Alright, let me give you a bit of the rundown of what I've been up to for the past 5ish days.

Wednesday
02h30: Meet at Dr. Barry's house to get on the bus to pick other girls up from the university
04h00: Finally get on the road
11h30: Stop for a break and "breakfast" of cookies and yogurt.
15h30: Stop for another break because we haven't made it to our lunch stop.
17h30: Stop for "lunch".
18h30: Constant complaining about how long we've been on this really uncomfortable, hot, sticky, dusty bus.
20h30: Arrive at the hotel at Niokolokoba, the wildlife park the size of New Jersey, eat dinner, crash.

Thursday
08h30: Breakfast and boat tour of the Gambia River to see hippos, birds, warthogs, and monkeys.
11h00: Safari to try to see exciting animals, but alas, we saw nothing.
14h00: Lunch.
16h00: Left for Kédougou.
20h30: Arrive in Kédougou, eat dinner, and crash.

Friday
07h30: Breakfast
09h00: Leave for the waterfall in 4x4 jeeps.
11h30: Arrive at village and hike 45 minutes to get to waterfall. Beautiful place. Swimming and lounging.
14h00: Lunch back in village.
17h30: Arrive back in Kédougou and visit market.
21h30: Dinner.
23h00: Drinks and some girls went out dancing, others went to bed.

Saturday
07h30: Breakfast
08h00: Depart for Bedick village visit.
09h30: Arrive at the bottom of the small mountain we must climb to get there.
10h15: Arrive in village and visit the place, seeing the biggest Baobob tree in the region (24m of circumference!), seeing their school and medicinal building, and playing with the kids.
12h00: Reach the bottom and leave.
12h30: Tour a rock quarry. (Freakin' lame.)
14h00: Get back to hotel and eat lunch.
16h30: Take tea with the hotel managers and visit market.
19h30: Dinner at Thierry's house, the only male student with us. He came because he knows the region well. So, he spent 5 days with 19 American women.
22h00: Hit the road for Saint-Louis.

Sunday
07h00: Stop for breakfast.
11h00: Stop for break.
15h00: Stop for lunch.
17h30: Return home.

I calculated, and we spent 49 hours on the road throughout the whole trip which was 120 hours long. It was great to get to know the other girls, who exceeded all expectations. They're good fun and they've had so many experiences here that it was defintely our orientation of sorts.

Today was the first day of classes, and so I went to the first one that I thought I was going to take which happens to be at 10h00. The prof didn't show up. Here, you have to wait for 30 minutes you leave. I left and met some German guys who are just here visiting and hung out with them for awhile before a meeting with professor Barry. We have rooms now, but can't move in until Wednesday. Hopefully things will get started here. There's a choir that I plan to sing with, and maybe I'll take an Aikido class.

It's weird to think that all of a sudden, I have less than 3 months left here. It's been an interesting experience. I'm still so exhausted and desperately need to catch up on sleep.

Love and miss you all.