Weekend Recap

This post is mainly for my own benefit, but lots of funny things (meaning struggles, not funny in the moment but after we laugh a lot) happened this weekend that I wanted to write down.

Friday

We had school in the morning and then we got to go home early. Another girl and I went to the hypermarché to get some things for our classmate’s birthday. I honestly felt like I was back in the US. It felt like a Walmart complete with American songs playing in the background.

At night we decided to order pizza. As I've said before, a simple task is actually super complicated here. We finally found a place online and placed an order. We had to enter our address and even after almost 2 months I have no idea what it is. So I went down and asked the doorman what our address was which he didn’t really know either. There was a number painted on our apartment, so I put that in and then found a street sign for the name of the street. Then the store called my phone to verify the order, but I couldn’t understand anything because there was so much background music, but the lady said “toute à l’heure” so I counted that as a good sign.

Then, the delivery guy called me but barely spoke French (just Wolof), so after several attempts, we went back to the doorman and had him tell the delivery guy where to go. We joke that the doormen probably get their daily dose of entertainment from our group as pretty much every day we have some sort of struggle.

Finally, the delivery guy said he had arrived, so we go down in our pajamas and bare feet, but we figured out too late he was actually at the neighborhood mosque, not our apartment. So we had to walk through the neighborhood with no shoes to the mosque to get pizza. Luckily it was still light out. Then there were only 3 pizzas instead of 4 and he had no change, but by that time we just needed to eat. Was the pizza worth it? Definitely not, but the amount of energy we spent on the order, we had to accept it. Anyways, we went to bed somewhat early after that whole ordeal.

Saturday

I woke up early to make a quiche for the birthday celebration. Again, perhaps the easiest thing to cook is not easy here. First of all, it took me 40 minutes to figure out how to light the oven (needed to use a match, turn the knob a certain way, and press down to make the gas come out). Then we have no baking dishes, so I used a saucepan as a mixing bowl and a fork for a whisk. But… eventually, it turned out and tasted totally fine. We had a fun birthday brunch.

Sunday

I usually don’t have many plans on Sundays. All of the kids who live in the apartment are usually home so I talk with them some. Today the landlord caught a pigeon and gave it to his son so when I walked out into the hallway I was greeted by a noisy bird.

Then while we were chatting the landlord handed me his phone. At this point, nothing really phases me so I just started talking. It turns out it was the landlord’s brother who lives in Indiana. He was excited to talk to an American living in Dakar so that was fun once I figured out what was going on. Apparently, he has kids who are our age so he was also excited about that.

Other than that I just worked at a nearby café to prep for the last week of classes.

We have been going here almost every week for our weekly dose of icecream but just recently discovered the upstairs complete with Wifi so it’s our new favorite spot.

We just started our last week of classes before a week of spring break and then 6 weeks of an internship. I still have no idea where I'll be working, but time is flying!