America Night and ISP

Yesterday, we celebrated America night, and I think it's safe to say that it was a success. Since we had Friday afternoon off, we headed to the supermarket (Casino) to pick up our supplies. I had signed up to make macaroni and cheese, but I ended up going on a bit of a shopping spree, picking up tabasco sauce, brownies, frosted flakes, Doritos and just about anything else American I could get my hands on. I ended up spending upwards of $60, but it was definitely worth it. Afterwards, we headed back to school to cook everything up and celebrate.

Between all the group members, we had macaroni and cheese (myself), baked beans (Milo), grilled cheese (Elizabeth), pizza bread (A'Daris), peanut butter cookies (Karen), pineapple upside-down cake (Megan), marinated chicken (Sonya and Alicia), fresh vegetables (Jeannie) and some good ol' fashioned American soda (Allie). After eating, we watched a number of Pixar short films followed by one of my favorite films of all time, Casablanca. Despite the fact that I suffered from some pretty serious indigestion the next morning, I was very happy.

ISP starts Tuesday, and I've settled definitively on bronze sculpture. In some ways, it sort of feels like a cop-out compared to some of the more "serious" research that other people are doing, but I'm thinking I'll be able to get art credit for it (Inshalla), which will be nice. I'll be working with Issa Diop, a well-known Senegalese sculptor, and one of the more interesting people I've met in a long time (he lived in LA for five crazy \years in the 1970s... But that's a story best saved for a later post).

We also took our second language placement tests this morning. In French, I scored advanced-mid, which is one level above what I scored at the beginning of the program. In Wolof, I scored intermediate mid, which I don't feel that I deserved, as I really struggled through the test, largely due to my inadequate vocabulary (didn't know the words for beach, country, etc.). I talked myself into corners a couple of times, forcing myself to use the third person plural future pronouns that I didn't really remember. I guess I got points for effort or something.

Finally, I feel it bears mentioning some of the crazy things that have been going on in my homestay lately. Aida, the three-year-old daughter of my host brother, has been toeing the line between adorable and demon-spawn quite well the past couple of weeks. She's recently taking to critiquing everything I do, and she seems to only speak in the negative, even when I'm in the midst of doing the very thing she's referring to (e.g. (while pointing at my shoes) you don't have shoes! (while I'm eating chicken) you don't eat chicken! you don't know me! etc.).

Most recently, I overheard a discussion in Wolof between my brother and my mom about Gaspard, the disgusting old cat that belongs to our family (who I affectionately dubbed Mickey Rourke cat based on his appearance). Based on the very little that I understood, I gathered that Gaspard might be on his last legs. When I asked Aida what had happened to Gaspard, she replied (in French)"I put him in a bag and threw him in the trash because he couldn't walk anymore."

I didn't really know whether to believe this or not, but I found out the next day that although this was an exaggeration, Gaspard had indeed been sent away for good. On a similar note, my family has spent the last few nights trying to capture another one of the cats in the house and put her in a bag. The reason they gave for doing this was that they were going to "put her up for adoption," though I'm not sure to what extent this is a euphemism. So far, the cat has comically eluded capture.