pics from halloween and goree, no pun intended

 
The world-wide adventures of Aziz and Yacine continued (post from a week back)…

Here we are at Halloween – and in full black cat/pumpkin regalia. Some new American friends of ours (black kitty number two and Cleopatra) and their Senegalese boyfriends had us over for a sort of block-partiesque soiree. Though a good time was had by all, Aziz went back to studying for his GRE (grad school test) within all of 10 minutes of getting home (see pic- still has the pumpkin makeup on!). This is what he does all day, or at least what he tries to do. Be careful or he might start speaking GRE to you (run, run far, get out while you still can!) 

 Above are some kids at the international school near our house, whose Halloween parade I had to film for the video I’m making about expat life in Dakar. The video project is going well, and between that and dancing with a real senegalese dance troupe (talk about lesson in humility), my days are now completely full! I leave the house armed with camera and tripod in the morning, spend the day trying to convince people that I’m making a NON commercial film (people are often very upset when I start filming here, for a variety of reasons) and shooting scenes, head over to dance practice in the afternoons, run home and make dinner, and then go teach my English student at night until I collapse. Overall, quality of life is high, despite being busy. (see pics from my film shoot at goree island) We’ve gotten to welcome a new set of American researchers who just got in to Dakar- it is strange to realize how much we know about life here now, seeing them coming in fresh. We’ve made some good friends already, like the gal in the photo in the next post (entitled more pics from goree), who is staying with us for a few days while she gets her bearings and heads to St. Louis. I went with her and a friend to shoot footage on Goree Island, which I've talked about in previous posts. We even got to beach a little before taking the ferry home.

  (diving in the water at goree)

In the next pic (upcoming)we are doing Somali face masks, which her friend Jamila prepared for us, using a yellow powder that reminded me of tumeric, but is allegedly not. Although their skin was glowing beautifully afterwards, they hadn’t counted on the hazards to toubabs- I spent the rest of the afternoon an interesting shade of yellow!