Perfect Day

Okay so yesterday started off pretty boring. No electricity or running water. Mostly sat around sleeping and reading. Started and finished half a book. But come about 1 o'clock Eric, Nick and I went to have lunch with a Mauritanian friend who's we had over for dinner once and he's been asking us to come over for weeks. We finally found a time when we could and thank Allah we did.

Had some of the best Chebb Gen and Daomada I've ever had... yeah they fed us two plates of food at once. Pretty Akbar. Then we just hung out forever with him and his family and talked shit. Pretty entertaining to be talking shit in four different languages. I'm still amused by how we have conversations switching seamlessly between all of them.

His house is out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere(pardon my language, but this is my blog and it is my language)even further away than my school so we had a long walk. He was telling us about his friends house where he works out here and he said they had proper weights... we had to see this! So we go and we find ourselves the first Mauritanian 'gym' we've ever seen. It's just a guys dirt yard with some car axels welded to wheels, a couple of water jugs hooked to a rope and pulley system and a bench made of scrap wood -- but they are other than that the proper equipment. So we stay for a work out. We're working out with what have got to be 4 of the most ripped malnourished guys I've ever seen and it's like having four personal trainers yelling at you 3 different languages. I've been trying to do push-ups and sit-ups and running and some other stuff to make me feel like keeping something of my former strength from the states but it's been nothing like this. Eric and Nick are both much bigger guys than me and I thought I might look like the runt of the bunch when we were lifting but I was happy to see that I was more than keeping pace with them and the Mauritanians. This morning I am, however, a little sore. The good kind though. What more could you ask for? I'm definitely building a gym out of car parts when I get back home, I wish I had a welding machine here I'd go to town!

After that we just went home chilled out and had made ourselves a tasty treat. I guess that was pretty much all that made up my perfect day here.

I think it was such a nice day because we spent it almost all with Mauritanians (which is generally the opposite) and it was one of those times in a volunteers progress for me when I felt like I was breaking past another plateau. For the last couple months I've felt like my language and integration had been stagnating and there is nothing that I hate more than being stagnant. I'm constantly seeking personal growth, usually by putting myself into uncomfortable situations (like this stupid sandbox I'm living in!). In the last few weeks I've really been hanging out with my teachers a lot, I've got some new projects percolating, I feel like my French is starting to improve again, I'm getting better at Wolof I can pretty much understand what's going on 75% of the time in Wolof conversations, I'm starting to learn some Hassaniya beyond saying hello and it's hot for 45 min (I plan on sneaking into language classes this summer or getting a tutor so I can learn hassaniya as well) and more importantly I feel 'normal' again in my encounters with Mauritanians. I'm hitting a serious transitional stage again and I feel growth coming in many areas. Including these guns (yes I am pointing to my arms... oh yeah, you can feel the power!)

It's nice to have internet here at my place now. I am a morning person and I usually do most of my work between 5-10am. I can start reading my news and bullshitting on here on a regular basis, get a whole new morning routine. Okay, that's all my blathering and BSing for now.

Peace.