10 Days Left!

Hello everybody, and welcome to my brand new travel blog! I don't have anything to write in it yet because I haven't started traveling, but with only 10 days left to go, I figured that I should get this set up and ready to roll. My plan is to update as frequently as I can with all my doings and add a few pictures here and there as well. I have no idea if I will actually be able to do this. First, because I don't know what my Internet access will be like and second, because I might be too busy/lazy/forgetful. Hopefully it won't be the last one. My mother will have a nervous breakdown if she doesn't hear from me often enough.

Right know, I don't know too many of the specifics of where I am going and what I'm doing when I get there. I know a little bit about my host family but not about where they live or what their house is like or anything. The father, Jean Baptiste, is 58 and retired, but he was a human resources director at a bank when he was working. The mother, Marie Aimé, is my mom's age and is a director at a school. They have two children, Stephane and Fatima, who are about the same ages as my brothers. There are three other children from Jean Baptiste's first marriage who live in the house also: Daniel, 26, an accountant, Caroline, 24, a seamstress, and Anita, my age, who is still in school. I'm excited to be with a big family with lots of older kids and am especially thankful to have someone my own age in the house.

I don't know any more about them than that. I suspect that they might be Catholic (with a name like Jean Baptiste . . . ) despite the fact that nearly everyone in Senegal is Muslim. Maybe 5% of the population is Catholic (there are few or no Protestants), but I've heard that lots of Catholic families volunteer to be host families. I was sort of looking forward to living with a Muslim family and seeing what that was like, but I am certainly not disappointed. This family sounds great. The Catholic thing is only a hunch anyway.

There are 16 people going on my program. Strangely enough, they're all girls. One of them is from UMass. I've met her, she's very nice, but I don't know anyone else who's going and I don't know if any of them will be living near me. All, or nearly all, of us are going to be flying to Dakar on the same flight, so that's good. There are probably 5 or 7 other students going to Senegal from UMass, but they're all on other programs so I probably won't be seeing them much if at all when I'm there.

I haven't been able to sign up for classes yet. That's something that I will do when I get there. The Wells College program that I am going with offers classes at the West African Research Center (WARC) and the Université Cheik Anta Diop (UCAD). UCAD is the main university in Dakar (in all of Senegal, really), and WARC is like a mini-university where several different study abroad programs offer classes. Most, or many, of the WARC teachers are professors from UCAD. I've gotten a course listing, so I do have some idea of what I want to take. Best case scenario, I would take Intro to Wolof (the local ethnic language, very useful for bargaining in the markets) and another class on Senegalese culture or literature at WARC, and then History of Islam and something called the Unity of Traditional African Religions at UCAD. I have no idea if I can get into these classes, but that's the hope. My main academic goal for this semester is to get some religious studies education that I would not be able to get from the Five Colleges back in Amherst. Classes at UCAD will be with other Senegalese students and classes at WARC will be with students from exchange programs. I'm pretty sure that all my classes will be in French. Some of the WARC classes might be in English, but for the most part, French it is.

That's about the entirety of my knowledge at this point. My next post will probably be after I get there, since I don't think much is going to happen between now and then. Donc, au revoir! Ba beneen! And for my monolingual readers, good bye!