Summary of My Last 2 Months of 2019

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        Happy New Year! 2020 has just begun and I feel like I am already behind. I have about 17 months to complete everything that I want, which seems like a lot of time, but I swear these past months have floooown by. With that being said, let me take a quick break to catch you up on the last two months of 2019 since I “forgot” to add to my blog.


            November was fairly slow work-wise, sprinkled with a few meetings here and there. Trying to move projects along without a local work partner to spearhead them is mighty difficult, so not much traction on that front. Before I knew it, Thanksgiving was upon me. I decided to celebrate with a handful of other Peace Corps Volunteers in and around my region. Seeing as this would be my first Thanksgiving ever away from the family—not to mention out of the country—the food and company were a much needed salve to the soul. Here is proof of my enjoyment:





My twist out was being very cooperative :)



           




















        After Thanksgiving, it was back to the grind before I halted everything for the Christmas Season. Since my large project was all but dead, I decided to switch tracks and work on an idea that I’d been pondering for a week at that point: computer literacy classes. I checked out the computers, designed lesson plans, and spoke logistics with local work partners to try and get this thing in motion by late January. This as well as handling entrepreneurship trainings kept me quite busy up until December 22nd when I officially started my self-given and hardly-earned 2 week hiatus for the most wonderful time of the year.


         For this Christmas I decided to celebrate with my host family, so it was a quiet affair. Since they are Muslim, I decided that sharing a bit of the spirit of Christmas would be best which to me this means giving: giving meals, drinks, and entertainment in this case. I tried to watch a Christmas movie with my 3 year old host nephew, but since it didn’t have Micky Mouse in it, he was not interested. I shan’t make this mistake next year. A terrible picture of the meal can be seen below.

My host mom can throw down; this meal was divine



            I was able to have my parents and two of my siblings finally video chat and meet my host family, so that was nice and reassuring for both sets of parents I’m guessing. It was a lot of poor translations on my end, but everyone seemed to understand the gist of the conversation so it was good. I knew for New Year’s Eve I didn’t want to be at site, so I headed up north to meet other volunteers for the NYE Bash. I had a great time, and no you will not find pictures of my exploits below.

Actually, here is 1 photo of the view from our Airbnb.


            Now I am back at site feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to work on these projects. May 2020 bring fresh insight and much needed help to everyone's future endeavors, opening new doors and all that jazz. Things will be great this year, inshallah (this means "God willing" in Wolof).

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