March 17

Hello all-
Finished my exams for the week and just have to sit through 2 more classes tomorrow and then spring break woo!  Very excited to take a sept-pace taxi (basically a regular taxi that they cram 7 random people into who are all going to roughly the same place) for 5-7 hours to St. Louis with 2 friends from my program...at the very least, I'm sure we'll have some interesting stories about the randos who end up all cozy with us in the car.
So this week, we had our usual adventure Wednesday (nobody on our program has class after 11am on Wednesdays, so a small group of us has decided to make Wednesdays our day to cross off the sights to see in the Lonely Planet)...this week's edition: Les Almadies.  La Point des Almadies is the Western-most point in Africa-it's really beautiful, obviously has a market, and obviously, being a seaside, touristy spot, has delicious food.  We went to a place called Sweet Coffee (which sells, *gasp*, REAL COFFEE, not cafe touba!), so naturally we all indulged.  And afterwards, we went on what seemed like a wild goose chase searching for this artist's atelier, and after about 2 hours of circling around Les Almadies and N'Gor (another quartier), we found it...in the first place we tried (and missed it).  Anyways, it's this place called Ceramiques des Almadies, owned by this French expat who's lived in Senegal forever...and he doesn't seem to get a ton of business, so he literally gave us a tour of his entire studio, from his firing kiln, to his own artwork, to works of art from other famous Senegalese artists.  I'm finding that it's these random little out-of-the-way spots that seem to be the best here (mostly because you're not being harassed by a zillion Senegalese men asking for your number/money).
Let's see...well, I've been teaching lessons regularly at my school, and it's been going great (I've been making lesson plans and teaching at least one bloc of classes for both English and Geography courses now every day)...except for the part where one of the teachers made me call roll.  Which was embarassing and probably really culturally offensive because I am absolutely positive that I did not pronounce a single name correctly (and often said masculine/feminine forms where inappropriate).  Oops.  Oh well, I'll count it as a part of my cultural education.  It's just that I have since realized that there is nothing more horrifying than getting laughed at my a classroom of 70 plus 12 year olds.  If I plan on a career in education I should probably get over that at some point in the near future.
Other than that, it's been a pretty standard week...I'm sure I will have lots more to blog about after my spring break trip.  Until then, take care, and I'll be back on the 27th, Inshallah.  Ba beneen yoon.