so its election day and ive not updated for a while. We got back from pout monday afternoon, after 8 days in pout. It was a interesting week, as it was language intensive for the whole week. we looked after our garden a bit during the evenings but mostly just went over a few new language subjects and reviewed for our Language placement interview on tuesday, today. Sunday in Pout we went to the city football final. My brother Palomine is the keeper for the reserve team from quartier mbayen. It was quite a different scene then the last game that i was out. In that sense, considerably less excitement. The reserve game was ok, it was nil nil and went to penalties, and Palomine was substituted. The guy they put in was badass though, he saved three of them and they won the game. Palomine was very happy about it. We stuck around for the first half of the senior game and went back to our home stay's to pack up our stuff so it could be picked up the next morning. The senior team from Mbayen won that game as well, so it was a clean sweep for quartier mbayen. they paraded the trophy through the quatrier that night and everyone was having a good old fashioned street party basically.
So we came back to thies on monday afternoon after saying goodbye to our homestay families. We ate lunch with them and then waited around for the peace corps car. My family and lots of their friends were all curious about the election and wether or not i was voting for Obama. They all were very happy that i was voting for Obama even though when i asked them why they like him, some of them just pointed to their skin. i mean theyre not going to know the different policies and ins and outs of the american political system just like we dont know theirs. Hence we had a class on it on the 5th after the election. But we get back to thies and relax and get ready for the LPI the next day. I was rather worried about it as i felt like i was kinda at the same level as before maybe a little more advanced in the sense of knowing a few more verbs and how to build a sentence. Shelia and i go into thies to check email and the internet in general. So i study that night and still feel this kinda impending doom kinda feeling with the election, LPI, and other things going on in my life in Senegal. Writing this now on the 5th, one has turned out well in the shape of the election, yay ohio, way to step up to the plate. LPI is still unknown at the moment. We have the rematch of the staff trainee soccer game at 6, so thatll be fun, ill prob go into town after dinner for some interneting and beers.
So i had a crzy dream about 2 things, kinda seperate incidents. The first one was kinda neat/hectic, kinda a travel related one. We were going to Dakar for swearing in and we get to the Dakar HQ office and its got a huge rather american style parking garage underneith the building. So were pulling in and its really really long with support beams holding up the roof, and momadoud, from previous entries, is driving and for some reason were backing up and were late or something so hes just hauling ass down the length of the parking garage at top speed in the PC bus. Im sitting there think oh shit were going to hit one of the support pillars and wrap round it. we dont cause mama-dukes is the shit and we get to the door just a little late and make it to swear in. The second part that i remember was about the election and i thought it rather foreboding. Obama won by a tiny bit and everyone was all happy and celebrating but in 2000 fashion recount and he loses. Considering i had this the night before the election and my LPI i was a little nervous going into said day.
I just found out that our entire stage passed their language proficiency tests. Which is great as no one has early terminated from our stage also. The country director who was here to talk to us said that is the first time in a long while that no ones done that. I also just got my package from my parents, it had a really cool football jersey from croatia, as well as my obama pin, which im wearing now. After our last safety and security session we got our soccer game under way. It was supposed to be kicking off at 6 but the staff pulled the old switch-a-roo and moved the time up for some reason, some nonsense about daylight not being there or something. well due to some shady substitutions and some sub par defending on my part we were down 2-0 in the first half. In the second half i started on the bench and the rest of the trainees who wanted to play showed up by this point and subbed in. I tried to organize the team a little bit, but im not very good at that, and were not all soccer players. The second half was alot better then the first as we more then held our own and had more then 4 chances to put away, our last touch was just off. When i got back in i played up on right wing or attack. I think im better there as i can run more and expose tried defenders a little more. we had a few good runs up the wings once we started using the wings more. so the second half was good. But we ended up losing 3-0. Ah well what can you do, we'll catch shit from teh trainers now, but im pretty good at slinging it back.
So i suppose thats a really brief summary of what went down, really really brief. But ill be swearing in on friday at the ambassadors place or something and then off to Kédougou on sunday hopefully. So my new address there is as follows
PCV Alan Edwards
B.P. 37 Kédougou
Senegal
West Africa
so for those of you who feel inclined to send me things thats the spot to send them to.
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