After 3 days...

all RIGHT!
So, a little preface, this blog is for family and friends alike, so this could end up being a little scandalous for some, maybe not quite racy enough for others. With that said...

HOLY SHIT I AM IN DAKAR
After about thirty hours of travel of course.

When we first arrived, we got to stay in a little apartment for two nights, to have a little space and yet be around each other, which was super nice. The other night we moved in with the families. There's the timeline, here are the details:

DETAILS (very random, but organizing observations at a cyber cafe is downright tricky)

Beautiful mosques are everywhere, though they don't seem so beautiful when you wake up to the call for prayer at 5:00 in the morning. Either Dakar or Senegal is 95% Muslim, 4% Catholic, and 1% Animism. They coexist cohesively. There is a scattering of others and non-religious, but it's not very common. Though drinking is looked down upon, that does not keep young Muslim twenty-somethings from getting their party on. Booze is sold many places and is pretty darn cheap.

We went to the Atlantic Ocean, which is massive and beautiful and hotdamn is it intimidating. Guys play soccer and work out there, but the Senegalese have been so spoiled by nice weather that no one really goes to the beach until it's (for me) an ungodly temperature.

Pretty much every Senegalese is super attractive. Men are tall and slim. Running and soccer are big, and also chubby men are seen as effeminate (French is ruining my English already, so spelling... eh). While in America the typical roles are for the men to be big and the women to be much smaller (same size at biggest), it's the total opposite here. When a women gets married, she's expected to gain weight get bigger to show that she's relaxed and happy and not stressed or working too hard. All of the Senegalese tell me that I should find a husband here, and hell, I feel way sexy here. And because hygiene and cleanliness is really emphasized in Islam, everyone smells really good too.

Children are begging everywhere. Some (maybe many) belong to these "Muslim" schools, where men basically send children to beg for money, then keep the money and feed the kids. By giving these kids money, one is supporting the problem, which the government won't attack because attacking this problem is indirectly attacking Islam.

I also learned that in Senegal, some gay men were sentenced to prison for being seen together in a rented beach house. Though there aren't hate crimes or anything of the sort, homosexuality is strongly hated on by Islam. It's been really interesting to talk to people about this aspect of society, because here, racism is nonexistant and people are very warm. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I'm working on it.