First week complete!

I am here at a cyber in Sokone where I came in to meet some volunteers, check my mail and buy some stuff. Its a pain typing on this though since it is a French keyboard and I almost have to relearn to type everything. But lots to say, so Ill do my best until I can get on an American computer again, preferably mine.
My site is lovely! Pics to come when I get back into Kaolack, which will be Thanksgiving. Where do I even begin? I have a small family, which is a huge change from my homestay site where I was surrounded by tons of people all the time. Now, if I need to get away and rest for a while, that is perfectly feasible. I have a backyard where I am working on starting a garden, and my own bathroom (a hole in the ground wth some concrete and a millet fence surrounding it). I actually have my own patio, with a little plastic and millet stalk roof covering it, so people can come over and sit on the concrete banister and chat. And best of all, I have lighting!! It turns out that my counterpart is also my dad at site, and he is pretty patron, so he installed three solar powered lightbulbs in my hut; one inside, one in my backyard and one on the front patio. It is rather convenient.
As of right now I dont have a bed, but I commisioned a local artisian in a neighboring village to build one, and we are going to get it back on a horse drawn charette in the next few days. Yes, I will make sure to take pictures of that. For the time being I am sleeping on a cot I bought in Kaolack before install and my camping mat on that. For what its worth, it gets the job done.
My sister and mom make my life a much happier experience as well. My sister, Umi, is the same age as me, and she is amazingly not yet married. She has a boyfriend in Keur Saloume Diane, the aforementioned neighboring village, and she always pretends to deny it, so I tease her. She then proceeds to tease me back about my boyfriend, who I refer to as my husband here in Senegal so as to avoid a long cross cultural discussion every time I mention him. Umi is the only person I have met in Senegal so far who can go toe-to-toe with me when I tease her for something. We actually managed to start dueling with our spoons at the dinner bowl the other night, which progressed into a pretend kung-fu match, and eventually ended up as an all-out wrestling tournament. Sometimes I wonder about my own antics...
My mom, Arame, here is adorble. She called me yesterday while I was at another volunteers house in Sokone to say goodnight and check up on me. I am pretty sure I never really appreciated people always checking up on me back in the States to see if I am ok, but now in this foreign culture and place it means the world to me to know that I have support and am not completely on my own all the time trying to figure out what I am doing. Oh and ps, I`m pretty sure she is the same age as me, but Senegalese have a habit of never telling you their real age. It is not an embarresment thing like it is in the states, but more of a superstition. And for clarification, Umi and Arame are not actually related; Umi is my sister because she has a room in the house with which I am associated, but she is just living in Keur Andalla for a while because she is a teacher there.
Usman, my counterpart/dad, normally stays in a room that he has in Saloum Diane because he works there. He comes home a few times a week to see the village and spend a bit of time with Arame and Diama, their 1-year old baby. Diama is adorable and I play with her all the time. She`ll get into her terrible twos while I`m living here, so maybe it`ll start to get annoying, but 2-year olds can be cute too sometimes.
There are two major downsides to my site: first, it is the most remote site in all of the Fatick region. To get to Sokone, I biked around 48 kilometers yesterday, mostly on a packed laterite road, which is basically a red gravel and clay mixture. In the future, I can take a car from Saloum Diane at 6 am, but that involves waking up and walking 4 km to Saloum Diane before it is light out through the fields, probably not the safest means. Otherwise, I can bike on the bushroads which I have not yet learned about 25 km here, which is better distance but worse quality roads and may just be annoying. I guess I`ll learn my options quickly enough.
The other downside is water- I do not have a robine (tap) at site, so I am pulling water from a well for everything- laundry, drinking, showing, watering my garden, etc. It`s amazing how much you are concious of your water usage when you have to carry every drop you use on your head for about 150 meters. Really makes you appreciate showers. I am starting to get the hang of it; it will definitely involve some next muscle strengthening before I perfect the art that is carrying binoirs of 10 gallons or so of water on your head.
I haven`t started any major work projects yet, and I don`t plan too for a while. We won`t hqve the training for it until after IST in December. Right now, our jobs as new volunteers is to integrate into our communities, learn everybody`s names, settle, start to form ideas about where we would want to start projects in the future, talk to other volunteers about their work, and start to pinpoint potential work partners outside of just our counterparts. To start, however, I`ve already started a guava pepiniere as part of a reserch project for one of our PST trainers, and I plan on starting more of a garden in my backyard. I am also learning to cook Senegalese dishes, and generally I go out to the fields with the other women in the mornings to pick peanut plants and help carry a few back to the compound. It`s pretty hard work, but I do enjoy getting outside and having something to do rather than just sit and drink Senegalese tea all day. My sister and I are also going to paint my room tomorrow or the day after, should be fun!
Ok well my time at the cafe is running out quickly so I`ll wrap this up. Now you can all start sending me packages! Easy mac, instant oatmeal packets, granola bars, and American candy/chocolate is all apprecited.
love you all from across the ocean,
~E