long week

This has been such a busy week. I cant believe it is friday. I graduate from training in a week then off to my village.

Monday we went to Dakar to visit the Embassy and the PC HQ office. We did a lot of silly paperwork. We had to go to the police station there too so we could sign our Senegalese IDs. It was a very long day, driving around in traffic and listening to people.

The middle of the week was dedicated to some language classes and getting ready for counterpart workshop. Wed. night we welcomed our village counterparts (mine just happens to be my host dad too) and our professional counterparts (mine is from the forestry department). There was a lot of anxiey for everyone...waiting for their counterparts to arrive. Mine are really great. Well from what i understood. little language barrier. my host dad/counterpart is illiterate and can only speak wolof. on the other hand he has been working with trees forever and knows way more about them then I do. All of our sessions for the las two days were in Wolof so my brain hurts from trying to understand. I definitely got the jist of everything that we were talking about which made me feel good. It was also translated into English for us. We have some amazing language teachers. Some of them are fluent in 6 languages.

The past two days have been exausting, trying to explain cultural differences and trying to learn about agroforestry technologies. With that said I am off to eat dinner and go to bed. I love you all and miss you a lot! jamm rekk!