International Orientation

So why was I so busy the first few weeks here? In part because of International Student orientation. Here's a picture of my group:

We had a dress-up dinner complete with photoshoots. Here are the orientation leaders:
We had some pictures by continent. Asia had the largest contingent, of course:
Africa:

Road Trip to the Gambia

During my last weekend in the Gambia, five other volunteers and I traveled to the Gambia for a four-day weekend (we had a day off for a national Catholic holiday, of all things). We took sept-place down, stayed three nights, then were given a ride back from the border to Dakar by a slightly crazy Chinese man from Paris who was driving a Jeep across Africa. The road near the border was heavily potholed (so much so that most cars opted to drive off-road, through the bushes, because it was a smoother ride). At least it was green further south--the Gambia is much more tropical than the savanna of Senegal.

The Gambia is a tiny country, the smallest in Africa; a remnant of British colonialism, where the British controlled strips of land on either side of the Gambia river. Most of the population lives on the south side of the river, so we crossed the river in an slow, ancient car ferry to get to the capital, Banjul, which was pleasant enough little town.

We found the ocean!
One of the places we stayed at was a bungalow in a courtyard:
--which was in this neighborhood, where the women at the side of the street tried to teach us some Mandinka phrases, since Wolof isn't the predominant language in the Gambia.
Next, we stayed two nights at the Tostan office in the Gambia, which was across the street from the mosque:

We were near the beach:
So we went and ate at an ocean-side restaurant that had hammock seating:
By the way, did I mentioned that it was wet season? Hint number one:
The others went to the beach, but I decided to go see the monkeys at the reserve instead. There were five guides...and me. I felt bad refusing a guide, but I didn't really need or want one. They were nice anyway, though, and even offered me lunch.
Hey, ladies...walking back into town.

Lunch, greasy chawarmas (there's a surprising Lebanese population in West Africa).Yup, that's definitely the ocean!
Ferry back over the river! And back onto the potholed roads.

Update of Sorts

So I should have mentioned that "will update soon" means "when school allows me to" in college parlance. Anyway, I'll get there eventually, and to start it off, here's a picture of the walk to work: