the beginning of the end

I'm quite happy to be back in Dakar. It felt like a homecoming, much more than the other times when we have come back from trips away. I finally feel at home in this city, like I could say that I lived here for a short while without qualifying it as "well, sort of" or "not really". Of course, this realization comes at the same time as my realizing that I have no mental (or actual) map of the city and can't get anywhere without a taxi. Oh, well.
My schedule seems to be somewhat figured out for the rest of the ISP period. I leave Dakar again on Saturday (hopefully very early in the morning) for Palmerin. I should have Saturday afternoon and evening and all day Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to do more interviews and research. I haven't decided if I'll come back late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, but I'll be back in Dakar for the Thanksgiving dinner that one of the other students is hosting. (Her family is coming and apparently her mom is going to re-create every aspect of a traditional thanksgiving dinner. Fear not for my holiday meal!) Then I'll stay in Dakar after that, doing some more research, interviewing people from my NGO and writing my final paper and preparing the oral presentation. We have a few days down in a nice hotel near Mbour, as a sort of exit-orientation period, where we give our presentations and relax by the beach and say goodbyes. We go back to Dakar on the 13th and grab our bags and those of us who leave together on the group flight will head to the airport! I'll leave with the group but stay over in Paris for a few nights and be back in the states on the 17th or so, I think. It's all very fast approaching and sort of exciting. Given the mini-breakdown I had in front of the ice-cream section of Casino the other day, I'm finally starting to feel homesick! (Breakdown in a silly way, not in an actual breakdown way)(Casino is the French chain of supermarkets here, so it's like a slice of western/pre-packaged/expensive/organic/air-conditioned/materialistic/clean goodness in the middle of the goats and dusty streets of Dakar. We all sort of lose it when we're in Casino. I won't tell you how much I spent on cheese the other day...).

Anyway, that was a grammatically convoluted paragraph, but what I'm saying is that I miss you all and I'll see you sooner than you think!
xoxo,
Robin