Hot hot hot.

Wow! Yes, it has been a very very long week since I have not updated the blog. Blame it on Africa. We have literally been all over the country this week, seeing lots of cool things and sweating our brains out. Here's a little of what's been going on:

First of all, our trip to literally the other side of the country that took us 12 hours. We left Saint Louis at 5:30 in the morning and got to our other hotel at about 6:30, with only a few stops in between. Here's a picture of the bus that was our new best friend by the end of the trip for one magical reason: la CLIME (air conditioning)

So. Bored. What did we do during our life-shortening bus ride? Let's think... we ate a lot of pringles; talked to our neighbors about our love lives and what our goals for the future are (someone had this talk about finding your sweetheart or something that we passed around and every single person on the bus read it); we read (I read a book called Sous l'Orage (under the storm) about this girl whose parents are arranging a marriage for her, as the third wife; and tried to catch up on journal writing.

We finally made it to our destination, some national park (I'd take the time to look up the name, but you wouldn't really care anyways) where we spent the night in this wonderful case. We got (hobbled) off the bus and noticed right away how well the clime had been working. HOT. Yeah. So, we had like a little orientation that night with our tour guide, and luckily they turn la clime on at night so we were able to not suffocate from heat during the night, and all was well. I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the case, so I'll try to describe it. there's like a t-shaped wall on one side of the room, one side with the toilet, and one side with the shower, and then the head of the beds at touching that wall. Does that make sense? Let's see if I can draw it out using the keyboard (where are you when I need you, Gav?)

the toilet | the shower

---------------------------

Bed 1 Bed 2

It's a pretty great setup....

In the morning, we were greeted by lots of hungry monkies. We were warned to "surtout ne pas crier!" Don't scream... But when we got to our door, the air pressure made the sheet behind the door jump out so of course I screamed first thing. Chelsey, Sarah (in the picture below, trying not to scream), and I are the screamers of the group. We luckily weren't attacked by any monkies.

So we split up into two groups, one group in the cat-cat (this off roading truck here) and the other group in the pirogue (boat). We opted for the morning cat-cat ride.

It was a nice little mini-safari where we saw monkies, warthots, tons of different kinds of antelopes, beautiful blue birds, other not so beautiful birds, and we even got to get out and walk around and see a whole group of hippos hanging out in the water.

Next up, the pirogue. We saw a few more hippos and some crocodiles too.

All the boys decided that they were going to the stache for our little sejour dans la brousse, so here's Andrew with his creepy pedi-stache, as we call it. Luckily he already has a wife!

The hippos! I can't find my good picture, but if you squint really hard you can make them out

Beloved bus and prof.

After that, we set off for another 3 hour long ride (where Chelsey and I tried not to be car sick for the first hour on a really horrible road), where we passed tons of really beautiful country side and lots of very picturesque african villages such as this:

Pringles are the snack food of choice on this trip. Until after the trip, when we all got really sick of them after eating so many.

My favorite picture ever.

So we FINALLY made it to the east side-- KEDOUGOU. And let me just say, HOT. Like you couldn't believe. And that wasn't the worst of it (okay, it really was, but there was more). We got there and Madame Thompson got out to check us in, and it became clear very quickly that this was not what she had in mind. They were in the middle of a coupure (power outage), meaning no lights, no clime. There was pretty much no organisation at all there (okay, really, we can't blame them for not doing anything and being kind of lazy, because if I lived there I would never get up because I would have melted). It took about an hour to find rooms for everyone. This is the case that Chelsey and I chose, obviously before finding out what it had been christened.

Luckily, the power came back on. So we did have la clime. Now, I use the term "clime" VERY lightly when talking about Kedougou, because normally it connotates cold air, but in this case, it's a very faint strain of warm-ish air, but at least it causes some air flow at all. And apparently, Case au playboy has more perks than the others because we had an extra fan in the room that we had going all night.

The second night, however, there was another coupure, meaning no clime. I went to bed at like 9:30, wearing as little as possible, and just laid there with my mouth open and sweating to death and thinking how I would never be cold again and that I'd never been so hot in my whole life. Chelsey and I didn't fall asleep until probably around 1, and luckily the clime came back on around midnight so that we were able to not drown in pools of our own sweat... but just barely.

The surprises just kept on coming in the morning when Madame Thomson's shower didn't work, and she found out that the truck we'd reserved had been given to someone else. No worries though, we found alternate transportation: le car rapide d'enfer = the fast bus from hell (as it would be later known as). We piled in, drove a little ways to the bus depot place, where our driver got out for a minute. While we were waiting there, unsuspectingly, this other guy gets in the driver seat and tried to drive us away. Luckily, our real driver got to him before he was able to kidnap us.

Classy. So during our three hour drive over rough, dirty, dusty african roads we sang every 90's song we could possibly think of, and tried not to inhale too much dust. We were filthy by the end.

We got to the village that we were going to visit, when we found literally the cutest little girl in Africa, Eliane. We would show her the pictures of herself, and she would make the cutest faces ever.

We went to this other village, where we used the toilets:

I got to see how the crush grains and rice up for their food. They are unbelievably fast at it, with four women at a time, and it's almost unimaginable to think about how different their lives are from ours.

Can you see how dirty we were at the end?

The next day found us at another village, with this beautiful view

And then a half hour hike to a very beautiful waterfall, which was totally worth the hike

We left Kedougou (early), and drove four hours to a midway point, Tambacounta, where we all got in our rooms, changed, and jumped into the pool

Sunday, we left that hotel and drove five more hours to la petite cote. Here's me and Stephanie, my bus buddy. I think we've spent more than 20 hours in the bus together by this point.

On Monday we went to this museum about the first president of Senegal, Senghor (here's the statue of him)

And then went over to this little island thing that is made completely of seashells, it's crazy.

La petite Cote, was beautiful. We stayed at this super nice hotel, right on the beach.

We got breakfast and dinner every day, including an amazing dessert bar.

Chelsey and I worked our butts off getting our projects finished by Tuesday morning, so we spent ALL of Tuesday afternoon here: (yes, those are pool chairs that we put in the kiddy part of the pool while we caught up on our journals)

Last night they had this little dance party at the hotel where we partied it up with some old French women, and then they had this little African spectacle thing where this guy ate fire... scary.

Today, we are back at the Hotel Nina in Dakar. And we are happy to have la clime again :) Stay tuned for our last couple of days...