris with v. If she doesnt get stuck in jail that is. :( :(
Heat hot heat makes for oppressed movements and oppressed thoughts and oppressed appetite but my host family says lekal lekal (eat eat) if I pause for like two seconds and I say maa ngi lekk (i am eating) or suur naa (i am full). And I feel like I am overeating food that already makes me a little quesy (how they like to eat such heavy oily foods in this heat I will never know...give me oil-less rice and stir fry or steamed vegetables or an orange please or granola with rice milk maybe I can find an Asian grocery store somewhere) so I feel icky and lethargic many times..and sticky and I miss my friends and.
I wonder if it will be like this the whole time I am here? Sometimes I feel frustrated and shit and sometimes I have a really good time. I wonder if the frustrations will start to turn into my normal frustrations at some point instead of the frustrations of adjusting to different everything. But that's why I came, yes. (I have to act, just as strong as I can, just to preserve a place where I can be who I am --Ani DiFranco)
My Senegalese family doesn't believe that there are people in the group whose French is actually worse than mine. But there are. There are a couple people in the group that get on my nerves and I seem to always end up sitting to eat with them and not the people I want to. There is a girl here who looks like Sara - same facial structure and type of dreads and whatnot.
The side effects of the prophlyaxis bother me sometimes, I get these weird sort of dizzy out-of-it feelings in my head sometimes, like I'm dreaming only I'm awake. It's harder to pay attention to what people are saying when that happens, and I think about lying down and sleeping when that happens. I don't know if I am slipping into a different brain-wave pattern or if my vestibular system gets confused or what it is that goes on when that happens. Maybe I can find out on the web somewhere.
I am always doing homework here. I feel bad cuz I get up at 7am every morning and am not home until like 5 or 7 every night from school, then I sit and do homework all night until I go to sleep. I want to talk to my family more and go do things with them but I am here to study, too, and I don't really feel like I have much choice. The only time we really talk is around dinner, and for maybe half an hour afterwards. Or maybe ten minutes here and there, like when I get home. Shiii-it.
Maybe I'll have some ice cream today and that will placate me. I think also part of my problem is that I am so so so inactive physically here. I walk about 40-60 minutes every day and that's it. And that walking is so slow cuz it's so hot. You know that sweat you get when you ride your bike somewheres on a hot day all quick-like? That's the sweat we all get by walking somewheres all slow-like.
I want a bikebikebike. I should see if my bro and sis want to go swimming at a beach today..the plague mammal (mammal beach) is a really nice one. The waves are strong and I can swim on top of them but not too strong and there isn't much of an undertow....yes. Swimming would be a good idea. Works up an appetite, relieves stress, cools a hot body. Okeeeeeee.
