Julienne's 1st week summary

Hi Everybody!

After a super fun-filled 4 days in Paris, we have arrived in Dakar and are settling in.  Getting our visas at the airport was 2 hours of hot, crammed, unorganized lines while I stretched out a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang story for as long as I could go to keep our hot and exhausted children from completely losing it, but since then Senegal has been great!  Folks at the school have been super friendly, and everyone out and about and at little shops, etc, has been friendly and kind.  Sylvia has been happily noticing the goings-on of the babies and kids she sees around (in Paris she was busily noticing how many women with high heels were riding motorcycles), and Skylar, after seeing a few cockroaches scurrying around in our new home when we arrived, has decided he would like to keep one for a pet.  Marc, an experienced cockroach-keeper, has helped facilitate this dream and we are now housing one in a jar inside our tv cabinet.  Cockroach TV.  

I was surprised to find that, so far, aside from the large roads, which are paved, most of the smaller roads we've been on, including the roads all around our neighborhood, are dirt.  Cars and taxis drive all around, and then there are horse-drawn wagons that come around to pick up your garbage and I guess do other jobs. We're in the capital city, and yet a horse wagon drives by each day on the dirt road in front of our house.  

What else?  We've been shopping at some fun spots to help get our house set up.  Skylar and Sylvia got their first djembe drum lesson the other day when we passed the drum-maker on the street and he showed them how to play.  Tonight I lay with Skylar and Sylvia under their mosquito netting listening to the call to prayer.  Tomorrow is Korite (pronounced kor-ee-tay), the feasting day at the end of Ramadan... I guess it's the local version of Eid al-Fitr.  All the new teachers (and Skylar and Sylvia and some new teachers' teenage son named Kyle) are going to the home of one of the Senegalese employees at the school.  I'm really looking forward to the day!