Starting to reflect

I realized today that the hardest part of studying abroad is not traveling for hours on end, nor is it living with a family with strange food and languages and habits... nor is it even learning to make and appreciate new friends just because they share my nationality and can understand complex sentences in English. No, the hardest part is actually checking email. And tho I'm in Africa, the difficulty is not actually on account of scarce internet cafes. Checking email actually reminds you (well in this case, me) of the weekly meetings, lunch dates, passing smiling faces, and leisure moments that I underappreciated only 2 weeks ago and had completely forgotten.... until I started checking email. And then, its also the difficulty of checking 100+ emails, when it takes 15 seconds to delete each one.... oh right, I'm not in the land of the free instant internet access anymore.

But it really is a mini-culture shock to open this computer that reminds me of so many late nights messin around at home, at school, and then realize that I won't see those places for a looong time. But I can still "surf" da net, so maybe that will ease the feeling. :)

So at this point I've received enough emails from people wondering if I'm still yet alive that I need to work on the international communication. But, as its incredibly difficult to condense my "experience" thus far into a few sentences short enough for people to actually read, I will try my best to convey the range of feelings, awesome sights, and linguistic frustrations of these first few days storytelling-style. So check out my pics, and added commentary.

And until next time... salut, lebes, and SALAAM y'all!!