I can’t believe how busy I am. Today I woke up early to work on a presentation on Senegalese wrestling. Wrestling (la lutte) is Senegal’s most popular sport primarily because this cerain form doesn’t exist outside of Senegal and thus they take a lot of pride in it. The presentation went well and after the first couple of hours of class we went to the University Diop to interview students on the subject of begging. More difficult than the interviews themselves was asking a random student if I could interview them. I find that people here are much nicer and more likely to help than in the United States. For example if one were to ask for directions, something that I’ve done nearly every day, in my experience its more common for a person to physically walk with you to the location than give you directions. This same generosity was easily observable this morning as student took time out of their days to discuss a touchy subject with someone who has no idea what they’re talking about.

After class I went home and helped my mom wash our goat. Oh yea, we have a goat. He’s four months old and has his own bedroom (strangely enough its bigger than mine). He was pretty dirty so we took him to the terrace and mama Rama washed him as I grabbed his horns and tried to calm him down. Every time my mom would begin to wash his testicles the goat would double over in pain. Finally I apathetically asked her if they really needed to be clean. She responded by saying that since there is so much meat in the testicles they must be clean. I guess I have goat nuts to look forward to at the end of Ramadan.

Later on in the day I met up with some friends and we all headed to a beach. This certain beach was on the road of all the embassies and up and down the beach were unbelievable extravagant mansions, each protected by men toting huge machine guns. We sat on the rocks, trying to put our experience into perspective but that’s a very difficult thing to do. Its hard for me to get my mind around what I’m doing and where I am. These past few days have been some of the most exciting (and tiring) days of my life. Whenever I’m home I want to travel and this is why. I feel alive, I feel like I’m doing something, I feel excited to wake up and live my life. I’m sure this wave of initial excitement will peter out after a while but right now I’m going to enjoy it to its fullest.