Sun, Sand, and Surf

Tuesday we had out first African dance lesson which was a lot of fun despite my lack of rhythm. We had live drumming to dance to which is amazing to watch since their hands move so fast and they are able to sync their rhythm so easily. I’m going to keep going every week and we have a concert at the end so hopefully I will improve throughout the semester. Our program set up the dance lessons and in the future we’re going to get to try batiking (weaving cloth) and drumming.
Thursday after classes we went to Marché HLM; there were numerous stalls with beautiful fabrics, clothes and accessories. We’re all very excited to get clothes tailored to fit since it’s so inexpensive here and the country is known for it. It’s so hard to choose what to get when the possibilities are endless.
We were so excited to find l’Institute Francais downtown on Friday. It was like an oasis in downtown Dakar, no flies, no pushy vendors and clean vegetables. Needless to say we all had cheeseburgers (or one of their fancy French takes on cheeseburgers) and sat for a few hours basking in our serene environment. L’Institut has a lot of musical performances and movies throughout the year so we’ll definitely be making it down there again. At night we went back downtown to Le Mex; a discothèque/Mexican restaurant. We were less than excited to discover that blenders are few and far between in this country so there were no frozen marguerites on the menu. It was nice to hear some outdated American music with a techno twist although I was less than enthused by the Spanish music to be honest. Even though it’s Ramadan this place was fairly crowded by French military men, Peace Corps volunteers, and U.S. marines which was pleasantly surprising. We headed out early though because we wanted to be well rested for our surf lesson the next afternoon. Surfing wasn't much of a success, I wasn’t able to get up past my knees but I’m excited to try again. I’m blaming it on the fact that our lesson was in French but I really think that had very little to do with it. It was a lot of fun, but exhausting. I’m glad we found this beach because it was calmer than the others we’ve been going to, but I did get quite sun burnt despite re-applying sun lotion many times and spending my non-water time under an umbrella. The sun here is way too intense for my Scandinavian skin, I’m hoping I’ll adapt throughout the semester because if not I’m going to have to spend an awful lot of money on Aloe lotion.