To Turkey and Back

This post is long overdue... sorry about that:

About two weeks ago I packed my backpack and left to go on vacation. As I was leaving the kids across the street said, "is the Toubab going home?" and I responded, "no just on vacation." They all told me to have a good trip and I was off. Before the trip I had to do some office work in Dakar so that's how I spent the day before. My flight was at noon which is an odd time for flights out of Dakar (normally flights leave between 10pm-5am) so the airport was really empty. While waiting to board I met a nice Egyptian man who has a daughter my age. He's working in The Gambia and only gets to go home to Egypt once a year, he had to fly through Istanbul to get home but he was really excited. I also met a nice family from Burkina Faso who lives in Dakar and was going to turkey on vacation. The Dakar-Istanbul flight is the farthest East you can go directly from Dakar so there were a lot of people using it as the first leg of a trip into the Middle East.

When I landed in Turkey I met my parents and we traveled to Ephesus.The ruins at Ephesus are amazing but we were all exhausted from travel. The next day the three of us went to Cappadocia (where the original Star Wars was supposed to be filmed). It was beautiful and the landscape was bizarre and lovely. Made of volcanic rock formations, the entire area seems to be a combination of sandy colored rocks and bright blue sky. Turkish food is AMAZING and in both places we ate really well.

After 4 days of traveling with my parents we flew to Istanbul to meet Alan, Noah, and Tara. It was great to see everyone and so nice to live a somewhat normal life again. Istanbul was beautiful and interesting with the mixing of cultures, religions, and a continents. One evening Noah, Tara, Alan, our tour guide, and I went to the Asia side and just hung out in some local bars. In addition to eating amazingly fresh, well seasoned Turkish food, everyone humored me and we had McDonalds, Starbucks, Italian food, and Mexican food. Coming back to Senegal was really difficult but I forced myself to go straight from the airport to Bambey.

I made it back to Bambey in time for the Korite (or Eid al Fitr in the rest of the world) celebration. My family is tame so it involved eating meat and onion sauce for lunch/dinner then sitting in front of our house in the pitch black waiting for people to walk by. Usually you ask forgiveness from people you've wronged but I was tired and no one was stopping by our house so I went to bed pretty early.

The past week or so since the trip have been a whirlwind. The girls' camp starts 7 days from today and there's a lot of leg work to do. Alyssa came to see the University and the guy who had priced the food told us he had priced it wrong and we were VERY over budget. We were able to redo the entire menu and get back to being on budget but that took a lot of work. I have a meeting with my campers tomorrow to give them the permission slips and tell them final camp details. This next week I'll spend buying all of the supplies, visiting the University again, and preparing any other last minute needs.

As far as host family news goes: Youssou has asked me to teach him English... it all started when he asked me to take him back to the US with me when I leave. I explained that he wouldn't be able to talk to anyone because he doesn't speak English ... now we're doing short "classes." Mostly I just say a sentence in English and give him a written copy too (i.e. "how are you?"). We have a grand-child visiting for the holiday and she's about 3. She was afraid of me the first few days then started to warm up. I let her and another neighborhood girl color the other day and I overheard them talking about me. Last night she sat on my lap while we watched tv. I've recently gotten AMAZING packages from an old roommate, a girl in my sorority, and my parents! It's made days better (work is less difficult when you know there are amazing snacks to follow) and my host family is even enjoying the American treats. My parents sent me a package of oreos that I gave to my host mom who is the gift "banker." It's her job to hand out oreos to the kids and decide who gets how many. Thank you to everyone who's sent stuff! You have no idea how much it makes my day.

I didn't have internet when I got back from the trip but now that it's back I promise I'll be a better blogger!

KO