Life After College Graduation

Ok, YOU try calling a helpline for the internet and explaining in technical french what the heck is wrong with your computer or their internet…. see how far you get. Helpline guy: “Regardez le clavier (the keyboard)… pousser le ah-l-tay et day.” Me: “Le crois? On ne peut pas pousser tout les lettres au meme temps!” Him: “Le ah-l-tay, pousser ca!” Me: “oooooooh, the alt button!” Yeah… took me a hot minute to figure out everything he was saying. And it’s so much harder on the telephone! At least in person, you get hand gestures and you can read their mouth a little. Over the phone… the communication is less rich. Sigh… what could have been a two minute conversation was more like 30 minutes.

I went to Thies, and we saw this tapestry factory. It’s world famous, and apparently has tapestries on display in the Atlanta Airport and the Buckingham Palace. It was a good time… Met up with the other students from St. Louis.

Oh! Ok, so update on the strikes at the university! The students set a car on fire at my university and put it out in the middle of a main road near downtown. Then the students up in St. Louis decided to strike in solidarity with our university, and the police tear-gased em, sending two students to France for hospitalizing. I guess it gets a bit crazy around here. So we are on strike for another week, but that’s ok, my mommy is coming to visit me this weekend.

Leave it to me to be asking for a coke duck for all these months…. i mean when i asked what a can was, they were like canard (or so i thought). I find out all these months later that a canard is a duck. A canette is a coke. Psh. No one bothered to tell me. I mean I knew there was something funny going on when I asked the boutiquiere for a duck, while pointing at a coke can. I actually remember once the boutiquiere saying they didn’t have any canards… and was looking around the shop.

It’s like proviser. You think provide would be proviser in french, but no. It’s fournir. And Pape is looking at me annoyed… for the millionth time because I made up yet another word.

I gave a presentation to the Rotary Club of Ziguinchor today for a service project. I think they will endorse it… but the presentation was SO bad. I mean you can misspell a lot of words…. but the word alphabet? If you know any word it should be the word alphabet. Mine was missing the first a. That was one of many errors. Of course… I basically read off the power point slides (breaks rule No. 1 of presenting a powerpoint).

Well tomorrow it’s bush taxi time.

That’s enough to start a cult! What should our cult be called? I guess the purpose of it could be to worship me. Actually, you worship the dead, so we should worship Napoleon. He would like that. It’s funny, Mr. Bond, according to your statistics you check it maybe once every two weeks. Are you sure it’s my blog your checking?

So I did end up going out to celebrate Tamkharit (sp?) at my friend, Ibrahima’s. It wasn’t too much of a celebration, I guess it’s not of the bigger holidays, but we had some really good food and Ibrahima and his friends are really nice. Rebecca started off talking in french, and I was like… I’ll just follow the conversation and stay quiet. That way it won’t be so apparent that my french sucks. So, we’re going along and it’s all in french, and I’m like this is great, I don’t have to say a thing! Then, Ibrahima actually does say something to me in french, and it’s the first thing I don’t understand! And then he and Rebecca started laughing and I asked what he said, and he had said my french was really making progress. So much for that.

I am absolutely convinced by now that my french will never improve to the point that I need it to, but it’s my fault. I should also realize by now that whenever i go out I know I’m going to embarrass myself one way or another. That never seems to fail.

I had a good time though, more speaking in french, so that was good.

On another note, I went to the boutique last night and this guy walks in and says hello. He then proceeded to ask me what happened to my finger (it took him explaining it 3 times, but i finally got it) and I said my cat tried to eat my nail, so it needs a bandaid. He asked if it was healing and I said yes, but I just couldn’t look at it. He said he felt better because he saw me in the boutique the night before and I was wondering what had happened all day. It’s so strange what some people pick up on and think about!

Well, I’m about to try making another phone call to Pop… unfortuntately my french is so bad that speaking on the phone is torturous. Both for me and the person on the other end. But it must be done.

p.s. OMG it is so cold to take showers here still! I take them and then as soon as I’m back inside I dive for the covers and hide under there till I’m warm again. I swear my palms actually turn blue.