a week in

As things go in Senegal, (read:slowly) I can update only time to time. I've been in my home-stay village for the past week. It's a wonderful little city/large village about 5km from the ocean. It has sand everywhere and palm tres. The people are super nice, but always insist on wanting to make us learn wolof and not speak in french. My home-stay family is great and huge, thought it's awkward to interact because of the language problem. But we try and it's been going well. There is a 30 year old son Babarcar, and we bond well. I spend most of the day between class either sitting under a tree and trying to chit-chat or making amazing senegalese tea. We're back in Thies for a few days before another two weeks back in the village. All things are going well (Iinchallah).
Please, send me mail!
PCT Kenny Cox
Corps de la Paix
BP 299
Thies, Senegal
West Africa

I'm here

I arrived safely in Dakar and was greeted by the country director and some current PCVs. We took a nice (nap) bus ride to Thies where the Train Center compound is located. Our group of 50 trainees seem to be really great and motivated; and the staff with PC is amazing. They are very kind and patient. We've immediately begun cultural training (which senegalese culture is AMAZING). We were finally allowed to walk around with 3rd year PCVs outside the walls of our safe little compound yesterday. Thies is eye-opening. talk about extreme poverty. i've never seen anything like it before. hopefully i can get some pictures up, but the people are semi-offended by us taking pictures. they'll ask why we would want to take pictures, it's just their lives. but they are extremely friendly. We've been split up in language groups, and right now i'm learning french. though we've all picked up some Wolof. I travel up with my 4 person group and teacher to a village on the north western coast to live on-and-off for the next 9 weeks to train (traveling between there and Thies). It's a sweet beach resort town, so yea for that. I leave for there tomorrow evening for 10 days.
Asaalam aleikum

Logistics of Staging

I leave Indy on Tuesday (8/11/09) at 7am. US Air Flight #3302. I stage in D.C. and stay at the Washington Plaza Hotel. We fly out Wednesday night, non-stop to Dakar, Senegal on United Flight #4590 @ 5:40pm.