Preparations, expectations, anticipation

The first leg of my flight leaves Denver at 6:00 tonight (first to Frankfurt, then to Lisbon, and finally to Dakar), so I thought I'd take some time to jot a few things down before I leave.

For those of you who might not know, the focus of this field-based study abroad program is arts and culture. I'll be learning various forms of visual art, music and dance as well as language, history and politics. The final month of the program is formatted as an independent study, which I plan to use to study something in the field of human rights (though that may change).

I feel fairly well prepared for this trip, given the amount of time I've spent reading and watching films from Senegal. I'm fairly confident in my ability to speak French, but I've come to learn that Wolof will likely be more useful. I've familiarized myself with the basics of this language, but resources for learning it have been hard to come by.

I'm looking forward to meeting my host family and other students in the program, and I'm certain the experiences that I'll have in Senegal will be life-changing. (The one thing I'm dreading is getting sick--I haven't thrown up since eighth grade, and I have no desire to break my vomit-streak just yet.)

As for what you can expect from this blog, I'm hoping to post not only photos but audio as well (My experiences in Mozambique taught me the importance of having an audio recorder on hand). I'm not much of a photographer, but I'll do my best to get at least a few shots each place I visit. While I can't make any promises in regards to how often I'll be able to provide updates, I'll make every effort to post as soon as I can with interesting news. While I will have consistent internet access in Dakar, we'll be making numerous excursions to other outlying areas that likely won't be as well-connected.

As I'll be waiting for a good six hours or more for the rest of my group in the airport in Dakar, I'll likely post from there once I've arrived (assuming internet access is available).

Here's to hoping that Lufthansa is better at not losing my luggage than South African Airlines was. (Here's to parenthetical statements as well, since every paragraph has one.)