I'm about to go back to America and the Bills are 5-9

Seriously, what is this? 7 straight losses or something like that? Pathetic. Nonetheless, GO BILLS. Or is the season over? I haven't really been paying that close attention, but that is going to change because I will be in America this time tomorrow (just knocked on wood, don't worry). I thought I would hash out all of the food that I want to eat when I'm there. I always planned to make the first thing that I ate when returning to America a Big Mac, even though that isn't really my meal of choice at McDonalds. It just feels right. I remember coming back from India when I was 6 years old and forcing someone to take me to Burger King in Logan airport so that I could get a kids meal (not a Big Mac, I know, and I think that story doesn't do much to further the point I was making. My bad). Unfortunately, as a consequence of flights out of Dakar leaving at 2am, I will be arriving in the U.S. in the early morning. McDonalds has a very strict no lunch in the morning policy that I plan on debating thoroughly with the motivated early morning shift employee at the first one I see in the Dulles airport. I am not confident, but that might have something to do with being used to Senegalese customer service, which more or less does not exist.

So no Big Mac most likely, but luckily another food that I have really been missing, bagels, are considered an appropriate breakfast food. I would like one cinnamon raison with plain cream cheese and one everything with some sort of garlic-chive cream cheese. After that, I plan on going to Wegmans so that I can cry a little. Also, I would like to buy salami there, and cheese. I miss cheese.

I also want to go to the following restaurants: Dinosaur BBQ (crucial), Country Sweet Chicken (crucial in the literal sense of the word), Chen Garden (doesn't have to be that restaurant necessarily, but Chinese is essential), the Johnson House (I would like to get their veal parm), Sinbads (more or less optional, there is a large Lebanese population in Senegal), Jimmy Z's (cheeseburger with hot sauce, ketchup, mustard, and onions with a side of fries), Java Junction (southwest panini sounds really good right now), Chester Cab Pizza (again, not essential, but because of the lack of good cheese here pizza isn't as good as in America), Wendy's (the used Cadillac of fast food restaurants), any Indian restaurant (I'm curious as to whether I'll like Indian food a lot now), any Senegalese restaurant (hahahahahahahahahahaha...kidding), and I'm sure I'm forgetting somewhere. That being said, I will be home for like a week, so I'm going to have to eat something like 8 meals each day in order to get all of this done. I also plan on bringing some McDonald's back to Senegal (because of the preservatives you can leave a burger out for a week and eat it without getting too ill).

Also, as it is Christmas time, I assume we will be eating lots of meals at home. I think Jo said something on facebook about wanting Grandma's beef stew. That would be good. I would love some apple brown betty as well. The word in wolof for "also" is "itam" and I almost just typed that instead of "as well." I worry that I will be saying waaw (yes), leggi (now), and wante (but), during English conversations.

This has not been a particularly informative post, but I'm bored in Dakar so I figured what the hell. I am excited to navigate the Dakar airport, though. That should be an adventure. Ooo I called HSBC and Bank of America to make sure that my cards work while I'm travelling. The friendly Indian man from HSBC understood exactly what I wanted, but the American at BOA had a little bit of trouble understanding why I would want to return to Africa after having returned to America. Okay this isn't interesting or informative anymore, so I'll try to find some movie quotes and call it a post.

How about Airplane! ?

"Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"
"Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?"
"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"

"We have clearance Clarence. Roger, Roger. What's our Vector Victor?"

"I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film."

Okay, see you all soon. Except my Finnish readers. To them I say "Olen hukassa, Missa on vessa?" which means "I am lost, where is the bathroom/pharmacy.

The Fastest Blog Post Ever Written

I have only 9% of battery left, so I will try to cover things quickly. I am currently uploading pictures to flickr, but I don't know how far I will get. The set is pretty big. It automatically uploaded the video first. That is a video of us at Magic Land (yes, Magic Land), the amusement park in Dakar. It reminded me a lot of Coney Island, just with less character and far more dangerous. It was so fun. This is a video of us on the bump jump. We didn't understand the name until about halfway through that video. We also decided that pictures taken on the Pop Art setting on my camera just look better. Casey and Monica also feel that my camera takes off a few pounds, which they like. It tends to make some people look emaciated.



Thanksgiving in Dakar was very nice. There is a picture of my plate. It was the first plate that I had eaten food off of with a fork in some time. I am looking forward to more of that. The ambassador and his family were very nice, and a crowd of about 55 Peace Corps volunteers and 11 expats and embassy workers cleaned up a table with about 2 metric tons of imported turkey, mashed potatoes, canned cranberry sauce, gravy, pasta salad, garlic bread (which Casey and I made and brought at a cost of 20,000 cfa, or roughly $40 American), and maybe 90 pies. It was delicious. They also had real wine, which was nice.

7%. I'm going fast. I just realized I never took a picture of the Magic Land sign, which was dumb. So we also went to the mall (twice), and got gelato. It was nice, but being somewhere like that for too long can kind of make you crazy.

Whoa 2%. You should all check out Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like. It is a funny blog that also describes Peace Corps volunteers pretty well.

It looks like flickr has successfully uploaded the picture of my Thanksgiving dinner, which is what I care about most, so I'll leave this at that.

Movie Quotes:

Actually TV Quotes (I've been watching Arrested Development and Battlestar Galactica):

"I have the ball."
"I've made a huge mistake."

Welcome to the DANGER ZONE. (I also watched Top Gun).