So, yet again I've left it ages between blogs so there is so much to tell. Sophia has been and gone, I went surfing, we finally took the kids swimming, visited St. Louis for the Jazz Festival, rearrange our room (you'll be amazed at how much more space we have now, not sure why it took us this long to do), visited Ile de Goree with the school and went to a school prom in jeans…

I had an amazing time with Sophia, it didn't even feel odd having her here, it was like she had always been here with me. When she arrived in Dakar we decided to go and visit Goree and try surfing in one day. We did not reckon with Senegalise ferries! They are fairly regular except around lunchtime. We were scheduled to go surfing at 2 but turned up date due to the ferries stopping for lunch. I also managed to get really sunburned that day. You would think after having been here for 8 months I would pay attention to that kind of thing… The rest of the week was spend showing Sophia my home. She came along to all my classes and hey, the kids even behaved nicely for her! We visited Fadiout, Leopold Sedar Senghor's House and even went to Mbour for a day. On the Sunday we took the kids to a local hotel to take them swimming! They had an absolute ball. Most people here cannot swim so it's a novelty to be able to go when it is so hot. That evening we went out for a amburger, you haven't had a good hamburger until you try the hamburgers in Senegal. They have eggs, cheese,meat, chips, mayo and ketchup all in between a bun.

After an amazing week in Joal (the boys from Kaolack even finally came to visit us!) we all headed to St. Louis for the Jazz festival. St. Louis is an amazing town, the buildings are beautiful and colonial. And, it's colder there! We stayed in a lovely Auberge near the beach, it was a little outside of the town center (around a 40min walk) but had a really nice beach. The first night in St. Louis we went into town to enquire about tickets for the festival. They had told us that it was free in February but when we got there and asked in a hotel they tried to charge us 5,000cfa each for one night! We weren't having that so we decided to go check out the stage there any. When we got there they just kinda ushered us inside like we were royalty. We say some good jazz. On the Friday we got invited to one of Bab's friend's houses. We also met some Peace Corps and managed to get a bar hired out for a PC & PT party! Ahh the perks of being volunteers. Saw some amazing jazz that night too! The next day we got invited to dinner a Elahj Douif's house. (I had no idea who this was but apparently he is a famous footballer in the UK) His brother took a shine to me, pretty sure that is husband number 50 now… Annd the girls from Ziggi somehow managed to get a lift to Dakar and decided to come to St. Louis! It was nice to have everyone together again. On May 27th we headed back to Dakar because Sophia's flight was the next day and we didn't want to take any chances about not making it back. (that was our excuse anyway, really we wanted to go surfing again.)

On Monday, after surfing, it was time to say goodbye to everyone again. Everyone else went off to Kaolack while me and Sophia stayed in Dakar. We had one last amazing sandwich and then went souvenir shopping in Yoff near Mr T's house. Later on that night we headed to the airport and Sohpia headed home. I miss her more now that she has been and gone but luckily/unluckily it isn't all that long before I go back too. The day afterwards I decided to head to the German institute to see if I could get somethings for the German club. I managed to get some books and games but they didn't have any movies which I could have, unless I was a Senegalese teacher… It was nice to speak German to everyone I met in the building.

the rest of the week carried on as usual. On Saturday I went to school to teach my IT class, when I got to school there was no students there and very little teachers. It was parent teacher day, but they hadn't bothered to inform me. As usual, there was some teachers missing, so because I was there they had me doing parent teacher conferences…. in Wolof. Luckily there wasn't that much to say, you just had to explain the grades the kids had in each subject and whether they were failing out of school. Apart from the language barrier the only real difficulty I had was when my students came up and I couldn't remember their names. Im definitely better than I was but still don't know all the students names.

We rearranged our room! It is so spacious now! Ciara didn't really want to change it at first but I talked her into it and she loves it now. On Wednesday June 6th we went to Ile de Goree with the school. There were three buses full with at least 80kids per bus, it not more. These are 40 seater buses, so it was a little squished to say the least. I had a good time and we didn't even have to pay a toubab tax on the island, score for having students who stick up for us and refuse to let us pay.

On the following Saturday we headed back to Dakar again, this time to go to a Fosco for one of our university friends. We checked before we went whether it was formal or informal. we were told informal so jeans were deemed to be okay. When we arrived, it turned out to be pretty much like my 12th Grade prom! They were all wearing suits and ball gowns. Luckily we are foreign and so we get away with things that other people wouldn't. The upside of the whole night was seeing Pape Diouf and some other artists! We had an amazing time. Mr T, being well connected, had another toubab friend staying with him. She had just recently set up a womans group in the Casamance region to teach them linguistic skills. She was an amazing contact to make but sadly it was a little too late on in our year to help her here in Senegal, maybe in the future she can give our girls club a boost!

I had an amazing night last night. My Germans had organized a Street Battle. Basically this was a night were dance groups met up and had a dance off to win a price. It was like being in a movie. They are all amazing dancers (mainly boys, there was one group of girls but they weren't all that good). If they were in the UK or the states some of these boys would have big careers by now!

Anyway that is all for now, Im keeping teaching until the start of June and then we're off for some more travelling!

Julia