Happy 2009!

It's hard to believe that 2008 is over and I've already been here for 6 months. This is the one full year I'll be in Mauritania--as John said, "that's a long time, I wish you hadn't said that!" Haha. After spending a week on the beach in Senegal, it's tough thinking about this long stretch in Mauritania.

After hearing about all the snow back home, I'm sure the only thing you're all thinking right now is "I can't believe you just spent a week on the beach!" Well I did, so haha. It was great. After a relatively uneventful trip (OK, we did have a bag fall out of the car and run from the police on the way from Nouakchott to Rosso. Seriously.), we made it to St. Louis, about a 1-2 hour drive from the border. It's a very cute, very touristy town. It was nice to wear jeans a bathing suits and order a beer or two (or more...), and it's amazing how much more stuff there is in Senegal. There's just more of everything--types of food, items you can buy in the market, everything. As they say, money makes the world go around...

Anyway, the downside of St. Louis is that it's a tourist town to the extreme. In Mauritania, cab drivers (and everyone else) tries to overcharge you, but they usually give in pretty quickly because some money is better than no money. In St. Louis, if you refuse to pay what they want, they'll go pick up a family of tourists who will gladly/stupidly pay anything. It makes it tough for volunteers there, both financially and just on principle. So even though I would have gladly stayed at the beach, I was ready to get away from tourists.

After leaving Senegal, all the first-year volunteers headed up to Nouakchott for Early Term Reconnect (ETR) and some training sessions. It was pretty uneventful, but we had a blast eating pizza and catching up with people we haven't gotten to see much since stage. Nouakchott has real grocery stores (one even has Ben&Jerry's ice cream!!!) and real beds and hot, running water. It took a long time for me to get used to it all and not make a scene everywhere. OK, so I never stopped making a scene, John was pretty embarrassed when I kept yelling things like, "look, capers!!!!" in the grocery store. But after 4 months in Selibaby, things like orangina and kidney beans and potato chips are really that exciting. My bag is stuffed with things like strawberry nesquick and canned cheddar cheese to get me through the next few months!

We left Nouakchott yesterday (lucky lucky John got to spend his whole birthday in a car!). It took us about 8 hours to get to Kaedi, which is much longer than it should have been. We ran into problems with the driver missing some ID, police wanting to write all our names down, the battery dying and having to get the car jumped, but in the end we were inside a car with all PCVs so no one weighed 400 pounds or smelled really bad. You have to focus on the good stuff. I'll be here until tomorrow when Shelby, Sari and I take a back of the pick-up truck adventure home. As much as I'll miss the food and the people, I'm glad to be going back to Selibaby. I miss my host family, and it'll be nice to be somewhere where I'm not a stranger. I'm even looking forward to teaching again, but we'll see how long that lasts before my students take any more years off my life! There's nothing like a vacation to make you appreciate home. I'm just trying not to think about the big pile of exams waiting for me...

Be well, and I'll post pictures as soon as I can!!