back in thies

i have been in thies for a bit more than a week now and i am utterly exhausted.

i was a zombie today and practically slept walked through the entire day because this past weekend we went to toubab dialaw -- a beach near dakar -- and after getting back, stayed up all night to watch the superbowl which started at 11:30PM here and lasted until about 3 in the morning. i silently cheered for the giants, as most people here are patriots fans, and even though i passed out for most of the third and fourth quarter, was woken up in time for the last crucial minutes and thoroughly enjoyed the great sport of american football.

it has been great being back with everybody and last week was loads of hanging out and catching up and now i am suffering the consequences. i should lay low for a while as later this week we plan on going to dakar for chinese new year which will require hauling our butts out there after work and getting dinner and celebrating and then grabbing a car back for the 2+ hour back to thies so that we can make it to class by 8AM. it should be interesting and i will probably regret it on friday morning but you can't get chinese food in the village and i don't want to miss this opportunity.

being at the beach this past weekend was amazing. i don't think i've ever needed a vacation as much as i did and as i was lying on the beach, i could literally feel the stress leaving my body. it was a fantastic feeling. i guess i am just now realizing how much emotional and physical stress i can be under at times and must take advantage of these miniature vacations as much as possible. my once pasty legs now kind of sort of match my super tanned arms and i don't even know how long it's been since i've showed so much skin.

(also, today i treated myself to real ice cream and realized that i haven't had ice cream since i left america. sad.)

i feel like i could be twenty thousand times more eloquent right now but am so tired that i can barely think of the words to explain my crappy reasoning for my crappy writing. i'm going to go eat dinner and pass out.