hello again! day 2 is coming to a close. thank you for all the wonderful emails :) i am sorry i haven't written you back yet - i am using other girls' computers and feel bad using them for too long. supposed to be a computer lab but it is open at questionable hours and there are occasional power outages soo u know. will write back asap. please keep writing! it makes me very happy :)

took about 2 hours to fall asleep last night - unclear whether to jet lag or due to lack of air conditioning. would lay on one side and within 30 seconds my legs would be sweating and then would turn over- feel relief- and 30 seconds later hot again. i actually tried counting sheep- i got to 100 and was so pissed, i got my dorky head lamp and read my book. talked to a girl this morning and she was like yeah i couldnt sleep so i started counting sheep for the first time ever. made me laugh and it was nice to hear.

felt fine today though and we started orientation. met more people, ate more bread for breakfast and mustered eating an egg for protein, talked a lot about "culture" which was actually quite interesting, learned a few wolof greetings which i can tell will be a major struggle for me to remember, ate delicious lunch (flies enjoyed it as well), and then did much more discussion, talking about core values and realizing just how different senegalese values can be- like values of "time" and they prefer not to take risks, etc. thought the directors were good and lead good discusssion and at the end of the day, we got told where we would be living. they said there were 3 neighborhoods - one a 5 minute walk, one a "car rapide" away, and then one u have to take a taxi because its a 3o min walk. obvi living in the 30 minute walk away- its called the "sacre coeur 3" but i like a lot of the other people who will be living there. we all have to share taxis back and forth which will be hard but we walked around the area and it seemed pretty nice. find out later in the week who our families are and move in friday. gahhhh. i found walking around dakar today it already seems more pretty and appreciate it more. nervous abou t moving in w/ the families but i am feeling fairly comfortable speaking french so thats good. ok have stole this girls computer for 6 hours. love love