June is Off to a Good Start

First off, congratulations to Sarina for finding my blog. I was beginning to worry about you. My address here is:
PCV Mandi Kimberly
B.P. 360
Thies, Senegal
West Africa

Packages are always warmly accepted. :) I will tell you about everything if you send me an email at mandikimberly at yahoo.com. You didnt give me your email address, you know.

In other news, yesterday was really crazy involving a meeting with the principal of the high school to discuss a sexual health weekend to talk about aids and other STDS and promote awareness (something desperately needed in this country as the Senegalese are very squirmish about talking about sex at all. Its very taboo). Its not going to work out this school year, since the students are really busy planning for their exams, but hopefully towards the beginning of the next one. After that I went to the youth library where I seem to have sabotaged my own work by accidentally deleting one of the columns and am just now catching back up with where I left off. Damn.

After lunch I had a meeting with my girls group where we did skits on how to react to peer pressure to drink, smoke and have sex. It was of course after the meeting that someone pointed out that in Senegal it is taboo for women to either smoke or drink, therefore they will probably not be pressured to do so. Perhaps I should have made the lesson more culturally appropriate? At any rate the girls were silly and had fun and if nothing else the sex one was relevent. One out of three is good, right? I found out there are two more weeks in the school year here until summer vacation so I only have to plan out two more lessons. Im actually a little dissappointed, but I know there is no way these girls are having enough fun to sign up to come into school once a week over summer vacation. I am not that inspiring. Or intelligible when I speak. Spent the rest of the evening at the library trying to fix my mistake.

Today am in Thies working with one of my neighbors on a two hour presentation we are giving to American volunteers who have just gotten into Senegal to work with a local NGO on how to train Senegalese in IT. Should be fun. I will head home after lunch and have a consultation with an aspiring entrepeneur (not sure of what, havent heard his idea yet) and then more library fun. And thats my life these days.