Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Arrival

So I arrived a little later than scheduled as our flight was denied a layover in Senegal. My bags, unfortunately, are even farther behind and in all likelihood are still in New Jersey. After a surprisingly good sleep, I woke up around 730 with the roosters and had a very nice breakfast of eggs prepared by Mohammed and his wife Haddi. We then got into one of the mini van public transportation things and rode down to the University in Brikama. It was very smokey on the road, needless to say, I don't think many catalytic converters work on hardly any of the cars here.  The driving seems very rowdy and disorganized at first but really makes quite a bit of sense once you watch it for a while. I think it would be just as safe, if not even safer riding here as no one ever really exceeds 50 mph. The school is probably less organized than I expected, it's almost comical. After a brief meeting with Professor Degoede, we headed back to Jeshwang, where I offered to help Mohammed change his spark plugs as it seemed like his Mitsubishi could really use it. We got some spark plugs that ended up not fitting and changed some of my money out, then purchased a 10 Dals (Dalasi) SIM card for a phone Mohammed has lent me. Nearly everyone here has at least one phone as it seems pretty cheap. Mohammed and his wife found my vibrams very amusing, they said everyone will ask me why I am walking around in my socks. I then proceeded to fall asleep for a few hours in the afternoon, it seems my jet-lag is more than I had originally thought. Mohammed then showed me the way to the beach which was very nice and quite close to the house, not far from National Stadium where I will hopefully be lifting weights. It's been very cool to hear the calls to prayer during the day, I've actually sat down a few of them and prayed as well (not necessarily to the same God though). Please excuse the various changes in tense as I wrote some of this earlier and am too lazy to change everything.

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