Language Seminar

"Therefore it seems to me that everything that exists is good - death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement , my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed to lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of dispeir in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some perfection by to leave it as it is, to love it, and to be glad to belong to it." -"Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse

That quote is from a book I just completed. I think it is a perfect example of how people should view the world and accept the things that are happening in it. Something to take with you today.

Well, once again I am back in Tamba. I crossed about 280km to the great city of Kaolack last Monday from Tamba; and after the 4.5 hr drive to the city, we got into another car that took us straight to The Gambian boarder (literally). The lovely city of Karang is located right on the boarder of Senegal and The Gambia. There Cibyl and I met up with our fellow Mandinka speaker, Will, and we then traveled to his town of Masarinko. It was a lovely little town, full of Mandinka speakers! I spent 4 days there for the language seminar to brush up on some of my language training. It was extremely helpful, and a lot of fun! When we were not studying our Mandinka verbs, we went swimming in a near by Mangrove. The water was so salty, it made floating effortless. It was a great escape from the city life I normally lead in Maleme-Niani. We saw some very big monkeys as well! Whooo!! Real African animals... finally!!!

Now that Im back here, I am taking some nice R&R before I head back home tomorrow. It will be a short stay at home, since I am due to celebrate America's Independence with my fellow volunteers soon! I will be traveling a lot in the coming weeks, which is exciting and exhausting to think about. I hope it will make for some good stories, if nothing else. I have added some more pictures to my Picassa site... check them out! And finally, my good friend Shareen headed to Kenya yesterday as part of a volunteer opportunity through her church... Check out her blog here! She is a great writer and I am excited to hear about all that she experiences while in Kenya!

Thats all for now... sorry nothing too crazy to report. More stories later...