January 27

Naka nga def!
I'll start where I left off earlier: we all successfully obtained Youssou N'Dour tickets for tomorrow night, so our huge gang of toubabs will be storming onto the Dakar concert scene a mere 2 1/2 weeks into our stay in Senegal...it'll be my first night "out" in Africa, so I'll see if all the fuss is justified.
Nothing else really compares in terms of fun/exciting events, so I'll regale you with a few random little snapshots of my last few days.
Yesterday, one of the other students that lives in Ouakam and I were walking home, when all of a sudden we notice drumbeats coming from somewhere in the distance.  We follow the noise only to discover taht there is a djembe drum circle (impromptu, apparently) playing in our village quad, and all of the women and children of the neighborhood pulled around their lawn furniture to form a kind of a performance stage.  Women in brightmy colored boubous and pagnes casually took turns in the middle of the circle doing traditional (and some more modren) dances (if you get a chance, check out Mbalax dancing on youtube-it's sweet and makes me feel super white and unrhythmic).  Anyways, apparently this sort of thing doesn't happe often, but it was a fun thing to see at least once.
Also, today I was supposed to start taking a class at the university...turns out it doesn't exist!  I showed up with a classmate to the assigned room (which we were soooo proud of ourselves for locating in the first place) and a different class was taking place there.  The university is sort of a free-for-all; there is no discernable central office, nor any real sort of organization (of enrollment, scheduling, or anything else that one in the US would assume to be a critical element of an educational institution).  But, as they say, This Is Africa, c'est la vie.  Anyways, after trying to navigate a series of lines (that led to ambiguous ends) in order to determine if, when, and where our class was taking place, we abandoned ship and returned to WARC...our supervisor told us he would look into it, but if nothing concrete materializes, we have enrolled in another class (African Political Systems) to replace it at WARC.  At least we're really starting to know our way around.
The best thing that probably happened in the last few days though was yesterday afternoon: a group of us played beach soccer, and obviously we kicked the ball into the ocean. One of our braver (or dumber?)teammates jumped in and rescued it, and to celebrate his survival, we went to lunch at the university, where I had my first experience with Senegalese street food.  Footay 5spelling?) ids the best thing that I have ever had.  It is this triangular piece of dough filled with meat, onions, hot sauce, and some other unknown elements.  And it's glorious.  And more importantly it costs 250 CFA, which is about 50 cents.  I love the exchange rate here.
Well that's about it for now, but I promise to keep you updated on my daily experiences...off to class.  A tout a l'heure