Long overdue fist post

11 may
Hiyo friends and family in America! Yes, this is Amber, and yes, I somehow have managed to survive almost 2 months in Senegal almost completely unscathed. Are you all proud? I certainly hope so because I am not near hardcore enough for this country in any way, shape, or form, but am slowly but surely morphing into a quasi-hardcore PCT (Peace Corps Trainee).
I realize that this first blog post is a little bit late, but I just haven't had that much time and have not really been sold on this whole "blogging" thing. Anyway, the main reasons I am just now attempting to write and post my first blog entry are:
1. I'm really not sure if anyone will want to read anything I have to write. Even back in the good ole days when I could depend on those then unappreciated language parts of my brain to speak and write intelligently, I was never that great of a writer, so it’s pretty comical that now that I for some reason I still have not realized I decided it would be a good idea to attempt to write a witty, inspiring, and insightful blog (shaaaaa right), which leads me to reason #2:
2. I really don’t know why anyone would ever want to take time to read about the incessant jumbled mess of thoughts perpetually battling for attention and importance in my mind. I obsessively over-analyze everything and have a killer case of low self-confidence, which combined with my obscene indecisiveness can only lead to a cluster of thoughts that are probably a lot better off just staying inside my head, rather than being posted for all the world to see, and by whole world I mean hopefully at least 5 people that haven’t forgotten me back home and think I'm cool enough for them to want to keep up with what’s going on with me while I'm in BFE Tambacounda desert Senegal for the next 2 years.
3. I miss everyone of you all from back home and hate that communication is so unreliable here and I just feel like I’m losing touch with stupid stuff that I loved like work and boy gossip, you know? Just know that any seemingly stupid response here, face book wall post /message, or random e-mail never ceases to bring an incredible amount of joy and encouragement into my day and I really do appreciate knowing that there are people in this world who understand me and even miss me.
4. I have to say it. I’m more than slightly skeptical about this whole blogging trend and so naturally am especially wary of both the seemingly self-important people who write them and the creepers that read them. I really just hate the fact that people that blog appear to be trying way to hard to fashion portraits of themselves as curious, reflective, wide-ranging individuals. I would just rather spend my time reflecting and ranging wide.
For all of these reasons, I have only made a few feeble attempts over the past 8 weeks to even type out anything I thought anyone would be interested in reading but then just got annoyed with myself and stopped.
That, said, I’m going to attempt to hit the high notes of my past 8 weeks here in a somewhat cohesive manner, but I don’t really think in a cohesive manner anymore so I'm going to apologize in advance for my haphazardness.
I was going to write some about these past 8 weeks of training, but so much happened and I went through so much personally that I don't even know where to begin. I think I can best write about what's going on with me now.
On Friday we officially swore-in in Dakar and are now PCV's (Peace Corps Volunteers) instead of PCT's (Peace Corps Trainees), and I, for one, couldn't have been happier. I am so ready to be done with the rigid structure of PST and finally be in my permanent village and actually doing development work. I was supposed to be heading to Tambacounda with two other people whose sites are in the region on Saturday to hang out at the regional house for a couple of days and then be officially "installed" in my village on Tuesday, but I have to stay in Thies for another week of language training. Why? We all had language placement interviews last week and were required to test at least "intermediate low" in whatever local language we have been learning. I apparently only tested "beginner high" in Pulaar and so myself and 2 other volunteers have to stay here another week and take more language classes.
By the way, Pulaar is freaking hard, in case you were wondering. There were 3 of us in my Pulaar class, and out of the 3 only one person got intermediate low, if that says anything.
French is the official language in Senegal and hence the language of the formal education system. There are also 22 national languages. Pulaar du Nord, the language I have been learning, is spoken by about 25% percent of Senegalese people, according to Lonely Planet. It's a beautiful language, but it by no means comes easy to me like learning Spanish did. For example, the English language has 2 articles: "the" and "a." In Pulaar, there are 24. Yes, 24 different articles. There are articles for liquids, quantities, different types of animals, ect., and we won't even be learning any of these until IST (In Service Training in August). Awesome. I really feel like going on a rant about Pulaar right now and the many ways it's a linguistic nightmare, but I think it's best to not let all of my frustrations out here, right? The main thing I have learned throughout all of my language learning difficulties is that not everything comes easy to me, Pulaar being one of those things. In a frustrating way my daily battles with my attempts to learn Pulaar are actually humbling and daily lessons in perseverance.
I know I haven't really caught you all up on much, but I hope that you all enjoy the pictures I have posted and I promise to write more soon. Hope all of you all are doing well! I miss and love you all!