Dance, Djembe and MacGyver

Today was our first day of dance and Djembe at SIT, and it certainly was an interesting one. As someone who doesn't normally dance at all, getting into the rhythm of Senegalese dance proved particularly difficult. With the variety of arm and leg movements used, some of the dances feel a lot like trying to rub your stomach at the same time. Eventually, I started to get the hang of it, though this next week of classes is going to be tricky. Physically, the dancing was an incredible workout, and I was quite literally sweating more than I ever have in my life. I'm well on my way to drinking 5 liters of water today.

Djembe was definitely easier, and I'm looking forward to playing it more, along with the Tama later on in the program.

Something else that bears mentioning is an incident that occurred with my fan last night. Upon deciding to turn in for the night, I went to plug in my fan only to discover that one of the prongs had broken off of the electrical plug. I decided to try to tape the prong back on and try to plug it back in. This worked only momentarily; the prong broke off again, this time in the outlet.

Upon realizing my failure, I decided I would try to sleep without a fan. I slept in fits and starts for about a half hour, finally waking up drenched in sweat, vowing to fix the fan situation if it took all night.

First, deciding that I would rather risk electrocution than spend a night sleepless and sweating, I used my pocket knife to disassemble the electrical outlet and tried to remove the piece of the plug that was stuck in it. While I don't think I got the piece out, I at least moved it around enough that it was out of the way. I then reassembled the outlet and tested it out to make sure it was working properly.

In so doing, I realized that the power adapter that I've been using for my computer works as a sort of miniature extender, and in order to get the fan working again all I would have to do would be to find some conductive material to shove into the socket of the adapter to take the place of the missing prong. After experimenting with pieces of pens and the like for a half hour or so, I noticed that the screw that I had removed to disassemble the wall socket was about the right size. Feeling I had nothing to lose, I put the screw in the hole, jammed the plug into the adapter, stuck the adapter into the wall and...

Alxahmdulilaay!

It's hard to describe just how elated I was when the fan started working again. I can honestly say it's the happiest I can remember being in a long time. For the first time in my life, I felt what it must be like to be MacGyver. And it was awesome.

I'm going to head to the hardware store tomorrow for a more permanent solution, and I'm planning on getting a haircut as well. We'll see how that goes.